Threat to rural deliveries

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 12th Jun 2007

Team for Cornwall MP's keep on fighting for Post Offices across the county

Cornwall's five-strong team of Liberal Democrat MPs today (Wednesday) slammed Royal Mail plans to introduce 'zonal pricing', which will see the cost of bulk business mail to Cornwall rise, to cut prices in urban areas.

In a special House of Commons debate called by the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives lent their support to the Royal Mail proposals, which Cornish MPs say will threaten the viability of regular deliveries to rural areas.

Speaking in the debate, North Cornwall's MP, Dan Rogerson, said deliveries of letters from friends and family and of bulk direct mail from big companies could not be divorced from one another. "Postcards and flyers all come on the same van," he told MPs, "one supports the other."

"We have to keep our country together", Mr Rogerson continued in the chamber. While times had changed, the need for Royal Mail to provide a universal service to rural and urban areas, to remote areas and more populous ones, had not, the North Cornwall MP argued.

Andrew George, MP for the West Cornwall and Isles of Scilly constituency of St Ives supported Mr Rogerson in saying that too many people confused support for rural areas with subsidising the privileged. "This is not a class issue", he said.

Responding, the Conservative Party spokesman said he understood the reasons why Royal Mail would want to introduce differential pricing for rural and urban areas. Business mail, he said, was not part of the universal service.

Commenting after the debate, Dan Rogerson said:

"The Minister has said today that he supports the Universal Service. If that were so, he wouldn't stand idly by while that service is threatened.

"More extraordinary still was the Conservative spokesman's support for Royal Mail's plans. This is yet further proof that Cameron's Conservatives are the same old Tories. Their cavalier dismissal of rural needs is indicative of the approach they would take to Cornwall if they were ever re-elected.

"The Conservatives have rushed to endorse the price increases attached to zonal pricing before their extent is even clear. In the first year we're told there would be a rise of some 4.8%. But that's just in the first year. What about the second? What about subsequent years?

"Neither Ministers nor the Conservatives can answer just how much their plans would cost people in Cornwall."

Andrew George added,

"Differential pricing for business mail is the thin end of the wedge. Its effects will not be confined to big corporations but could threaten deliveries of stamped, personal mail to Cornish households too. Indeed, it could undermine the viability of businesses on the Isles of Scilly, which have developed niche markets in difficult circumstances.

"Bulk mail products may not, in law, be part of the Universal Service Obligation but a universal service in areas like ours is dependent upon them.

"The human cost to the poorest and most peripheral areas of these changes hasn't even been considered.

"How disappointing that these plans enjoy Conservative as well as Labour support."