OPINION ON SUNDAY: Time to come clean on plans for Royal Mail

THE media is giving Royal Mail a difficult time. Acres of newsprint trumpet complaints about late delivery of mail; the service's new pricing plans have been greeted without enthusiasm; and a television programme last week created an impression of a thoroughly untrustworthy workforce.

It has painted a terrible picture of our industry.

There will always be something wrong with the post. There will always be someone who hasn't got a letter they have been waiting for. I'm not making excuses, but it is inevitable, given that we deliver 82 million letters a day to 27 million addresses.

The vast majority of mail is delivered safely and on time. To give the impression that the chances of your letter arriving is about the same as winning the lottery is absurd. Yet that is what some reports this week have suggested. So if they are clearly wrong, why is it reported in this way?

This worries me. I don't argue that the post can't be improved, but I resent attacks that present the business as wholly inefficient and its staff as hugely unreliable. 99.9 per cent of our postal workers are honest, hard-working, committed public servants.

That's what makes these attacks grossly unfair, and it makes me suspicious - because it is exactly what happened at BT before Margaret Thatcher privatised it. Step one was making the public dissatisfied with the company by starving it of funds; step two was publicising the company's failures; and step three was selling it off. The public accepted this because they didn't have too much affection for BT any more.

Is this someone's plan for the post?

The television show - I can't call it a documentary - was distorted, but it did illustrate some serious problems in the industry. Viewers must have asked why Royal Mail uses so many agency workers, and especially why they are so ill-equipped to carry out the job.

The truth is that there is a shortage of applicants for full-time dedicated postal jobs.

The reasons are plain. It is a physically demanding occupation, the hours are unsocial and the pay isn't great. We have only recently secured a route to getting pounds 300 a week for delivery postmen and women. It's not a lot to live on.

Then there is training. When I began work as a delivery postman we had strict sorting tests, and no one was sent out with the mail without being shown the round by an experienced worker.

You can't dispense with training and expect people to do the job. It can be complex and confusing. The business is so pushed, and so obsessed by financial targets that cuts are made, and the essentials often neglected.

The union doesn't ignore financial considerations. That is why we agreed to management's proposals for a single delivery. We were convinced that a single delivery could lead to a more reliable service, and then wanted extra services to be provided on top.

We wanted special arrangements for social reasons, like visually impaired people; and even same day delivery services within cities.

All this, however, depended on having the tools for the job: and they haven't been evident.

Machinery has often been inadequate, and trollies for the extra loads of taking out two deliveries at one time haven't been provided.

But worse, management came up with a 'one size fits all' solution to postal deliveries. It doesn't work. Every town, every walk, is different.

If you want to know about the local area, where would you look? Who are the local experts?

Obviously, the local postman or woman and their union.

Where union representatives at local level have been involved in open talks with management, most of the difficulties have been ironed out and the service is acceptable. But in many areas, this has not happened.

If it does, many of the short-term delivery problems will disappear. In the longer term, we need a fresh approach to the industry.

That is why I wrote to Department of Trade and Industry minister Patricia Hewitt last week urging her to summon an urgent top level meeting of all the major stakeholders in Royal Mail.

At the moment we have an unsustainable position where the key stakeholders cannot agree on how the business should be run.

We have a Government which fails to accept accountability for an industry it owns.

We have the regulator Postcomm, which see its primary role as driving and encouraging competition by allowing private firms into the industry without any regard for our universal service obligation. We have Post Watch, the consumer watchdog, which constantly attacks the business in a negative way without taking into account the funding and resources we have at our disposal. We have government- appointed high-profile business leaders who seemingly operate purely on short-termism, and are frankly confused about their role.

The burning question is, "What type of Post Office does the public want?"

Do we want a business run commercially like any other? Or do we want a properly functioning public service that is run for the benefit of everyone?

This is the question we want to discuss with Patricia Hewitt. We all need to know her views; we need to be assured of her support for our objective: which is to bring back direction and public confidence to our postal industry

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