Backbenchers turn up Royal Mail heat
Lord Mandelson has come under pressure from Labour backbenchers to reconsider his plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail.
Lord Mandelson has come under pressure from Labour backbenchers to reconsider his plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail.
The business secretary defended the policy speaking to scores of MPs at the regular gathering of the Parliamentary Labour party in the Commons on 9 February.
More than 100 Labour MPs have signed a motion opposing the policy which – they believe – flies in the face of assurances given last year by the government.
Two junior aides have, meanwhile, quit their jobs in protest at more than a quarter of the Royal Mail being sold to a foreign rival.
Lindsay Hoyle, MP for Chorley, asked the business secretary why the government would bring in private capital when the business had started to make a profit. “I don’t understand why we want to nationalise the debt and privatise the profit,” he said.
Keeping the Royal Mail in full public ownership was one of the main policies agreed at the “Warwick 2” meeting of Labour policy-makers in the summer. That stance shifted after the return of Lord Mandelson from Brussels and the publication of the Hooper report on the future of the group.
Ministers are likely to guarantee that legislation would expressly rule out a full privatisation of the business – but this is not enough to reassure backbenchers.
The union said that it would ballot its 240,000 members for disaffiliation if Lord Mandelson pressed ahead with the policy of part-privatisation, after publishing a poll showing 90% of people opposing any type of sale of the business.
