Post Office must be broken up and privatised, think-tank says

THE POST Office should be broken up and privatised if it is to preserve its
standing as one of the nations most-respected brands, a right- of-centre
think-tank says today.
A report from the Centre for Policy Studies argues that the Royal Mail and
Parcelforce need to be split off from the Counters network quickly and sold
off
separately. In the medium term, Counters should also be privatised once
“commercial efficiencies” have been introduced.
Stuart Lyons, the industrialist turned fund manager who wrote the report,
describes the Post Office as “the last unreformed nationalised industry in
the
country”. He claims the cost of posting letters does not represent value for
money, while the Post Office’s management is cumbersome and its acquisition
strategy unconvincing. He also argues that it is being overtaken
internationally
by competitors such as the Dutch and Germans while at home, the Counters
business is in “crisis”.
Mr Lyons argues that although the Post Office is being converted into a plc
a
week from today, when it changes its name to Consignia and starts to face
competition for the first time, it will still have a single shareholder in
the
shape of the Government and its monopolistic culture will still be
preserved.
“Public ownership is hindering the enterprise from exploiting newly emerging
possibilities, more flexible European operators are expanding and
diversifying
at a rate which threatens to undermine the Post Office’s scope for growth –
even
for survival,” he writes.
A Post Office spokesman said that questions of ownership were a matter for
the
Government. But he said that breaking the organisation up would be a
backward
step. “Big companies want a structure which allows them to talk to one point
of
contact. Breaking it up would be going in the wrong direction.”
INDEPENDENT, 19th March 2001