Mr Graham Corbett recently announced further liberalisation steps on the British letter market for next year.

Mr Graham Corbett, chairman of the Postal Services Commission, Britain’s
regulator, has announced further liberalisation steps on the British letter market for next year but declined to disclose any details. Last week Mr Corbett presented two documents, which suggest that Britain’s milkmen and supermarkets may in future become involved in accepting and distributing letters. According to the ‘Daily Telegraph’ Mr Corbett said that ‘the logic behind it is that if the milk distribution is threatened, then letter deliveries would add further business to the system. This is not just a proposal from us but we have already entered into preliminary discussions with some companies.’ Mr Corbett said Consignia’s results (see above) should act as a warning signal for the
mail company to finally wake up and face the competition to come. Mr Corbett swept aside one of Consignia’s most important arguments against liberalisation when he said that the costs for providing a universal letter service – a
guarantee known among experts as uniform prices for all regions – were ‘negligible’.
However, he still thinks that it would be ‘unrealistic’ and ‘irresponsible’ to introduce a complete liberalisation in the short term. Subscribers to the CEP News can obtain both PostComm documents from our office
(phone +49 40/220 4000 or e-mail Rrobles@m-r-u-de).