Break up fear for UK Royal Mail
Royal Mail faces the prospect of being broken up if it blocks access to its delivery systems by rival operators.
Graham Corbett, the postal regulator, said that the state organisation may be forced to spin off its sorting offices and distribution centres if it was felt that Royal Mail was unfairly obstructing competitors.
The postal group is obliged to allow other postal companies to use its infrastructure, but the regulator has yet to determine the price.
Mr Corbett is braced for a legal tussle with Royal Mail when he sets an access price within the next couple of months.
Mr Corbett said: “If, at the end of the day, we have so much difficulty with getting access agreed and implemented, eventually we might finish up going the route which other regulators in other industries have done, and say ‘well the only way you can do it is by breaking up the vertigal integration’.”
Royal Mail is already under fire from large business customers who use some of the organisation’s infrastructure through “mailsort” services.
Postwatch, the consumers’ group, recently sent a “super complaint” to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). Super complaints can result in an OFT investigation.
Postwatch has already pressed for Royal Mail to be broken up.
Mr Corbett first outlined the possibility of a break-up when he began his job three years ago.
A spokesman for Royal Mail said: “Any move to break up Royal Mail would be barmy.
It would be a piece of uncertainty which our people could well do without.”
Many other utilities such as gas and electricity have been dismantled to combat monopoly behaviour.
