The CWU’s second motion — 35 — focuses on our People’s Post campaign, which comes towards the end of a decade of liberalisation, aggressive regulation and competition in the postal industry.

The experience in postal services is characteristic of the way a dogmatic belief in markets has been put before the public interest and the sell-off of Royal Mail is the latest part of this.

It should be no surprise that the idea of services — from post, to rail and energy — belonging to the people (or, to be more accurate, being returned to them) is now gaining traction.

The letters market was opened to competition from 2003-06.

While this coincided with unprecedented and dramatic changes, with the internet and email coming in, successive regulators have been determined not simply to allow competition, but to actively promote it.

This has been done through an access regime — forcing Royal Mail to carry and effectively subsidise other operators’ mail — and by giving new entrants freedom to cherry-pick the most profitable mail, undermining the cross-subsidies of a national mail service.

This has had predictable results. We have seen a steady erosion of service standards for the public and small businesses, who then bore the brunt of price increases to keep Royal Mail afloat. All the while competitors catered exclusively to the largest bulk mailers.

And we are seeing increasing pressure on employment standards over the race to the bottom, with the competitors that have come in — with preferential treatment from regulators — taking advantage of lax employment laws to employ staff on zero-hours, minimum wage, temporary contracts.

While CWU members in Royal Mail have had pay rises for six years, it is striking that regulator Ofcom is setting out its stall against this.

Last year it publicly criticised the CWU’s Agenda for Growth pay agreement with Royal Mail — which, as one of our responses to privatisation, prevents the company from outsourcing and using other insecure employment models — as a barrier to efficiency, and at a select committee it called on Royal Mail to adopt more “flexible” employment practices.

No union in the country can accept a regulator becoming a second tier of management which undermines collective bargaining, and our campaign is calling for an overhaul of the regime.

There must be stronger protections for the daily delivery service against competition, fair minimum employment standards across the sector and a voice for workers and the public in Royal Mail — in short, there must be a People’s Post.

Dave Ward is general secretary of the Communication Workers Union.