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POST OFFICES are under increasing threat, Jeremy Corbyn told post and telecoms workers yesterday.
The Labour leader used a speech at the Communication Workers Union (CWU) conference to call for Royal Mail and the Post Office to be brought back together under public ownership.
High street post offices were kept under state control when the Royal Mail was sold off under the Con-Dem coalition in 2013, but plans announced earlier this month would see 61 of the 314 crown post offices handed over to WH Smith.
Sub-post offices are often run under franchise agreements already.
Mr Corbyn told CWU delegates that postal workers were the “real lifeblood of our communities” and were regularly “seen as a friend” by local people.
He said that staff in post offices were “often the only people that many isolated people get to talk to.
“If we lose high street post offices … we’ve lost something pioneers fought to get,” he said. “The bean-counters in our government don’t understand the importance of human interaction.”
Mr Corbyn also pledged to maintain the guaranteed daily delivery at a fixed price, which has come under increasing pressure since private competitors moved into the post market.
Such firms have been accused of “cherry-picking” profitable delivery routes and leaving hard-to-access rural areas, where the price of delivery is subsidised, to Royal Mail.
Labour had itself planned to part-privatise Royal Mail in 2009, which Mr Corbyn vociferously opposed from the back benches, but Gordon Brown’s government backed down, blaming poor market conditions.
The party subsequently opposed the Tories’ sell-off and criticised ministers for undervaluing the service.
But in spite of a vote at the 2013 party conference, then shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna refused to commit to taking the mail back into public ownership if Labour won the 2015 election.
Criticism of the botched sale was also credited with seeing off the privatisation of the Land Registry the following year, though Business Secretary Sajid Javid has now revived this plan.
