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Royal Mail

I thank my hon. Friend for the commitment that he has given to the universal service obligation, which means so much to a rural constituency such as mine. I and a number of Labour colleagues met the regulator before he took up post and officially started to liberalise the service. We warned the then Secretary of State and Ministers with the relevant responsibilities that we were about to see a butchering of the service. What happened in such a short space of time should never have happened to the extent to which it did. It is not beyond the wit of the work force or the Royal Mail management team to deliver for this country what we require without the interference—I shall put it no more strongly at this point—of a third party to partner the business.