Postal services evidence session
20 January 2009 (updated on 22 April 2010)
The Business and Enterprise Committee has arranged this hearing to discuss the findings of the Hooper Review, first with Richard Hooper, Chair of the Postal Services Sector Review Panel, and subsequently with Billy Hayes, the General Secretary of the Communication Workers’ Union. Watch from 10.30am.
The Government established an independent panel to review the UK postal services sector on 17 December 2007. The Panel was chaired by Richard Hooper CBE; its other members were Dame Deirdre Hutton and Ian R Smith. The review reported on 16 December 2008, concluding that "The only company currently capable of providing the universal service in the UK is Royal Mail. But it is much less efficient than many of its European peers and faces severe difficulties."
It recommended a strategic partnership between Royal Mail and one or more private sector companies with demonstrable experience of transforming a major business, ideally a major network business; that the Government should tackle the historic pension deficit, to enable the company to reap the benefits of modernisation; and that a new regulatory regime is needed to place postal regulation within the broader context of the communications market, in which responsibility for regulation would pass to Ofcom.
The Committee will use this opportunity to discuss some of the review's proposals and their implications.