Don't Go Dutch

Over in The Mail on Sunday, Neil Clark writes:

Hundreds of campaigners recently marched through David Cameron's Oxfordshire constituency to protest against Government plans to sell off the Royal Mail. 'The planned privatisation is an unnecessary ideological move which will damage postal services for ever,' said Billy Hayes, leader of the Communication Workers Union. While Hayes believes the sell-off of Royal Mail - in State hands since its inception in 1516 - would mean an increase in prices, a decrease in services and mass Post Office closures, Business Secretary Vince Cable claims the move will 'secure the services that consumers and businesses rely on'.

Of course, they can't both be right. To find out what a privatised postal service really would be like, we only have to look across the North Sea to the Netherlands. And Holland's unhappy experience should give us all grounds for concern over what is about to happen in Britain. Holland was the world's postal privatisation trailblazer, transforming its state-owned postal service to a private corporation in 1989. Five years later, the Dutch state sold 30 per cent of its shares in PTT Netherlands, and a year later sold another 25 per cent, thereby losing its majority holding. Since then, the Dutch have had to get used to several name changes to their postal service. In 1994 it became known as Royal PTT Post and in 2002 it was renamed Royal TPG Post. Today it is called Royal TNT Post, after the multinational company that operates the service.

If the Royal Mail is privatised, it is likely that similar name changes will follow here too. Although the Government promises that the Queen's head will remain on stamps, there is no guarantee that the name Royal Mail will stay. Neither is there any guarantee that our post boxes will remain red - in Holland in 2006 they changed from red to orange. Privatisation in Holland has also led to the closure of around 90 per cent of the country's post offices, including the magnificent 19th Century main post office in Amsterdam, which is now a shopping mall. In the space of just one month in 2009, ten per cent of all Holland's post offices closed.

There have been other cuts too. Dutch post boxes are emptied only once a day, unlike in Britain where there are sometimes three collections a day. Complaints about the reliability of Holland's privatised post are widespread. 'We all wait a lot longer for our parcels to arrive these days,' complains Peter Suurland, from Amsterdam. In the past three months, four packages sent from the UK have never arrived - one containing birthday money for my nine-year-old. I'm still awaiting two more packages sent more than two weeks ago. Not a week goes by when I don't get someone else's post.' TNT has acknowledged the problems. 'As a company we are not in a position to deliver the post on time, particularly on Saturday and Monday,' TNT said in a letter to workers in The Hague region.

Holland was not only the first EU state to privatise its postal service. It was also one of the first to adopt EU directives and allow new companies to compete in its postal market. The move was supposed to increase competition and lead to better services. But the opposite has occurred. New firms paying workers below the minimum wage have hit deep into the profits of TNT. In response, TNT now wants to replace 11,000 workers who work more than 25 hours a week with cheaper part-time workers and franchisees. Unsurprisingly, staff, who have already seen big wage cuts in recent years, are incensed, and two weeks before Christmas they went on strike. 'I'm 57 years old. Our company has an ageing workforce. These older workers won't stand a chance in the labour market, and there is no alternative,' Gerard van Os, a postman for 37 years, told Radio Netherlands.

Holland's postal problems have become front-page news across the country. But as bad as things are today, they could be about to get even worse. TNT says it wants to cut deliveries to just three days a week. 'If politicians want six days a week, then they will have to finance it,' declared Peter Kuinz, TNT's managing director. He also said that the Universal Service Obligation - which ensures that mail is delivered to every address for the same price - was a 'kind of Jurassic Park and we should get rid of it'.

The alarming deterioration in postal services in Holland could soon be coming to Britain. And although the Royal Mail is not presently up for sale, the official customer watchdog Consumer Focus warned recently that if the sale does go ahead, more than a third of our Post Offices will close, due to the loss of the Royal Mail's £343million a year subsidy. The Government claims privatisation offers the Royal Mail the promise of a 'brighter future'. But if the experience of our North Sea neighbour is anything to go by, it is likely to deliver nothing but chaos.

Neil certainly gets around. Unlike his critics, who turn up wherever he is published, to claim that he is never published. What they mean is that they never are. Nor should they be.