HC Deb 19 June 1893 vol 13 cc1343-4
MR. HENNIKER HEATON

I beg to ask the Postmaster General will he explain on what grounds, until the issue of the existing Regulation on the subject of the re-direction of letters, all postal packets, including letters, book-post matter, and newspapers, were redirected and delivered free within the same district, provided that notice of removal were given at the district post office; whether on granting, under certain conditions, the privilege of free re-direction of letters to the same or another district, the former privilege of free redirection of other postal packets within the same district was suppressed; and whether he will restore the privilege thus suppressed as regards removal, of which due notice is given, to another address within the same district?

MR. A. MORLEY

In answer to the first paragraph, I can only say that under the old system of re-direction a practice had grown up of re-directing any kind of correspondence without charge within the limits of the same postal delivery. This exemption was, however, anomalous; and when the Government granted in June of last year the important concession of free re-direction for letters to any part of the United Kingdom, it was thought right, while retaining the charge for re-direction on other postal packets, to make the charge on such packets uniform in its operations, and to abolish the local exemption which had previously existed. I am not prepared to recommend a departure from the decision of the late Government in this matter.