§ MR. HENNIKER HEATONI 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. MORLEYIn 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 1344 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.