HC Deb 12 August 1966 vol 733 cc2035-49

12.16 p.m.

Wing Commander Sir Eric Bullus (Wembley, North)

Some time ago at one of my constituency nights, which you, Sir, as a Member of Parliament know Members call their "surgeries", a man came in and told me that he did not think I could help him but that he wanted to unburden himself: he said that he felt like shooting someone because of the frustrations and the gross inefficiency of the General Post Office. I sympathised with him and told him that he was preaching to the converted. I have no desire to bring a gun into the Chamber, and the last person I should want to shoot is the Assistant Postmaster-General, who is respected by all and held in affectionate terms; but it is a serious problem.

I should also like, Mr. Speaker, if I were not out of order, to express my gratitude to you. A short while ago, Sir, you expressed the gratitude of the House for the hard work of its servants. There was one notable omission which you yourself could not include. That, Sir, was your own hard work, unfailing courtesy, friendship and help to all Members. I am sure that all Members of the House will agree with that. To that you have added the foresight and understanding of allowing me a few minutes to bring before the House a very important subject.

I want to raise the question of the postal delivery service, of which there is evidence of real deterioration. I am worried that it is now to be put on the same footing as the nationalised industries, and I tremble for its future. That is the only party political reference that I shall make on this subject, because hon. Members in all parts of the House are concerned to see that we should have a good postal delivery service.

Like many right hon. and hon. Members, from time to time I receive complaints from my constituents. I send them to the Postmaster-General. I usually, in common with my colleagues, get a long explanatory letter and the usual pro forma of apology. I am satisfied that there are many inefficiencies in the postal delivery service today. In the few minutes accorded to me, I want to enumerate some of them from my own experience.

I get them from my constituents and I follow them up, but if I use the factual case of my own personal complaints I feel that that would be a better example.

I suppose that I can be called the Department's best customer for complaints over the years. I have here a dossier of a few of my complaints and the courteous letters from the Postmasters-General or Assistant Postmasters-General over various years with apologies for inefficiencies. If I, a Member of Parliament, cannot get these mistakes rectified, what hope has the man in the street and my constituents of getting their mistakes rectified? I am genuinely concerned for the future of the service, for I believe that it is living on its reputation of former years, when it was a fine and responsible Crown service, a proud service.

Before the war, I could go down to the General Post Office in my own town in the North of England up until 10.30 in the morning and post a communication, even a newspaper, with the knowledge that it would be delivered in the suburbs that same afternoon at about 4 o'clock. Nothing like that can happen now so many years after the war. My home is about 23 miles from the centre of London. I have much important correspondence at the weekend when, as a journalist, I send copy to Fleet Street. There is a letterbox outside my gate, and I am perhaps fortunate in that, but like all boxes in all areas it has only one collection on a Sunday—mine is at a quarter to three o'clock. I have to phone Fleet Street every Monday morning to see if my copy has covered the 23 miles, and every other week it has not arrived.

I have discovered that the Eastern sorting area is about the worst in the country, but it is not always the sorters who are at fault. Twice in the past three months, to my knowledge, the box has not been opened and cleared. This is a heinous fault. It is a Post Office crime when a pillarbox is not opened, particularly on a Sunday. I invariably phone the Postmaster-General's private office, and then my copy sometimes arrives in Fleet Street on the Monday afternoon. But on the 9th May, when the copy did not arrive but reached Fleet Street on the Tuesday, I took the matter up again with the private office and—I am not criticising the private office, because the Postmaster-General must accept responsibility—I received a letter telling me: Despite intensive inquiries, we have not been able to discover any posting box in your area which was not collected according to schedule on Sunday afternoon. I was told: It seems, therefore, that your letter missed collection. The inference was that I had missed the post. I had certainly missed the boat.

When the same thing happened a fortnight ago and my copy was delivered in Fleet Street on Tuesday—and this time important mail to my constituency and to the Church Assembly was also delayed—I went into action and found that on this occasion and on the previous occasion the box had not been cleared. On the first occasion, of which the private office of the Postmaster-General had no knowledge, the door of the box had stuck and the engineers had not gone there until the Monday morning. On the second occasion I was told in a letter from the local head postmaster: I am extremely sorry to inform you that the delay occurred at the Rickmansworth office and was due to the collector failing to clear the box in which the letters were posted. Very serious notice has been taken of this omission, and disciplinary action has been taken against the officer concerned. Special steps have also been taken to try to obviate such a failure in the future. Please accept my sincere apologies for the annoyance which you have suffered and for your time which was unnecessarily taken up as a result of the failure on our part to fulfil our obligations. That is a handsome apology, and if it were an isolated incident honour would be satisfied, but I cannot believe that these are isolated incidents. These are my own personal experiences and I am satisfied that they are the experiences of others who perhaps do not complain or do not have the opportunity to complain.

I had to spend the best part of that Monday trying to find where my letters were and had to pay for fourteen telephone calls. That came to only about 3s., but why should I spend my time and money on Post Office inefficiencies? Until a couple of years ago, because I did not trust the service, I brought my journalistic copy here to the House and for 2s. I could have a special messenger who went the distance of less than a mile to Fleet Street. But now the charge for that small service has gone up to 6s. and I do not feel disposed to pay that to have a letter delivered less than three-quarters of a mile. The charge should be referred to the Prices and Incomes Board.

If these incidents were isolated, one could accept the excuses—but never on a Sunday. If a mistake is made on a week day, and one collection is inadvertently missed when there are four collections, at 8 o'clock, midday, 3 o'clock, and half-past 5 o'clock, there are the other collections, but not on Sunday. When there is only one collection there is an added responsibility to see that it is made, because it is the only one of a monopoly service.

I was told that a check is made the following day on the little time tabs in the box to see that there has been no mistake and that the postman would report if there were a mistake. But dog does not bite dog and I tried it out on the dog, metaphorically speaking, when I asked the postman on the round if he had looked at the pillarbox to see if the time had been changed and he replied, "Sir, I have not the slightest idea."

The position in regard to incoming mail is just as bad. Mine varies considerably, taking from one to four days for communications that sometimes come from only a few miles away. Regularly my letters posted on Friday in the north of England—Leeds, Bradford, Harrogate and other parts—and often from lesser distances, are not delivered until Monday. I shall be told that there is is no second delivery on Saturday, and I am well aware of that. But why? I have often sought the answer in the past and when I have raised that question in the House I have always been told that it is to suit the convenience of the postmen and their service. The convenience of the customer, the user, is ignored. I have raised the question on behalf of the Association of Municipal Corporations, of which I am a vice-president, but I have received no satisfaction. Most businesses have a five-day week, but there are others. What about them, and what about private residents?

I maintain that there are extra responsibilities to see that all Friday collections are cleared and delivered on the Saturday, even the newspapers, printed matter and larger envelopes which are so often pushed aside until a later post. A year ago, following a series of my complaints to the Postmaster-General, my mail was surveyed for a month at his request and almost every day I had to return to the local postmaster a series of envelopes on which small stick-on labels had been placed because of postal delay.

One would have thought that this would produce some improvement, but only this week I received a letter from North London, only 23 miles away, which took three days to reach me. It was correctly stamped and correctly addressed, but it had obviously been mis-sorted, according to a frank on the reverse side of the envelope, but that date was two days later than the original postmark. When a sorting mistake has obviously been made there is an added responsibility on the service, for its own good name, to try to rectify the mistake of one of its public servants, by speeding up the redelivery. Consciousness of extra responsibilities seems to have gone today, and not only in the postal services. It is part of the malaise of our times.

At the last General Election some of my election literature from the Central Office took up to lour days to reach my house, and some of the thousands of my election addresses handed in to the Post Office ten days before the General Election had not been delivered in some parts of my constituency by election day. I put a question to the Postmaster-General at that time, and he replied that his information was that they had been delivered on the day before the election. To my knowledge, there were some not delivered until after election day. This is another case in which there was added responsibility on the Department to see that delivery was made in reasonable time.

So I could go on, but I have asked for this debate so that the Minister may give the House an idea of what is being done to streamline the service in this half of the twentieth century. I want to be helpful. I am well aware of the labour shortage and of the unfilled posts. I am aware also that some of the recruits, unhappily, do not measure up to standard. But I do not want the Minister to quote figures to show that, perhaps, only one letter in 30 million goes astray. I do not believe it. I do not want him to tell me that 0.001 per cent. of complaints are justified. I do not believe it.

I am certain mat there are thousands who accept this situation of mis-sorting, late deliveries and so on and who do not report complaints. Figures, therefore, cannot show the true position.

What of the remedies? Turning to practical constructive thought, I suggest mat there is scope for an organisation and methods team in the Post Office. I understand that something like it has been tried. There is opportunity for much greater mechanisation in the Department. Nowadays, we could call in aid greater mechanisation to improve the efficiency of the service, or even to bring it back to the standard it showed in pre-war years. What progress has mechanisation made in the Department?

Above all, we need a system of priorities. I suggest that letters with a special stamp—perhaps 6d., though I should prefer it to remain at the existing 4d.—and/or a special size envelope should qualify for priority with as near possible a guarantee that such mail would be delivered the next day. Perhaps the urgent alarm colour of red could be used if it does not conflict with the international agreement on colours which we use. All other mail should be charged at 3d.—or, if the 6d. stamp were used for the one, 4d. would be the second charge—and this mail would normally be delivered the next day, though not guaranteed.

I once asked whether we could have a system of that kind at Christmas time when so many millions of letters and communications go through the post and are concentrated in a period of a few days. I have found from my experience that some of the more important and fully stamped mail was being delivered within two or three days and cards were often delivered with fantastic speed, Christmas greeting cards being delivered literally within a few hours of posting. I have felt that there was something wrong in a system of priorities which allowed important letters to be pushed aside while the cards were got out of the way, no doubt by the temporary postmen.

I understand that the authorities are to consider such a scheme. I hope that they will treat it as a matter of urgency. Otherwise, the existing charge for postal delivery will remain nothing more than a fraud. Only a short time ago, I put a Question to the Postmaster-General to ask whether, in view of the deterioration in the service, he would reduce the cost of postage. He gave the simple, short answer "No, Sir", and put the letter charge up to 4d.

I hope that the Assistant Postmaster-General will not tell me that the answer is the express delivery service. It is not. Very often, express letters arrive after ordinary mail. I am glad that, every Friday, I receive my Whip from the Opposition Whips' Office and it always comes at the first post. But when we were in Government and there was occasion to send it by express post and the blue cross was put on the envelope, it did not arrive at the first post but arrived by special messenger at mid-morning. The express delivery service is not the answer.

I could say a good deal more, but I want to hear the Minister's reply. I have been critical, but my criticism is of the service and not of the individual. In common with others, I want to improve the service. I apologise for the time I have taken, and I conclude by paying tribute, as you have done, Mr. Speaker, to those who serve us in the House, and, in the context of my remarks this morning, I add my tribute to the postmen of my own area, the three regulars, who are friends of the family and a joy to my young children. They are never failing in their work and their carefulness, and no fault can be laid at their door. I pay tribute to the staff in the Palace. We are fortunate in the House in the service which we receive and the never-failing courtesy of the Post Office staff. Here is the service at its best. I want this to be the rule rather than the exception.

I want to see an efficient postal service, a service not living on its record but proving its essential value in a modern and appreciative society.

Sir Ronald Russell (Wembley, South)

Does my hon. and gallant Friend agree that deliveries also are being made later in the day in some parts? In Wembley they are as late as 10.30 in the morning.

Sir E. Bullus

I agree that this is all part of the deterioration in the system. Although I have concentrated on facts within my own personal experience, I agree that some deliveries are getting later, and I hope that the Assistant Postmaster-General will make some comment about that.

Although I have been critical, I do not wish to end on an unduly critical note. I realise that this is a wonderful service. It has been a wonderful Crown service with a wonderful record. Its servants have been proud to work in it. I want to see that standard developed and improved to even greater efficiency.

12.38 p.m.

The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Joseph Slater)

The House has heard me say on previous occasions that the Post Office does not shrink from genuine criticism of its services, and I am glad to have this opportunity of another searching look into the quality of the postal services. The hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Sir E. Bullus) has, I know, taken a keen interest in the postal services in his constituency and has gone to much trouble to bring failures and shortcomings in those services to our notice from time to time. I am pleased that he has taken so much interest, and I think it quite right that he should be so keen to have as speedy and reliable a postal delivery service as possible, not merely for himself but for his constituency and the country as a whole. We are just as keen and are fully determined to give such a service.

But when we consider the failings of the Post Office, let us look at them in their right perspective. The Post Office handles about 35 million letters and parcels on a normal weekday and there is bound to be a small percentage of mistakes arising from human fallibility, transport difficulties and other causes, including the weather. By all means let us know when things go wrong—this is what the hon. Gentleman has tried to do—but I do suggest that in assessing the quality of the postal services we should measure the good against the bad. If we do so, in all fairness, I am sure that the House will see a much more favourable picture than that just described by the hon. and gallant Member.

The Post Office is presented with a formidable organisational task. Most fully paid letters are posted up and down the country in the late afternoon and early evening, despite our constant attempts to get the public to post earlier in the day, and the Post Office sets out, virtually within a span of about 12 hours, to collect these letters into sorting offices; to divide them into convenient groups for despatch direct to their delivery points or through some intermediate office; to convey them the length and breadth of the British Isles; and finally to sort them ready for the postmen to take out on their rounds. Considering how much is involved in all this, it is, surely, no mean achievement to deliver as we do some 90 per cent. of all fully paid letters on the day of posting or the next working day.

But what are the problems? I think that they can be put under three main heads. First, our stint cannot be fixed as a foreseen thing, for we do not know in advance precisely how much correspondence we shall have to deal with on any one day—and there are substantial variations in the number of letters posted day by day. Second, it is essential to have enough staff in the sorting offices to cope with these varying quantities of mail. Third, there must be reliable transport services.

Variations in the amount of work on hand present real problems. Of course we do our best to ensure that there is always enough staff available to handle these varying quantities; but there are occasions when through sheer weight of mail posted, the number of letters for treatment is beyond the capacity—I make no apologies for this—of the staff on duty to handle in the time available. On those occasions some letters are not cleared at the proper time.

The problem faces us twice every day: work peaks occur in the evening and again in the early morning. The pressures on the organisation at these times are such that there are occasional failures despite all that we do to try to prevent them.

Moreover, we have to reckon with the individual human error. Every letter has to be separately handled an average of at least six times from the time it is posted by the sender until the time it is delivered to the addressee. Every occasion of handling is a potential opportunity for human error.

Further, much of the work is done in the late evening and early morning, and it is not easy to ensure that we always have enough staff to cope with the work during these unusual working hours. I had a long experience before I became a Member of Parliament of having to get up at I or 2 o'clock in the morning and proceed to work.

Sir E. Bullus

Now the hon. Gentleman works till that time in the morning.

Mr. Slater

Yes, we have a long working day here.

If a postman fails to turn up at 6 a.m. because of illness or some other reason, someone else has to be found quickly to take on his delivery and this is not always possible especially when there is a general shortage of staff. In any case substitutes will usually take longer to prepare the letters for delivery and to deliver them than the regular postman. Thus delays in delivery on such occasions are sometimes inevitable. Similarly in the late evening and during the night, it is just not possible always to find men to stand in for their absent colleagues, and this gives rise to failures to clear all the correspondence on hand.

As Post Office Ministers have said in the House on a number of occasions, we have been suffering from an acute shortage of staff in the London area for some time and this has increased the difficulties. We are even now, in London alone, in need of 1,000 postmen to bring the postal establishment up to strength.

But despite these conditions we know that, while the quality of service has not always been as good as we should have liked, it has certainly been maintained at a high level; more than that, we have every confidence that it will become even better still when the overall staff position improves.

The need for reliable transport services is self-evident. We are grateful to British Railways for the facilities they provide. But our timetables leave little margin for error. Every connection missed—whether it be because of the late running of a particular service or whether it arises from a mistake on the part of our staff in loading mails—can lead to mail failing to reach its destination at the proper time. When this happens the mail very likely falls into a later delivery than the one it is due to get.

The hon. Member's criticisms mostly fall under one or more of these heads. I have already had correspondence with him on matters of the kind he has mentioned in the House today. While there have been some instances where I have been unable to explain just why the normal delivery was not maintained, we have established the causes of the others as being due to one or more of these factors.

Where our services do not work as they should do we are very much prepared to spend effort, and money if necessary, in putting matters right. For this reason, I can assure the hon. Member and the House that we shall always make prompt and thorough investigation into any cases of delay affecting himself or his constituents. I believe that we have a right to do this. It is our responsibility.

The hon. Member says that the services are not what they were. Of course they are not. They have had to be trimmed from time to time over the years since the war to meet the increasing need for economy of expenditure in both money and manpower. This has not just happened over the last two years. We are in fact still in the process of making the changes announced in the House on 2nd August, 1965. These changes, which in general are designed to reduce costs and improve labour utilisation, will mean slightly later finishing times for the first delivery and the consolidation of the number of letter deliveries in the London sub-districts to two on Monday to Friday; there is to be one delivery only throughout London on Saturday. These changes require a great deal of detailed preparatory work, and in consequence have yet to be introduced in some areas, including part of the hon. Member's constituency.

The hon. Member referred to the cancellation of the second delivery on Saturdays and the Post Office's obligation to deliver fully paid items posted in good time on Friday by first post on Saturday morning. I would wish to assure the hon. Member that our arrangements are designed to give this service. I am satisfied that in general we achieve the objective and that wherever there are failures from causes within human control we do our best to ensure that the trouble is eliminated.

Mr. Speaker

Order. It is not in order for an hon. Member to see to his correspondence in the Chamber.

Mr. Slater

To make another delivery on Saturday would not, however, be the right answer to the problem. It would be too costly, and it would mean pushing the postmen's conditions of employment out of line with those in broadly comparable jobs.

I am sorry that the hon. Member has twice had occasion recently to complain about letters posted on a Sunday not being delivered on the following morning. The trouble was traced to a failure to clear a pillar box near his home. I am sure these were isolated cases. One was due to human failure, and suitable disciplinary action has been taken. But in general we get very little complaint about boxes not being cleared when they should be. For example, in the Rickmansworth area where the hon. Gentleman lives there are 83 pillar boxes, and during the course of any one week the number of clearances totals 1,777. So far as we know there have been but two complaints in the past year about failures to clear the boxes in this area. But it is no excuse that they have not been cleared. I want to see them all cleared.

Sir E. Bullus

If a collection is missed on an ordinary day when there are four collections, that is too bad but it can be made up, but it is different when the Post Office misses a collection on Sunday. On the day when there is only one collection, there is an added responsibility on the Post Office to ensure that the collection is made.

Mr. Slater

Every course is taken to see that those in the service carry out their responsibilities and ensure that these boxes are all cleared. That is their job and we expect them to do it. I feel sure that the hon. Member will be generous enough to agree that, while failure to clear does occur on occasion, the overall record of clearance reflects an extremely high standard of efficiency. However, I agree that clearance should be 100 per cent. and I am grateful for the interest the hon. Gentleman has shown in the question of ensuring that all boxes are cleared at the proper times.

Each box has on it a tablet indicating the time of the next collection. When the box is cleared, the tablet is changed to indicate the next collection time. This work is supervised by patrolling officers. Detailed checks of letter box clearances have been tried in the past but have been shown to be unnecessary because failures to make proper clearances are very rare indeed in practice. We would not be justified, therefore, in asking postmen to certify that they have duly cleared each box. We have 100,000 boxes and most have to be cleared several times a day.

The hon. Gentleman referred to election addresses. We have all been in the position of preparing election addresses and getting them posted to the electorate in time for a general election. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the arrangements at the last general election.

The delivery of election addresses, as has been admitted, imposed a very heavy burden on all our offices and particularly those in London, where staff shortages made for difficulties in handling even the ordinary mail. The postmen staff worked loyally and diligently in order to ensure that the election communications of all candidates were delivered in good time. The election addresses in Wembley, North were all delivered by polling day, though a few for a very small number of streets in one particular delivery area were not delivered until the day before. This was due quite simply to staff shortages.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned arrangements at Christmas. We are very much alive to the need to ensure as far as practicable that the Christmas pressure causes the minimum interruption and delay to the handling of business and other fully paid correspondence. Therefore, while I am afraid that it would not be practicable to adopt the hon. Gentleman's suggestion, we are looking urgently at the question of having a first and second priority letter service and we shall certainly bear all these points in mind.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to mechanisation of the postal services. This is where the Post Office can claim to be amongst the world's leaders. Last autumn we held an impressive exhibition in London of automatic letter handling equipment developed by Post Office engineers assisted by British industry. It was visited by service representatives and Ministers of 22 overseas Governments and only the other day a Minister of a major European country here on a visit remarked that our parcel sorting and some of our other equipment was better than anything available in his own country. Our mechanisation programme is getting into its stride. Progress with installation is necessarily governed by the rate at which we can put up new buildings to accommodate it but these are going ahead and in the next few years we shall begin to reap considerable benefits in costs and manpower from developments which have taken place.

The hon. Gentleman made passing reference to work study and said that the Post Office is in need of organisation and methods treatment. But we have not been neglecting this important feature of management. Organisation and methods units have operated in the Post Office for many years and more recently special organisations have been set up for the application of modern management techniques such as work study and operational research to the postal services. In addition we have on occasion called in outside help to make special studies of our problems and at present the McKinsey Company is carrying out a fundamental and wide review of the postal services to see how they can be made more productive and more profitable. That is, indeed, what the hon. Gentleman is asking us to do.

I am grateful for the opportunity of replying to the hon. Gentleman in this debate but I would not like to leave the impression that we are in any way complacent or even satisfied with our achievements in the Post Office. We are not. We recognise that the quality of the postal service, although high, is not good enough and that there is room for improvement. But I do not accept that the service is going downhill.

The complaints we get from the public generally do not suggest that it is going downhill. We get our share of complaints and we are glad to have them because they help in identifying and removing causes of failure. But, over all, they are of small dimensions in relation to the 11½ thousand million letters that pass through the post every year. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am grateful for his criticisms and for the attention of the House but I assure the House that we shall spare no effort to put things right within the service as a whole wherever they may go wrong. That is our objective. That is the purpose of my right hon. Friend and the Post Office in general.