§ 23. Sir Harmar Nichollsasked the Postmaster-General if he will make a statement on proposed methods of improving the costing system of the Post Office.
§ 27. Mr. Bryanasked the Postmaster-General what changes he proposes to make in the costing systems used by the Post Office.
§ 17. Mr. Michael Shawasked the Postmaster-General what steps he is taking to improve the costing system of the Post Office having regard to the criticism of the National Board for Prices and Incomes.
§ Mr. MasonThe comments by the National Board for Prices and Incomes were not primarily directed at the costing system as such but at its use in tariff fixing. It said that the Post Office relied too much for this purpose on fully allocated costs and that the emphasis should be on long run marginal costs. I am adopting its recommendation to under-take further work on this subject.
§ Sir Harmar NichollsThe right hon. Gentleman will see from the Report which he has had of the investigation that this ought to be looked at in depth, because there is a lot of concern about it, and it is wrong that the Post Office should get a bad reputation because of the lack of attention given to it at administrative level.
§ Mr. MasonAs I said in my original Reply, although we do use this method, for example, for trunk calls and new information services, and for a few others, we are prepared to look at it further.
§ Mr. BryanWas it not rather extraordinary that this system, which was the foundation on which these enormous tariff changes were to be made, did not even show how costs reacted to changes in the volume of traffic in any service?
§ Mr. MasonI cannot go into those details now. There was a genuine disagreement between the National Board for Prices and Incomes and ourselves on our costing system, and we are prepared to look at the Board's proposal.