§ 44. Sir Knox Cunninghamasked the Postmaster-General what steps he is taking to prevent delays of more than one month's duration in delivery of first class mail within the United Kingdom, as in the example sent to him by the honourable Member for Antrim, South; and what action he intends to take to halt further deterioration in the postal services.
§ Mr. Joseph SlaterI am very sorry about the long delay to this letter. Unfortunately, it was delivered to a wrong address, and was not recovered by the Post Office until several weeks later. We shall do all we can to prevent mistakes like this, but we cannot entirely eliminate human errors.
§ Sir Knox CunninghamIs the hon. Gentleman aware that in this complaint other references were made to further delays? Has not the service deteriorated in the past year? What does he intend to do about it?
§ Mr. SlaterI cannot agree with everything that the hon. and learned Gentleman has said, although I am sympathetic about what happened in this case. Delay is inevitable with the vast amount of mail that we handle. Despite all the efforts made to give consistently good service, a small proportion will suffer in transit.