§ EARL RUSSELL had given Notice to call attention to the unbusinesslike procedure of the Post Office in such matters as the delivery of telegrams, the redirection of letters, the charging of an express fee when there is no express delivery, the refusal to give a free receipt for the charges on a telegram, and the repudiation of liability for registered letters; and to ask the Postmaster-General whether he will appoint a Departmental Committee of business men to make recommendations on these and similar unbusinesslike methods.
§ The noble Earl said: My Lords, I find it quite impossible to address myself to the Bench opposite without expressing my personal sense of the loss which we have sustained by the passing from our midst of the noble Marquess who so long led this House, and in saying that I am expressing, I know, the feeling shared by the House. Now, in the indictment, such as it is, that I propose to present against the Post Office to-day, your Lordships will be glad to learn that I am not proposing to include matters relating to the telephone service. Those matters are susceptible of having a great deal said of them. I have a record here of a nature which I think will be familiar to many of your Lordships, in which I get through to a number successfully at one moment, two minutes after I am rung up for the next number, a wrong number, three minutes after I am again rung up for a wrong number, an hour later rung up again for a wrong number, and then occasions on which I ask for a number, do not get it, and find afterwards that 891 someone is sitting by the telephone all the time. The telephone service would be a fruitful subject of discussion, and I think it is fortunate for your Lordships' patience that I do not propose to include it to-night, particularly as I understand there already exists some sort of an Advisory Committee with regard to telephonic matters.
§ There are remarkable things done by the Post Office as a Government Department, in the way in which it conducts its business. They are methods of conducting its business which would be immediately fatal to the success of any commercial concern, but which the Post Office is able to justify owing to two facts—the fact that it has a monopoly, and the fact that it is a Government Department and therefore cannot be sued like an ordinary person who breaks a contract. Your Lordships' House is fortunate in having several ex-Postmasters-General among its members, and it has been suggested to me that I might perhaps say that in this year or that year the Post Office was not subject to any complaints. My complaint is not against any Postmaster-General, and at any rate not against the present one, in. whom I have great confidence, but it is against the system of the Post Office as a whole. Rightly or wrongly, there is a general impression—and I think when your Lordships have heard some of the instances you will think it is not unfounded—that the Post Office is rather a martinet Department and lives in a world of its own, without any regard to the trouble and the inconvenience caused to those who are compelled to use it, and is very reluctant to listen to complaints or to be moved by them.
§ I just wish to weary your Lordships with one or two instances of the sort of thing that does, in fact, happen. I should tell your Lordships that this Question has been upon the Paper for a long time, and indeed throughout the life of the late Labour Government, and when reference was made to it in the public Press I was inundated by shoals of correspondence and complaints. Here is a case where a packet, both registered and insured, and containing £10, was addressed to some address in Germany. The packet disappeared. The sender of the packet, to whom £10 was a consideration, made inquiries of the Post Office, 892 and after several months the Post Office adopted a defence which was ingenious and, I dare say, in itself successful. It said that the packet had been seized by the Army of Occupation in the Ruhr. If that was the case, the Post Office can hardly be blamed. Anyhow, the unfortunate sender has lost his £10, and has received no compensation whatever for it.
§ A publisher wrote to me and said that he had sent off many presentation copies of a new book on July 4, 1924. Of the copies he sent off at least eight were neither received by the addressees nor returned to the sender. They simply disappeared in the post. He also says that several addressed to the London area took a whole week for delivery. Then there are many cases of letters which are clearly and correctly addressed, which are delayed owing to their being carelessly delivered at the wrong address, and perhaps being handed back to the postman the day after, or even the day after that. There are worse cases of letters, which are fully paid and correctly addressed, which are never delivered at all, and these cases are infinitely more numerous than they were before the war. The administration of the Post Office in this respect has become very much worse.
§ There are also cases, in which the Post Office may plead some excuse, in which a letter is not quite correctly addressed, but in which the address could be ascertained with the utmost ease by looking up any work of reference, even the Post Office's own publication, the Telephone Book. The Post Office now adopts the attitude that it is not its business to deliver a letter to the correct address and to take the trouble to look up any work of reference, even its own Telephone Book. It prefers the trouble and the annoyance, both to itself and the sender, of returning the letter to the sender, and simply saying "insufficiently" or "incorrectly" addressed. That does not seem to be a businesslike proceeding. I cannot see that it benefits the Post Office; it certainly does not benefit the sender of the letter.
§
I have here a case which is worth noting as illustrating what I said just now about the somewhat peremptory and martinet attitude of the Post Office. It is a case of letters, properly stamped and addressed, never reaching their destination,
893
and never being heard of again; and. after correspondence, this is the Post Office's official reply, and I invite your Lordship's attention to it:
The Postmaster-General is not legally liable for the loss, damage, delay, non-delivery or mis-delivery of anything sent by post.
§ No doubt that is true, but I do ask your Lordships whether any trader could conduct his business on that principle for a single moment, and I do ask you whether that is a sufficient attitude for a public Department to adopt when it has failed to render a public service, and a service which, owing to its monopoly, no one else can render? But that is the official attitude.
§ Then there are cases, now very frequent, of prolonged delay in delivery. I have a case here of a letter posted in the London area at 7.15 p.m., and delivered at an address in the London area at 1.30 p.m. the next day. These things are not unusual, I have a case here of a telegram handed in. at a country post office at 10.20 a.m., and not delivered in London, fifty miles away, till four hours later. Four hours for a telegram to go fifty miles!
§ There are other matters somewhat of the same kind. There is a new invention. I do not propose to mention its name, because I have no intention of giving it a free advertisement, nor do I guarantee that it is a good or a bad invention. It is an attachment to a telephone, which certain telephone subscribers desire to use, and which the person who makes the apparatus naturally desires to supply. The Post Office answer is that people are to be prevented from using this apparatus, even though they are. prepared to take the risk of a line going wrong or anything of that kind; they are not to be allowed to use a new invention which is not the Post Office's manufacture. There may be practical reasons for that, though I rather doubt it, but it is all part of the same attitude.
§ This is rather an amusing instance: In a village there is a collecting box, with the usual slit, which will only take an ordinary letter. An enterprising tradesman in this village desired to post some circulars, which were too large to go into the slit of the village letter box. He therefore waited until the postman came 894 round to collect the letters, and said: "Will you take these circulars?" The postman, no doubt quite correctly, said: "No, I am forbidden to take circulars. I cannot collect anything unless it is put into the box"—and the box was of such a character that he could not put them in. That, again, is another instance of what I call unbusinesslike administration.
§ Further, there are cases of telegrams sent to a registered address which has been discontinued. The Post Office used to charge a guinea, and I think now charge two guineas a year, for a registered address, and there may, therefore, be something to be said for their refusing to deliver a telegram to an address which is no longer registered. Obviously they have not been paid for that special service, but they know perfectly well for whom the telegram is meant, and the sender did not know that the registered address had been discontinued. It seems a little hard if they cannot, perhaps by charging a fee, avoid such inconvenience. Then there is a good deal of trouble about telegrams sent to telephonic addresses. The Post Office Guide says that you can send a telegram to a telephone subscriber by simply putting his number and exchange. If you try to do that you are told that it is not enough, that you must also put his name, and, if you ask why, the Post Office quite frankly tell you that it is because their disbelief in their system is so great that they cannot guarantee to transmit numbers accurately.
§ And here is another curious thing, which seems to me not to be founded on any business consideration; probably some of your Lordships have experienced it. You have a telephone at your address, you move to another address, and you desire to have a telephone there. If you should ask to have your telephone moved from your old address to your new-address the Post Office make a charge for it. I do not know what it is, but it is something quite substantial. But if you say you will have a new telephone at the new address they make no charge for it, and you can start with a new telephone. Why you should be charged more for removing the old telephone than for putting in a new one is a thing that really only the Post Office can understand; I am quite unable to give any reasons for it.
§ My next illustration is, I think, unusual; I will do the Post Office the justice to say 895 that. It is the case of a letter sent from the City to Bloomsbury, a total distance of a couple of miles. That letter took fifty-two hours in transmission. That seems rather a long time. Then there are things which the Post Office might do that it does not always do, such as the stopping of lottery circulars and betting circulars. I know it has often been urged upon them that they should interfere with this, but they have always shown a singular tenderness, even when they know what these circulars are.
§ Here is a business complaint, and a business complaint of a very serious character—a really remarkable record. I do not wish to give the name of the firm, except, of course, privately, but these are people who do a very large business in what is called the mail order system. That is to say, they advertise extensively, they receive remittances by post, and send off goods in response to those remittances. These people in three years, have suffered a loss by pilferage of the goods they have sent off—not of the postal orders coming to them—of £1,116. That seems to reflect on the administration of the Post Office.
§ Then there are great inconveniences in the shorter hours. There are smaller towns now in which the only post office in the place closes between one and two o'clock daily, and on the early closing day closes at one o'clock for the rest of the day, so that these towns, after one o'clock in the day, are cut off from telegraphic communication with any other place in the kingdom. In spite of high wages and shorter hours, I cannot help thinking that something might be done to remedy that state of affairs particularly since, as a rule, the telephone exchanges are not closed in this way. In another case which I might quote, a trader tells me that two gold chains were sent to him. value £25, of course with all the precautions of registration and insurance. They were not delivered, and he gets no compensation. And we have to remember the remark-aide contention which the Post Office has made about registered letters. I believe it still makes this contention. It is that if they deliver to the addressee the envelope of a registered letter they have completely fulfilled their contract, although the contents may have been abstracted in transit. That shows 896 a courage of which no private trader would be capable.
§ There is another small matter which has been mentioned to me and I can imagine that there are some reasons for it. I should also think that some explanation might be made. There is a rule at present, I believe I am right in saying, that a poste restante address—that is to say, letters addressed to a post office—can only be used for three weeks. I can imagine some reasons for that provision, though they are not very sound ones. But I am told that in fact and in practice, it causes great inconvenience to commercial travellers and people of that sort who have no fixed address. They want a fixed centre at which their mail may arrive and they can be sure to get it, but it is impossible for this arrangement to be extended.
§ Then there is a matter I mention in my Question, the matter of an express fee. The Post Office, some years ago with a great flourish of trumpets, introduced a system by which a letter might be delivered out of course of post on payment of an express fee of threepence when the letter was sent; that is to say, that on arrival at the office of destination it should be sent out, as if it were a telegram, by a special messenger and delivered at once. Naturally, this only applies to comparatively big centres where there are telegraph boys available and where the distances are short. But instance after instance has come to my notice where the Post Office takes this express fee of threepence for a village in the country where they know perfectly well there is no express service, and where the letter gains absolutely nothing by this payment and is delivered in the ordinary course of post next morning. It seems to me that in cases like that the address might be looked up in the Post Office Guide and the sender might be told: "You are only paying your threepence for nothing." But it is not done. I am not sure whether this threepence is refunded. It might be, but the Post Office does not always return money for services which are not rendered.
§
I wish to call your Lordships' attention to the last part of my Question, which is:—
… and to ask the Postmaster-General whether he will appoint a Departmental Committee …
§ Of course, I am only suggesting that it shall be a Departmental Committee, and that it shall be staffed, not exclusively by Post Office servants, but by business men to make recommendations on these and other methods. The Post Office has undoubtedly difficulties to deal with. It is a very great organisation, and there are difficulties of administration. As soon as any organisation becomes as large as the Poet Office a good deal of strictness in rules is necessary. But I cannot help thinking that it might be organised on rather more businesslike lines. I cannot help thinking also, fearing as I do the tradition of the Post Office, that this might be somewhat assisted if advice were to be given to the Post Office by business men chosen by Chambers of Commerce, or in some other way, who could suggest means of getting over what to the departmental mind seems insuperable.
§ I should like to suggest that some Committee might be set up permanently which should be an Advisory Committee, not merely in the sense that they should only answer questions submitted to them by the Postmaster-General, but that they should be allowed to meet at their own will and to take the initiative in submitting recommendations to him. I think such a Committee would help to bring the Post Office more closely into touch with those whom it professes to serve. I am convinced that a great many of the matters I have mentioned to your Lordships could be solved by business people with ordinary business instincts, and that they have not really the insuperable character which the Department attributes to them. I should like to know whether the Postmaster-General would not consider the setting up of a Committee of this character, thereby making the Post Office more useful than it is. We cannot do without the Post Office. We do not want to break its monopoly, but I think we desire that the services for which we pay should be rendered, and that when they fail to be rendered some measure of justice should be meted out to those who have suffered. I beg to ask my Question.
§ THE EARL OF LUCANMy Lords, may I in the first place thank the noble Earl for his kind reference to the late Leader of this House, the purport of which we very much appreciate. The Question of the noble Earl as it appears on the Paper 898 contains a very sweeping indictment of the Post Office, but in his speech I think he has made that indictment and the scope of his charges even wider and more sweeping. He v as good enough to give the Post Office the heads of the questions to which ho wanted replies, and the Post Office have done their best to give information on those matters. I am sure the noble Earl will forgive me if I do not follow—he will not expect me to follow—all the different cases he has mentioned of which we have not had notices. If he could let my right hon. friend the Postmaster-General know what his complaints are in respect of them, I am sure that every inquiry would be made and good explanations would probably be found for a great many of them. They were such matters as the attachment to the telephone, circulars going wrong, the registered addresses to which telegrams are sent, the telephone at the new address, and in regard to the telegraph office which was cut off at one o'clock. There must be, I am sure, some very good explanations which I could have given the noble Earl had I had notice of those points.
With reference to the Question which the noble Earl has placed upon the Paper, first of all, the registered letter he referred to was, I think, a letter to Germany, and my information is that the registration compensation that we pay in this country applies only to the inland post. The foreign system is the outcome of the Postal Union Convention which is subscribed to practically by all civilised nations and, therefore, our terms of compensation do not apply. As to the registered letter which the noble Earl stated arrived as an envelope with nothing inside it, as far as I can understand compensation is given in such cases provided that all the conditions of the Post Office are adhered to, such as the sending of money or valuables or anything which wants registering in a Post Office registered envelope. There are other conditions, but I am afraid it is too much to expect everybody to read the Post Office Guide and to know it; but all the conditions under which registered letters have to be sent and compensation is paid are laid down in that guide.
The noble Earl asked also about a receipt for a registered letter. It is not quite clear what it is that the noble Earl 899 wants. A certificate is given free when a registered letter is handed in, and, as a further safeguard, the sender can arrange to have advice of the delivery of the letter on payment of threepence.
§ THE EARL OK LUCANA great many economies have been effected here and I have no doubt that is one of them. In regard to telegrams, the noble Earl in the memorandum which he sent to the Post Office referred to receipts for telegrams. A receipt for a telegram can be obtained at a charge of one penny. This is very seldom made use of. If a receipt were to be given gratis it is to be feared that there would be a very large number of applicants, and that there would be considerable congestion and crowding at post offices, so that those engaged in work at the counter would be considerably hampered and hindered in the sending of telegrams. The noble Earl suggested that the public should prepare slips to hand in in order to save time, but the Post Office consider that that would not materially hasten the operation, or save time, because the slips would have to be checked, and the time, probably, filled in, so that there would most likely be a loss instead of an appreciable saving of time.
With regard to the non-delivery of imperfectly addressed telegrams, to which the noble Earl referred, I can only tell him that wherever possible the Post Office do locate the addressee. The local directory is usually consulted, but very often the address is so abbreviated that it is very difficult to follow it up. If the telegram cannot be delivered, the sender is at once notified free of charge. With regard to imperfectly addressed packages, the Post Office do all they consider possible to get these packages to their right destinations. They consult the Post Office Guide, and in some cases the county directory. They also consult the local directory wherever that is possible. They believe that reference to the local directory at the delivery office is. usually, much more satisfactory than reference to the Telephone Directory. I do not know if the noble Earl meant to refer to cases where people change their address, but, as he knows, and as most of your Lordships know, it is possible 900 for anybody changing their address to have their new address registered for the first year free, and for the second and third years at a charge of 1s., and after that at a charge of 5s. a year. If people would take the trouble to do that there would be no difficulty in their letters following them.
Express letters were also referred to by the noble Earl. He complained that express letters sent to be delivered from the delivering office by a messenger instead of by the ordinary postman very often fail to reach their destination as early as is expected. I understand that senders of express letters are always warned that it is only safe to send such a letter where there is a telegraph office, and, therefore, where there are boys or other assistants who can take the letters to their destination. Very often it is found that these express letters are posted in pillar boxes, and therefore the sender cannot be warned that very likely his letter cannot be delivered, but in all cases he can, on application, get back the express letter fee if the letter is not delivered. In places like London people are warned that it is no use sending an express letter by the night mail to a small country office which does not open until nine o'clock in the morning. If the letter arrives before that time it will probably be delivered sooner by the ordinary postman.
The Post Office know of no reason why copies of the books mentioned by the noble Earl should not arrive at their destination. They would be very glad to have particulars of any cases in which there has been a failure to deliver, and they would go into the matter. They have had very few complaints themselves. In dealing with this question of delay in delivery of letters, I should like to point out the enormous volume of correspondence that has to be dealt with by the Post Office. Yearly, about 3,500,000,000 letters and over 2,000,000,000 other postal packages are dealt with. The Post Office experience is that the vast majority are delivered at the proper time, but it is impossible, within reasonable limits of time, to produce safeguards against occasional delays. Efforts are constantly made to induce the public to post early, but those efforts meet with only a very limited degree of success. I have dealt, so far as the Post Office information goes, 901 with the Question of the noble Earl, and I can only say in conclusion that my right hon. friend the Postmaster-General does not consider that it would be advisable, or that it is necessary, to appoint a Committee such as the noble Earl advises There is already an Advisory Committee of business men who are consulted, and who meet, I understand, to decide all matters of principle, but on these questions of detail the Postmaster-General does not think the Committee suggested by the noble Earl is necessary.
§ LORD GAINFORDMy Lords, as one of the ex-Postmasters-General to whom the noble Earl alluded I should like to draw the attention of your Lordships to the fact that it is one of the few supporters of the Socialist Opposition in your Lordships' House who thinks it necessary to attack the one Department in the State which is run on the principle of nationalisation. It has been thought advisable in the past that the State should distribute to all parties in the community an equal service, irrespective of distance. I shall not attempt this evening to justify the attacks which have been made on the Poet Office by the noble Earl. I think I could supply from my own recollections a number of excuses for certain of the faults to which he has alluded.
What I want to remind the noble Earl, and also those who think with him in regard to the nationalisation of the means of production and distribution, is that when they appeal to us to bring business principles to bear they should remember that these are services in which business principles in the ordinary sense cannot be introduced. It is for that reason many of us are opposed, and will remain opposed, to the nationalisation of services in this country. The last words of the noble Earl were to appeal to business men to carry on the industry on businesslike lines. The main reason why efficiency cannot be secured in public Departments in the same way that it can under a system of private ownership is the inability to discharge from the service men who are not thoroughly efficient. In the public service you can only get rid of men who, owing to some real dereliction of duty, are no longer required in that service. But the Post Office, after all, is a very capable service. I believe that nationalisation is a system that ought not 902 to be supported, and I am very glad that a Socialist like the noble Earl has found it necessary to find fault with that system as embodied in the Post Office.
§ VISCOUNT HALDANEMy Lords, I have been deeply impressed by what has ex-Postmaster-General. It is, of course, inevitable that the Post Office should be a State service, but it is not inevitable that it should be loosely administered. The Navy is a State service, but the Navy is much better administered than most private undertakings of which the noble Lord, Lord Gainford, has spoken. So also is the Army in most respects. It is a question as to whether you have got that efficient organisation which enables you to bring proper supervision to bear, and whether you have that spirit in the service which induces the people in it to carry out what is required. It is not true that you cannot get rid of inefficient people in a State service. It is almost invariably from want of consideration and stupidity if you fail to get rid of people who do not succeed. Does any one suppose that in the Navy there is no method of getting rid of an inefficient seaman? Not in the least. Nor in the Post Office. It is all a question as to whether you have trained and supervised your people properly. We are not an intelligent nation so far as organisation is concerned—
§ LORD GAINFORDIs the noble and learned Viscount in favour of military discipline being brought into the Civil Services of the country?
§ VISCOUNT HALDANENo, but military efficiency. How to get lid of an unsuitable or inefficient man is a thing which is known in great private enterprises. It can also be done in the Navy and the Army. You have, of course, to proceed under a different set of Statutes; and this brings me to what I rose to say. I think my noble friend Earl Russell has brought out a case for an inquiry of the kind he suggests. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction all over the country about the administration of the Post Office. It is clumsily done; it is not done on a system which is up to the level of the system which obtains in other Departments. It would be very much to the advantage of the country if the 903 Postmaster-General would appoint a committee, which should contain representatives of outside business interests, and ask it to look into the system, see whether it is as well administered as it could be, and whether the system is the best one that can be devised.
§ VISCOUNT BURNHAMYou have a Committee in existence at the moment. I had the honour of serving on it for four years.
§ VISCOUNT HALDANEI know. But what we are complaining of is that it has not looked into these things. It would be well if a fresh and vigorous inquiry were made into the administration of the Post Office. The Army was subjected to a very severe investigation, and I do not see why the Post Office should not be subject to an inquiry. Until it is done you will not have that alacrity and keenness which you ought to have and which is required in order to put matters right. If the noble Earl's Question has served no other purpose it has served a useful purpose in bringing to the sense of the House that there is much dissatisfaction throughout the country with the state of things in the Post Office, a state of things which some of us think might be made much better.
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD)My Lords, I am much interested by the speech of the noble and learned Viscount because he entirely supports his follower in the House in the attack he so brilliantly made on the administration of the Post Office. The noble Viscount says that, after all, the Post Office is not the only Department which carries on various duties in this country. That is true; but the Post Office is the only Department which carries on what maybe called something in the nature of a commercial business. That is to say, it does work for which it is paid and it makes a profit out of the work it does. It is the only Department of the Government which carries on a commercial business, and the noble and learned Viscount was well justified in saying that here was the only unofficial representative of the Labour Party in this House making a most brilliant attack on the system of nationalisation as applied to a commercial undertaking and perpetually 904 saying that what you ought to do is to imitate the private trader; that it is the private trader that is really efficient in this matter.
Many of us on this side of the House heard these observations of the noble Earl with a great deal of sympathy, and if it were possible to transfer the postal service to private enterprise I have not much doubt that it would be carried on with greater efficiency than it is carried on at present. But it is the only nationalised commercial service of the State and it is the one Department selected by the representatives of the Labour Party in this House for criticism and attack. Surely that is an observation which is worth recording in the debates of this House.
As to the noble and learned Viscount's request that a Committee shall be appointed, what is it? He says we cannot trust the efficiency of the State to administer these services, what we want is that some private individuals, with their knowledge of private enterprises, should be appointed as a Committee to advise a Government Department how they can apply business principles to the work of that Department. "Business principles" was the phrase constantly recurring in the speech of the noble Earl. It is rather a striking piece of advice coming from the noble and learned Viscount. Such a Committee already exists, and the difficulty no doubt is not in laying down principles of organisation, upon which such a Committee would be admirably constituted to advise, but how to deal with the actual details of the administration of the Post Office.