§ LORD SANDHURST asked His Majesty's Government whether it is the practice of the Post Office in the case of packets marked for despatch by air mail, but insufficiently stamped, to despatch them by ordinary mail; and whether they will consider the alteration of the practice so as to admit of despatch by air mail subject to payment of a penalty fee on delivery.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to put the Question which stands in my name. I have here an envelope which hears an eight anna stamp, and is marked "For despatch by air mail." When this came to me I had the curiosity to weigh it, because it was delivered by ordinary mail and marked, "Insufficiently paid for transmission by air mail." The weight shows that there is only a very small balance against the missive. No doubt the authorities were perfectly right in saying it was insufficiently stamped for the purposes of the air mail, inasmuch as it exceeded half an ounce; 1315 and I only mention these details to show the bona fides of the sender. I understand that sending a letter by ordinary post in these circumstances is the usual practice of the Department. In this case the recipient would gladly have paid a penalty fee in respect of the insufficiency of the stamping for the advantage of having the letter delivered, as intended; by air mail, and I, imagine that in most cases of this kind a recipient of a letter, stamped and despatched and marked "For air mail" would gladly pay the necessary penalty in order to receive the letter with greater despatch, having regard to the fact that people do not send letters by air mail unless they have a reason, and people do not pay four times the normal rate just for the fun of the thing.
§ In this case the letter, having been delivered by ordinary mail, the Post Office at one end or the other pocketed six annas, the ordinary rate being two annas, for which they gave no consideration whatever. In the first place that strikes one as hardly honest, but quite apart from that it does not seem to me to be good business. Had they followed the practice which is in force with inland letters of delivering the letter, subject to payment of double the deficiency, they would have taken, instead of six annas, double six annas, or about a shilling. That, I should have thought, would be better business from their point of view, and would be better business from the point of view of the recipient of the letter. I should imagine there would be very few cases of letters of this kind in which the recipient was not willing to pay an additional fee; so few that the penalty rate which would be charged would more than repay the Post Office for any letters which they carried and which were refused on delivery.
§ I am not, I hope, unreasonable. I think it would be unreasonable to ask the Post Office in all cases where a letter is marked "For air mail" to deliver the letter by air mail subject to a penalty, but I think there ought to be at all events some practice of enabling the letter to be delivered by air mail when the bona fides of the sender is not in doubt. What I do invite the Post Office to do is to reconsider its practice so as to admit of the delivery by air mail of all letters, so marked, and stamped with an air mail 1316 fee not deficient to an amount exceeding the rate for one half-ounce. That would mean that if a letter were stamped with eight annas or about 6d. as I think it is, at this end, the letter would be despatched subject to a penalty fee, if the deficiency did not exceed what was required to pay for an additional half-ounce and so on. I think that really would be a sufficient guarantee of good faith on the part of the sender. The recipient would have the satisfaction of getting the letter, as it was intended, by a rapid despatch, and the Post Office would have the advantage of the penalty fee. I venture to submit that would be a reasonable way of meeting the difficulty.
§ LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDEMy Lords, the point raised by the noble Lord with regard to the particular letter in question is one which I must deal with by taking the general practice as a whole. Let me say to begin with that I think the particular case he has brought before your Lordships' House is rather an exceptional one. On the whole it is found that there are only about one in a thousand of the letters which are treated as the noble Lord suggests in his Question, being sent by the ordinary post instead of despatched by air mail, because of insufficiency of stamps. The practice is governed at present by the Postal Union Convention of London, which was signed by every postal administration in the world. The reason it is laid down that air postal fees must be prepaid by the sender, arid by the sender only, and that surcharges must not be collected, is because of the very high charges which are made for certain air mail services. For instance, there are charges for letters to certain South American countries by a French company which amount to 4s. per half 0z. Heavy letters are very frequently sent by this service, costing several pounds. It is quite obvious that there would be considerable difficulty in collecting substantial sums from addressees and a number of under-paid letters would probably be rejected and have to be returned to the senders. That is the general international convention by which we are bound and for those reasons.
But the question more especially raised by the noble Lord was with regard to letters from this country to India. This 1317 service carries more than half of the total air mail correspondence despatched from this country; so it is naturally of importance. We made the proposal some time ago to the Indian Post Office that there should be a mutual agreement—that an experiment should be tried in fact—that in the case of letters sent by air mail between the two countries insufficiently stamped, double the deficiency should be collected from the addressees. That, I think, was more or less the suggestion made by the noble Lord himself. An exceptional arrangement of this kind to modify the definite provisions of the Convention—because it would be exceptional and it would be outside what has been generally signed by the postal administrations throughout the world—can only be made, naturally, with the consent of the Indian authorities and the Indian Post Office. We have placed this suggestion before them, but the Indian Post Office have so far not given us a reply. If in their reply they say they are prepared to go on with this experiment it will be tried, and where there is such small cost as there is in the despatch of letters to India—it is only 6d.—the difficulty of collection from the addressees will not be considerable.
The Post Office take such measures as are practicable to minimise the inconvenience caused by withholding underpaid letters from the mail. When the name and address of the sender of an underpaid letter is known the sender is, whenever possible, given the opportunity of making up the deficiency. I was surprised to hear from the noble Lord that the letter in question was so near the proper weight, because in most cases if it is found that there is very little difference and that there is obviously only a mistake in weighing the practice is that the letter is forwarded by air mail without any penalty. I hope we shall be able to inform the noble Lord who has raised this Question when a reply is received from the Indian Office on the particular point at issue.