Goodbye to service

However, when then trade and industry secretary Alistair Darling extended his tenure until 2011 in November 2006, he called him "the right man with the right skills and experience to lead Postcomm in the years ahead."

And it is a safe bet, unless the government immediately slaps him down, that it doesn't view his proposal as overstepping the mark.

After all, new Labour's addiction to private finance initiatives and public private partnerships is based on private-sector penetration of public services.

Mr Stapleton claims to want to see "government and Royal Mail embrace a partnership approach with the private sector to secure a universal service valued by all users and provided at least cost, without public funding."

And this dovetails with current European Union thinking, which insists that it is possible to maintain the universal service in conditions of total market liberalisation.

The EU published its third postal directive earlier this year which lays down full liberalisation of postal services by January 1 2011, except for new entrant states and those with specific geographical conditions such as Luxembourg and Greece.

This will also be the date for the removal of the so-called reserved area, the national carrier's monopoly on delivering letters weighing under 50 grammes, which makes up 70 per cent of all letter post in the EU.

In the meantime, a handful of national carriers, including Sweden, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, want to seek new markets in other EU states.

This will be a rerun of what took place in the telecoms and energy sectors where national providers became privatised transnational corporations, gobbled up smaller competitors and created an oligopoly of profitable companies that dominate the EU and further afield.

Needless to say, postal workers are the last people to be considered in this latest potential bonanza for directors and shareholders.

Whatever the EU sunshine words about a plethora of finance mechanisms being allowed to finance universal service provision - including even state aid, provided that it doesn't distort the market - the involvement of private capital in the Royal Mail will hasten the process that has already begun.

Profits and dividend considerations will take precedence over any notion of service to the public.

We are already seeing the single-minded destruction, with government blessing, of the network of post offices that have traditionally provided not simply postal services but have fulfilled the role of community centre. New Labour has been gung-ho for marketisation and liberalisation of postal services.

It is difficult to believe that this latest statement is simply something that has come out of the blue to the utter amazement of the Prime Minister.

And even though the European Commission pays lip service to universal service provision, which it describes as one delivery and one collection each day Monday to Friday, the writing is on the wall.

If matters proceed in this direction, the profits and dividends will be paid for by big rises in the cost of postage and huge cuts in Royal Mail jobs.