Labour undermines Royal Mail by using its competitors

One of the things I think is essential for is for us to have is a mail service which delivers to every house in the country for the same cost. Otherwise if you live in the Outer Hebrides, or some remote part of Yorkshire or the Scottish Borders, you might have to cope with a less reliable, less frequent, more expensive service, or no service at all.

For all its faults, the Royal Mail is best placed to deliver that service. The Government claims to care about Royal Mail's future, yet Liberal Democrats have learned, through answers to Parliamentary Questions, that no fewer than eight Government Departments use its competitors. Three of these departments, Culture, Media and Sport, Communities and the Foreign Office don't use Royal Mail at all, while the other five, Children, Schools and Families; Health; Justice; Transport; and Work and Pensions use other services for part of its mail.

This comes not long after the SNP Government switched the Scottish public sector contract to TNT as Andrew recently reported.

I'm glad that Liberal Democrat Shadow Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael is exposing Labour's claims to care about the future of Royal Mail on one hand while it stabs it in the back on the other.

He said: "“Ministers should be doing all they can do to support this vital service, instead of handing contracts to their competitors.”