SNP vow to keep gold-plated Mail guarantee after split

An independent Scotland would keep its Saturday postal deliveries and uniform stamp prices, SNP ministers have pledged.

The promise is to match the current gold-plated Royal Mail guarantee of six-days-a-week post and uniform pricing, which means letters to rural parts of Scotland cost the same as deliveries to a city.

The pledge will be included in a Scottish Government white paper on independence to be published later this year.

And it’s the first time SNP ministers have committed to going beyond the EU minimum of delivering letters five days a week.

A price tag has not yet been put on the plan but the so-called Universal Service Obligation (USO) currently costs the Royal Mail £6.7 billion a year across the UK.

Royal Mail bosses have already warned that postal services “could become substantially more expensive in Scotland” under independence if opposition party fears over the cost of providing rural services are realised. The coalition’s controversial bid to privatise Royal Mail also means it is not yet clear whether a separate “Scottish Mail” would be created or if a deal to continue the current set-up could be struck.

Enterprise Minister Fergus Ewing said: “We are making a clear commitment that, with independence, Scotland will match as a minimum standard the Universal Service Obligation of the UK Government, ensuring people across Scotland continue to receive the service they expect.

“The Scottish Government is currently considering the ways in which the Royal Mail in Scotland will operate including keeping a close watch on Westminster’s privatisation agenda which will determine the postal service Scotland inherits on independence.

“Regular mail deliveries through the Universal Service Obligation are of real importance to communities here, which is why many of them have real concerns that Westminster’s privatisation agenda not only threatens the operation of the USO in Scotland, but that it also risks a reduction in the services available from post offices and could pose a major threat to Scottish jobs.”

Across Europe, member states’ postal services are obliged to sign up to a Universal Service Obligation, which ensures deliveries five days a week. However, in Britain, the Royal Mail guarantees deliveries six days a week and uniform pricing.

Despite controversial plans to privatise the Royal Mail which made a £403 million profit last year the UK Government has promised that the sell-off would not affect Royal Mail’s USO.

The UK Government has also said that neither the Post Office nor the Royal Mail would continue to operate north of the Border if we vote for independence.

But the SNP insist this is an issue which would fall under any post-referendum negotiations. Addressing Westminster’s business committee last month, Jonathan Millidge, the Royal Mail’s company secretary, said: “If some of the concerns that I am hearing from the Committee around the rural nature of Scotland and the cost and the worries about that were to be borne out, then clearly post could become substantially more expensive in Scotland.

“That in turn would trigger the already declining mail volumes and so the thing is a bit of a spiral. The less people use post, the price goes up. In some of the areas where there is not the broadband penetration that there is in other parts, these people become more and more disadvantaged.”

The Royal Mail has no separate figures on how much its operations cost in Scotland but the firm does deliver about three times as much mail as is posted every year north of the Border. Currently there are 1,415 branches in Scotland, which made a combined loss of £26 million last year. It is thought around half of the branches need taxpayer subsidising, which comes in the form of UK Government funding to Post Office Ltd of £330 million a year.

Scots MP and Labour postal affairs spokesman Ian Murray said: “This is yet another policy U-turn from the Scottish Government as they panic the closer we get to the referendum.

“They have never before committed to the Universal Service Obligation provided by the Royal Mail. If they are now saying this is what they will do then they need to explain how they will pay for it.

“It also begs the question that if everything will stay the same then what’s the point of independence?”