Starmer fails to deliver any insight on keeping Saturday mail

SIR KEIR STARMER has refused to commit to keeping Royal Mail Saturday deliveries if the Labour Party enters government.

The Opposition leader did not follow Rishi Sunak in ruling out the ditching of weekend deliveries, following Ofcom’s latest report on reform proposals. No10 had stressed on Monday that the Prime Minister “would not countenance” the scrapping of Saturday deliveries, which were “important for businesses and particularly publishers”.

His spokesman added Mr Sunak held the “strong view” that such deliveries “provide flexibility and convenience” for customers.

Among its suggestions to “modernise” the postal service, the communications regulator proposed amending the Universal Service Obligation (USO) to reduce the number of days letters are delivered from six to five or even three.

Kevin Hollinrake, the postal services minister, described Saturday deliveries as “sacrosanct” and assured a six-day service would remain in place.

However, Sir Keir did not make a similar pledge. He said that he was “very concerned” about Saturday deliveries being at risk and described the Universal Service Obligation as “really important”.

But he added: “Obviously there’s a report out and we need to look at it and review it and take on board what is said in the report, look at what the response of the Government is and make decisions accordingly.” When pressed on whether he could make a similar commitment like that of the Prime Minister, he said: “I think we should look at, we should read reports, reflect on the report and see what the actual response of the Government is.”

Ofcom estimated that Royal Mail could save up to £200million if Saturday deliveries were scrapped, and between £400million and £650million if letters were delivered just three days a week.

International Distributions Services, which owns Royal Mail, said last week in its trading statement that “it is simply not sustainable to maintain a delivery network built for 20 billion letters when we are now only delivering seven billion”.