Scotland’s best known entrepreneurs have voiced their concerns businesses could be adversely affected if Royal Mail goes ahead with scrapping postal deliveries on Saturdays, despite UK Government assurances it would not support such a move.
The company has said it would like deliveries from Monday to Friday only, however a spokesperson for Downing Street said the Government “would not countenance” this, as regulator Ofcom looks into the future of the service.
Speaking on the Go Radio Business Show, Lord Willie Haughey said: “I see Royal Mail are talking about dropping their letter deliveries, maybe from six days down to five, and even potentially going as low as three.
“Given that parcels could also be affected, should businesses be concerned about this? Is post going the way of the dodo these days for businesses?”
Sir Tom Hunter responded: “Here’s another business that’s experiencing change and those managing this development, the leadership, really should understand the change that needs to come in.
“I don’t know the answer but they’re losing a great deal of money. So either the customer pays, if they want a Saturday delivery, or that business has to rationalise.”
Lord Haughey voiced his hope “if they’ve hundreds of millions in savings they give it all to the sub-postmasters where they made their lives a misery”.
Sir Tom agreed, adding: “More legislation is going to go through Westminster and I was actually heartened by our own First Minister Humza Yousaf saying, if he could, he would just follow Westminster, if this meant helping those affected by the scandal more quickly.
“That was the first time I’ve actually heard the First Minister in Scotland say he would follow Westminster but good on him for it. Now, whether he does it, we’ll judge him by that . . . but I thought that was refreshing.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel