www.vote-jonathan.co.uk

Conservative MEP Timothy Kirkhope (Yorkshire Post, August 13) claims that European Directives give merely ‘general advice' such as telling the UK that we must ensure we have a competitive postal service.   It is true that the UK has some freedom concerning how an EU Directive is enforced, but if a Directive says we must open postal services to competition, then to competition our postal services must be opened.   This competition leads to an uneconomical postal service.  Why? Because the Royal Mail has a statutory duty to deliver daily to every UK household; its competitors do not.  The Royal Mail used to subsidise the unprofitable business of delivering letters with its other profitable business.  Since postal services have been opened to competition, companies have cherry-picked the easy profits, leaving the Royal Mail out of pocket.  This was a foreseeable consequence and the reason why UKIP opposed the relevant EU Directives.   EU competition laws also prevent the UK government from increasing subsidies to deal with the shortfall.  If the postal service remains uneconomical, it must close branches.   The EU may not have issued a Directive saying ‘Close UK Post Offices' but EU legislation remains the effective cause of the closures.  Timothy Kirkhope supported the legislation that precipitated our Post Office closures, yet now campaigns to keep them open.  He blames the Labour government when in reality the Conservatives and Lib Dems must share Labour's moral culpability for the demolition of our traditional Post Offices.