Simon Thompson grilled by MPs

Category: Operations
Simon Thompson grilled by MPs

Royal Mail boss Simon Thompson was grilled by MPs yesterday, and asked if he thought he was worth his half a million salary plus £140k bonus.

The biggest takeaway from the session has to be that Simon Thompson came across as evasive and obstructive and didn’t show much remorse for the current situation where consumers and businesses have had to suffer nine months of disruption from strikes.

However, the real highlights of the session were a couple of CWU stooges in the back row briefly holding up a “Vote Yes” sign, and Simon Thompson being warned by the chair that it’s a serious offence to mislead Parliament and that his reluctance to be straight with MPs wasn’t well received.

There was little reference to the fact that the post is still providing a diabolical service and items aren’t being delivered on time, and that’s despite the last strike date having been the 24th of December last year. However Simon Thompson was presented with a poster from a delivery office which clearly stated that tracked parcels should be delivered first, followed by large parcels, then late parcels, and only if a postie gets some spare time half of the letters they are supposed to deliver that day… meaning 50% of letters really don’t matter.

Simon Thompson denied this was policy saying the poster was an isolated incident in one Deliver Office, but the truth is on strike days they publicly stated on Special Delivery and Tracked 24 items would be prioritised – lending some veracity to the poster’s claims.

Despite rejection from MPs, Simon Thompson still wants to reduce letter deliveries to 5 days a week but says customers want parcels delivered 7 days a week. That’s reasonable, but after his performance it’s hard to trust that everyone would get letters delivered Monday to Friday and his insistence that letters are just as important as parcels doesn’t really ring true.

You can watch the entire session for yourself on Parliament TV. Royal Mail were grilled from 09:53 but there was also an interesting session with Dave Ward and Andy Furey from the CWU just before Royal Mail took the stand.

8 Responses

  1. When is the cyber attack going to be fixed?
    Why are strike backlog items still not being delivered?
    Why have the strikes not been resolved?
    Resign
    Resign
    Resign

      1. See he basically lied about giving priority to parcels over letters. Openly lied. I know enough Postie’s and they have all said the same.
        24 large letters for me are still taking 5 days and that was shocking what they did at Christmas.
        As far as I am concerned they are taking my money and not delivering.
        The Postie’s say the management are on their back in a second about the tracked services and not bothering about anything else. This comes from the top.
        I never actually use my shareholders vote but will be this year this one needs to go.
        While I do think the Postal workers are going to have to move with the times regarding the times they work and accept automation in areas this guy is not the one to fix the problems at RMG it now to volatile.

        1. I just had a 1st Class Signed For, posted on the 5th, received on the 17th. They’re certainly not supposed to take 12 days for a 1st Class parcel!!!

          1. Question is what is the regulator doing? Presumably sitting in the corner of a room whittling wood, whilst RM brazenly fails to meet every regulatory target.

  2. I too am moving to Yodel but I do a lot of overseas mail which becomes too expensive away from Royal Mail. Maybe this hacking has put paid to that though. Although I just had a phone call of thanks for something I posted yesterday at 4 p m Told the PO girl to put a second class stamp and she put a first class stamp no mistake. And boom it was there so not all delay but it won’t stop me moving my business.

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