Straw claims U-turns show government is listening to the public

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 21:51

A SENIOR Cabinet minister yesterday denied Gordon Brown's administration was losing the authority to govern after a series of reverses over the Royal Mail, ID cards and the clean-up of Westminster's expenses system.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw insisted that U-turns on plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail and on forcing British citizens to carry identity cards were not a sign of weakness but proved the government was listening.

The government also suffered a rare Commons defeat on proposals to allow remarks made by MPs in parliament to be used in court proceedings, and earlier dropped another clause in its Parliamentary Standards Bill to force MPs to abide by a legally-binding code of conduct.

Mr Straw said: "What we are doing is listening very carefully, but also taking account of changed circumstances."

Mr Brown, who was on a visit to Yorkshire and the north- east of England, came under continued pressure from Conservative leader David Cameron over whether he was telling the truth about the state of the UK economy.

The Prime Minister paid an impromptu visit to a fishmonger in Leeds after being told by the shopkeeper's wife on a radio phone-in that it had been badly hit by the recession.

Fishmonger Cliff Hocken said afterwards: "It was very nice to see – the fact that he's a human at the end of the day and he's tried to understand the problems that are arising."

But the government faced a warning that its decision not to proceed with the part-sale of the Royal Mail would do nothing to help a service in dire need of modernisation in its working practices and industrial relations, and which is being dragged down by a pension fund deficit that is projected to hit 10 billion.

Under the now-abandoned plans, the government had pledged to take responsibility for plugging the pension fund gap – freeing up the Royal Mail to progress as a commercial entity, aided by a private-sector partner.

But Richard Hooper, the businessman whose review of the Royal Mail led to the government's plans, said the pension deficit could prove overwhelming. "The universal postal service, the delivery of letters six days a week to 28 million households across the UK, is threatened by the finances of the Royal Mail," he said.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said the pension fund deficit remained a matter for the company to resolve.