Labour calls for halt to Royal Mail privatisation

The shares have been priced at between £2.60p and £3.30p but are expected to rise in value when the company floats on the stock market.

The Government is selling up to 62 per cent of the business, with a 10 per cent stake being handed for free to Royal Mail employees

But Labour’s Chuka Umunna has urged the Government to pull the plug on the privatisation to prevent a “massive bonanza” for city speculators. The Shadow Business Secretary reiterated his concerns that many Royal Mail property assets are in prime locations and could be sold, resulting in a windfall for investors that leaves taxpayers short-changed.

The prospectus highlights sites in London at Mount Pleasant and Nine Elms as being “surplus”, with reports speculating that they could worth between £500m and £1bn each in the capital’s current property market, according to Labour.

And Mr Umunna refused to support or condemn potential industrial action by postal workers linked to the controversial sale of the business.

He said: “Now they are pressing on with it, what they need to illustrate is they are going to get the best value for the taxpayer and increasingly what this is looking like is a massive bonanza for city speculators and a huge short-changing of the taxpayer at the same time. It is not too late to pull the plug on this privatisation. Pull the plug on it.”

It has also been revealed that Royal Mail chief executive Moya Greene has written to employees offering them £300 not to take part in industrial action.

Workers have been offered a pay increase of 8.6 per cent over three years, including a £300 lump sum in year one if there is no strike. The Communication Workers Union is asking members to vote on industrial action and the ballot closes later this month.

The revelations emerged as Royal Mail displayed its Dinosaur special stamps issue – to mark more than 200 years of dinosaur fossil discoveries in this country.

They were unveiled yesterday by broadcaster and naturalist, Sir David Attenborough, who said; “It was a British scientist, Sir Robert Owen, the first director of the Natural History Museum, who first identified a dinosaur and who invented that name for the whole group.

“These stamps are a wonderful reminder of the majestic creatures that once roamed what is now Great Britain hundreds of millions of years ago.”