MPs grill Royal Mail chiefs

An emergency inquiry has been launched by MPs into the dramatic deterioration of postal services in much of Britain.

The trade and industry select committee has summoned the Royal Mail's three most senior bosses to appear before them today to explain why deliveries have suddenly got so much worse.

The trio - chairman Allan Leighton, chief executive Adam Crozier and operations director Tom Melvin - are set for a tough grilling about their implementation of a controversial restructuring plan.

This involves scrapping the second delivery of the day and has been blamed for a disastrous fall in service quality since Christmas. To halt this, Mr Crozier took day-to-day charge of letter delivery operations last week.

There were allegations in a Channel Four Dispatches programme of postal staff stealing-money and chaotic scenes in sorting offices.

Mr Crozier has already apologised for the deterioration and admitted the Royal Mail will not hit its target of delivering 92.5 per cent of firstclass letters the following day.

The figure for Britain as a whole during the year to end March was about 90 per cent, with parts of London in the low 80s. Official figures will be disclosed next week and are likely to trigger compensation payments to customers of up to £50million.