Response to the Go Dutch petition

Today I finally got the Government's response to my Go Dutch petition. As many people who have organised a petition on the 10 Downing website will have found, the response is rather abstract and does not address the issue raised.

The petition stated that years of self-regulation by the direct mailing industry has a) led to an increase in the amount of junk mail posted through British letter boxes and b) has not made it any easier for people to reduce junk mail. Rather than continuing self-regulation by junk mailers, I therefore suggested the Government intervenes and introduces the Dutch system for opting out of junk mail. In Holland, people register with a Mailing Preference Service to stop all (and not just some) addressed advertisements and put a free and readily available 'no junk mail' sign on their letter box to put a stop to all unaddressed junk mail.

In his response, John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, and Regulatory Reform, states that "Government has no plans to take measures to prohibit or restrict" junk mail. His main arguments are that junk mail generates extra revenue for Royal Mail and helps keep the price of stamps down.

Of course I'm all in favour of a thriving Post Office and (relatively) low prices for stamps, in the same way that Mr Hutton will no doubt agree with me that people who are not interested in junk mail should have an easy and effective way of opting-out of receiving it. My argument, however, was that opting out is presently not at all easy. To stop addressed junk mail you have to register with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) and get your name off the edited electoral register. To stop unaddressed junk mail you have to register with Royal Mail's customer-unfriendly 'door-to-door opt-out' and get a 'no junk mail' sticker. And because of various loopholes in both the MPS and the door-to-door opt-out you will also have to contact individual companies. Stopping junk mail can't be more complicated and ineffective than this…

Unfortunately, the remainder of Mr Hutton's response is a summary of the MPS and the door-to-door opt-out. Instead, I would have liked to learn more about the idea raised in last year's Waste Strategy White Paper to introduce an opt-in system for direct mail if marketeers continue to fail to reduce waste caused by junk mail. This idea is still on the table and much depends on the introduction of a MPS for unaddressed junk mail. But all that is being discussed behind closed doors…