CAB129-35 — Page 62

SECRET

C.P.(49) 117

-Page 62 of 366

COPY NO. 31

20TH MAY, 1949

CABINET

TELEGRAPH BILL

Memorandum by the Postmaster-General

At the Cabinet's meeting on 19th May

(C.M.(49) 36th Conclusions, Minute 2), I was invited to submit a further memorandum showing how the proposed telephone rental increases could best be imposed in the various classes of contract by notice to individual subscribers, and the extent to which revenue would be lost by adopting this procedure for introducing the increases.

2.

The normal procedure would be to send, by registered post as is required by the Telegraph Regulations, a notice to each subscriber terminating his agreement or agreements on a certain date. The notice would specify the agreements by their dates. It would be accompanied by a fresh agreement form, on which would be entered in detail the items rented, the addresses where they were installed and the rental at the new rates, together with a request for the form to be signed and returned to the Post Office. Business installations are over 40% of the whole, and of these a large number will have many items in the biggest cases running to thousands. Questions as to the accuracy of the entries would have to be answered and failures to return the forms would have to be followed up. In this connection, it is material that subscribers are only supplied with a copy of the contract on request. Faced with new and detailed contracts, they would undoubtedly, in many cases, set about a check-up of the accuracy of the items set out and a study of the unfamiliar conditions of the contract. Considerable correspondence and delay would inevitably follow and in addition failures to return the forms would have to be followed up. This full procedure, including ensuring that a contract is returned before the operation of the new charges, was estimated to take on the average twenty minutes of staff time for each agreement. The estimate is necessarily conjectural so far as the subscribers' reactions and consequential correspondence is concerned: on review it is, in fact, felt to be too low.

3.

Since the previous paper was prepared, the question whether this long procedure can be reduced has been examined further. It is now considered that a simpler process could produce an effective contract. That process would be to send out individual notices of termination of agreement in uniform terms which would, (a) refer in general terms to the subscribers' agreements for telephone service without detailing or identifying them, (b) terminate subscribers' agreements as at a uniform named date or at the date of expiry of the initial tenn, (c) state, in effect, that a

Prebenishing to continue to receip service, after the

2013

mentioned

must complete a simple tear-off for which would write into his new contract the terms and conditions

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