Post-bearing suspect stamps will now be returned to sender along with a surcharge where possible. Until now recipients have had to bear the cost if a letter is suspected of having been sent fraudulently.

So they are actually just moving the burden of risking Royal Mail’s dodgy stamp scanning onto the sender instead of the receiver. Doesn’t do much to restore confidence in the system.

If the fraud detection is really that bad that Royal Mail have had to admit it publicly, it now makes me wonder if there really were any fakes at all.

Perhaps it’s time to break down their monopoly on letter distribution if the privatised Royal Mail has ended up in this sort of state.