Question: Were you surprised that Royal Mail and Business Post agreed access terms?

Graham Corbett: Not very. We've been encouraging them to do this since the beginning of the exercise.

I think it's the normal experience of these sorts of disputes that if there is going to be a settlement, the moment you get it is literally on the courtroom steps, so to speak.

People wait right until the moment when they realise that the important commercial decision is effectively going to be taken out of their hands to be made by a judge, or a regulator or whatever.

And that's the moment when they realise that they'd rather do it themselves.

So I was not at all surprised. If it was going to happen at all, that was the moment it was going to happen.

Question: What difference do you think this access agreement will make to the competitive postal market?

Graham Corbett: I hope it proves to be the essential key that really unlocks the market to a new competitive era.

The difficulty always was that until we got that decision in place, it was going to be very difficult for any significant competitor to come in on anything approaching a national basis unless they got a mechanism to enable delivery to take place in those bits that they didn't want to handle themselves.

So yes, its only one deal, but I think the industry generally was waiting to see how it played out, in the expectation that they would then know what the framework was to enable them to come in, either to offer access services through Royal Mail or perhaps to offer end to end services themselves

Question: Royal Mail has recently announced the sacking of thousands of managers. Do you support their plans?

Graham Corbett: I think the renewal plan was absolutely essential.

Allan Leighton was brought in, effectively to develop the renewal plan and to put it in place. Unhappily I don't think that any renewal plan which did not involve quite significant staff savings was ever going to produce what they needed.

I don't think that anyone had any doubt, including the unions, that Royal Mail had become a very overmanned organization.

So whilst no one enjoys this aspect of it, I don't believe that the renewal was ever going to happen without this being a consequence.

Question:? You mentioned Allan Leighton. He has a number of other business responsibilities. Do you think he has enough time to devote to Royal Mail?

Graham Corbett: Allan would say, and I would agree with him, that "history will be the judge of that".

I think what Allan has, amongst other qualities, is an extraordinary ability to pack more into every minute of the working day than most people.

Question: And how do you think Adam Crozier has performed in his first year as chief executive of Royal Mail?

Graham Corbett: I've been very impressed I must say.

Adam is so different from Allan. He's very quiet, very deliberate in the way in which he expresses himself.

At the same time he is very resolute, he is clear in working out what he wants and very firm in going after it.

I think that he's been an excellent choice actually.

Question: You are about to step down as chairman of Postcomm. In that time, the unions and some MPs have called for you to be sacked, Allan Leighton has accused you of "Wreck-u-lation" and you have imposed a financial penalty of £7.5 million on Royal Mail. What end-of-term report would you give yourself?

Graham Corbett: Well first of all, to deal with the criticism, I think that an economic regulator who does not get criticised by the organization he is regulating and by an awful lot of people whose toes he is stepping on is almost certainly not doing his job.

You don't come into economic regulation to win popularity contests.

I always saw it as my job during my time as chairman to create the framework which would enable competition and all the good things that I think competition will bring, in terms of innovation of service, improved service quality and efficiency.

Effectively what that required was that we set up a licensing regime and a market opening strategy which everyone could understand and see how it was going to lead, step by step, to full market opening.

We needed a price control regime, and we needed to put in place an examination of what the universal service was all about and how and why it should be best preserved.

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed over the access deal, but I'm hoping that all of these will be in place by the time I step down.

So without a huge amount of false modesty, I think it's a pretty good report.

Question: Where would you like to see the British postal market this time next year?

Graham Corbett: I think the big challenge for the commission under Nigel Stapleton's leadership is going to be to make a reality of what is still at the moment a theoretical structure.

The one thing that is absolutely clear as you look back over the time so far, is that the effect of real competition is absolutely tiny at the moment.

I think its impact, as a threat, has brought about very considerable changes, but if competition doesn't now actually become a reality, the momentum for change within Royal Mail will gradually diminish.

So bringing competitors into the market, with a wide diversity, some of them using access and some providing end to end services, providing innovation in designing and delivering what it is the general public want, is going to be a tremendous challenge.

Certainly I think Nigel will see that as his big task and that is what we will be watching for.