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A former cabinet minister has waded in on the growing row over plans to sell off part of the Royal Mail.
Peter Hain told the BBC that he objects to the sale of 30 per cent of the company.
The former secretary of state for work and pensions claimed that there was not the "public appetite" for the taxpayer to take on another public sector pension.
He also criticised the government for its "ludicrous and unfair system of promoting competition" within the universal service.
Government proposals to sell off part of the Royal Mail will be considered by the Commons business and enterprise committee today.
Ministers have defended the controversial plans, with postal services minister Pat McFadden arguing that reform is necessary to ensure the future of the postal service.
The chairman of Royal Mail's pension trustees, Jane Newell, wrote a letter to business secretary Lord Mandelson warning of "devastating consequences" if more investment was not found.
She suggested that recommendations from last year's Hooper report into the Royal Mail must be implemented, including the sell-off plan, in order to tackle the pension fund deficit.
Without such action the deficit would be "significantly larger" than the previously expected figure of £5.9bn, she stated.
And staff at Royal Mail have been warned that their pensions could be cut unless part-privatisation goes ahead.
The Communication Workers Union has suggested that the letter was released to "scare" those opposing the part-privatisation plans.
CWU leader Billy Hayes accused the chairman of the pension trustees of "interfering" in politics.
He described the situation as a "scandal" that was "designed to scare MPs".
"The government is saying they want a foreign company to run the Post Office, which is ridiculous," he told Sky News.
"We could be faced with a situation where the Royal Bank of Scotland is nationalised and the Royal Mail is privatised."
But ministers maintained that the letter was released to highlight the problems with the Royal Mail's pensions deficit.
McFadden told the BBC that the pensions fund had to be sorted out to guarantee the future of Royal Mail.
He stated: "What the letter shows is how big of a problem this is for the company.
"It is a huge drain on the company's resources and it also casts a doubt over the future pension security of Royal Mail staff."
He explained that the government is proposing taking on responsibility for the historic liabilities of the pensions fund.
But McFadden stated that the company has also got to "modernise and transform for the future".
And he added that the government and the taxpayer would share in any upturn of the Royal Mail's fortunes.
The postal services minister explained that Royal Mail would not be able to deal with the pensions deficit by itself.
He said: "The pensions fund deficit, I think, is around 75 times the company's profits.
"So they are just not generating enough profit to pay down the pension deficit and the modernisation that they need.
"At the moment, the universal service is under threat precisely because Royal Mail hasn't changed enough. The universal service is now losing money."
He added: "We will not privatise the company. But what we want to do is to bring forward the experience to drive forward that change, precisely so that we can secure the universal service for the future. That is the aim of this."
But Hain told the BBC he had "a lot of concerns" about the plans, which he had raised with business secretary Lord Mandelson.
"I hope that these will be discussed when the proposals are published on Thursday because they were not addressed in the initial statement," he said.
"The deficit, as we learnt overnight, is likely to be over £8bn," he stated.
"It affects 450,000 pensioners. I am not sure there is a public appetite out there for taking onto the taxpayers' balance sheet another public sector pension – a very good one with a final salary scheme – without some other kind of reform."
He added: "I think the government is right to try and address this in some way. The question is that by bringing in the private sector, don't you open the door to full scale privatisation in the future.
"How can the interests be protected with a private sector partner? Why can't it be done in another way?
"There are all sorts of solutions to this, I think, rather than selling the pass on the public ownership."
He also warned that there would be opposition to the plans from all sides in Parliament.
Hain said: "There is big opposition among Tory and Liberal MPs who want full privatisation. So it is not clear to me where the majority for this Bill will lie."
And the former minister also expressed concern about costly universal service obligations being placed on Royal Mail.
"We have had a ludicrous and unfair system of promoting competition, which I'm afraid our government has been responsible for under Postcomm which has been a bad regulator," he said.
"Because what it has done is undermined Royal Mail's ability to maintain the universal service obligation to deliver anywhere on any day for a given price.
"The private couriers have come in and taken the profitable mail – London to Birmingham to Manchester to Glasgow – that is easy stuff.
"A lot of it is pre-sorted business mail. But a letter to an individual grandmother in a remote area is being picked up by the Royal Mail."
He continued: "I want the government on Thursday to announce that it is radically reforming that whole competition regime. It hasn't so far committed itself to that."
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd