British Telecom was separated from the Post Office in 1980, and emerged as an independent business in 1981. Girobank was sold to Alliance & Leicester in 1990, and Royal Mail Parcels was rebranded as Parcelforce. The remaining business continued under public ownership, as privatisation of this was deemed to be too unpopular. However, in the 1990s, President of the Board of Trade Michael Heseltine began investigating a possible sale, and eventually a Green Paper on Postal Reform was published in May 1994, outlining various options for privatisation. The ideas, however, proved controversial, and were dropped from the 1994 Queen's Speech after a number of Conservative MPs warned Heseltine that they would not vote for the legislation.