Speeches by Edwards.

“Finally, what should the role of the Lords be? Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think what the Lords brings to our democracy is that more considered form of scrutiny—the ability to ask the House of Commons to think again. The Parliament Act 1911 says a great deal about reform of this area that was originally thought to be tempor…”

“Will my hon. Friend give way?”

“You would not be looking to have additional casuals, particularly in the delivery offices, to make sure that you are meeting your targets.”

“I have a few questions on resilience, but first I would like to pick up on some earlier comments about the capacity issues with the printers. Have you had discussions with Government about those concerns, and are you aware of any contingency measures being in place if there was a catastrophic failure of a printer?”

“If you had more notice of elections and a better timetable for postal votes from your perspective, would you be looking to recruit extra staff in the way that you do for Christmas seasonal work, or do you feel confident that the existing staff levels are able to cope with local and general elections?”

“Do you know offhand how many of those fix-it teams needed to be dispatched during the general election?”

“Like a lot of MPs, I visited my mail centre in the lead-up to Christmas and saw a really efficient operation and lots of hard-working staff and management, which was great. But like a lot of MPs, I have some issues with constituents reporting non-delivery of post, largely in the Strood area in my constituency. That vis…”

“I worked for the Communication Workers Union for three years as the lead postal researcher and received a donation from them for the last general election.”

“That would be useful, thank you. I am certainly aware that over the last decade, if not longer, your business has quite rightly pivoted towards parcels, which is the more profitable part of the business. How do you ensure that letters are not being sidelined or forgotten about, which obviously is particularly important…”

“Looking forward to the future challenges, particularly around resilience, what are your thoughts about how we can best deal with extending the franchise? The current Government have a commitment to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, and there is a lot of change happening at the local authority level through d…”

“The cyber risks and the data risks are much earlier in the process.”

“That is helpful to know, because we often think that it is very efficient in terms of cost and time to run them all at the same time, but it poses other challenges that we need to consider. We have talked a little about the various data systems—the national ones and the more local ones. To what extent are you confident…”

“Have there been any discussions about the Government acting as a printer of last resort?”

“No, because it is run independently by charities.”

“Have you had any discussions with the Government around doing a pilot approach? Would you need to engage central Government, local authorities or both?”

“It is a community event. There are definitely no party political votes for sausages or anything like that. I was going to ask about one of the things they do in Australia that you did not mention, in terms of looking at the way that elections are administered and how changes can be made to increase turnout, and that is…”

“—of that system, which I think is a very good one. I know I am a lone voice in being supportive of mandatory attendance at a polling station or mandatory voting, where you can just go along and mark. One of the other reasons is that it is quite a cultural event in Australia. I hazard to suggest that barbecues at pollin…”

“I was born in Australia, so I declare having experience—”

“I just wanted to pick up on the reset of the EU-UK relationship. I am obviously very aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has recently been to Europe to meet with EU finance ministers, which is fantastic. I am just wondering if you can give us an update on progress, or a timetable for the negotiations around that…”

“I completely agree. Are there any timetables for those individual negotiations, for instance, on the veterinary agreement?”