Chamber and committees

That is very helpful.

Barry Mochan, you mentioned the six-month period in your previous comments. Do you have a view on what the period should be for the mental health moratorium, and on the eligibility criteria? The working group’s recommendation is that it should only apply to those who are subject to compulsory mental health treatment. Is that the right criteria?

At the moment, in England, the criteria are slightly wider than what is proposed here. Is there any suggestion that that does not work?

I will make one final point. You have raised the issue of recruitment several times. Am I correct in saying that the pay deal now means that new starts all get paid about 20 per cent less than existing staff and that, for example, new starts lose their allowance for lunch—they do not get paid over lunch? Is it the case that the terms and conditions for new starts will be inferior to those of existing staff? If so, that has, I presume, had an impact on retention and recruitment.

You are not seeing any changes in retention or turnover of new starts as a result of that, at the moment.

You will be putting extra resources into those areas to make sure that you hit that target of 4:30 pm.

[Inaudible.]—recruitment challenges, though.

I turn to another issue. When giving evidence to the House of Commons’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, your chief executive admitted that postal digital assistants were basically being monitored and had been used to pressure staff to work faster. Do you ever monitor staff social media platforms?

Does it not seem a bit sinister to be monitoring what staff post on a social media platform?

Something that does appear to be in your business plan is reported changes to the pipeline for getting mail to delivery offices. Perhaps I can use my own area as an illustration. I represent South Scotland, and I am based in Dumfries and Galloway; currently, the mail comes north to Newcastle airport and is then transported to Carlisle. I appreciate that that is outwith your area, but we are classed as being in Carlisle as far as deliveries are concerned. The mail then heads to local delivery offices in Dumfries and Galloway.

You are now planning a number of central hubs, which, in our case, will mean Warrington. What will that mean for the time that it will take mail to reach the delivery office in, say, Stranraer? How will that compare with the time that it takes to reach that office at the moment?

Let me be clear that I am not disputing the importance of moving from planes to trains. Frankly, I support that, but I want to know what you are doing to mitigate the impact on those areas that are further away from the hubs, because their mail will now arrive at the delivery office several hours later. What does that mean for when customers get their letters? Take a rural area as an example. I think that you said that the last delivery time would be 3 o’clock. Is it not 4 o’clock for rural areas at the moment? What will that mean for customers in rural areas, given that their mail will arrive at the delivery office several hours later? By definition, the letters will be delivered later. At what time will people in rural areas get their letters?