Speeches by MacDonald.

“Yes, because there are so few post offices now, and the ones that are there are operating on reduced hours and are incredibly difficult for people to utilise.”

“Stacey, I am the MP for the highlands and islands, and a small business guy, basically. What do you think the big problems are for the postal service for remote Scotland?”

“Grace, on the basis of what Stacey has said, do you think that these challenges conflict with the principle of a universal postal service where everybody is meant to get the same service?”

“To take that one step further, in rural areas we have a much older population. Could you elaborate on why this might impact that population?”

“Grace, one of the big issues that we are facing, for which it is not clear to me who is responsible, is that we are seeing a vast number of rural post offices closing and reducing hours. Even in major towns they are open from 10 am until 2 pm or whatever it is. If you are a microbusiness on the west coast basically sur…”

“I do not think there is any doubt about the relationship and the quality of the posties. I think it is the other way around. It is getting the product to the customer base one way or another, and the fact that the post offices are now privately run and find it difficult to be viable and therefore are closing. In my opi…”

“Good luck with that.”

“Royal Mail was fined £16 million for not delivering on its targets. We now have new targets that are much less good. Do we have any confidence that Royal Mail is going to be able to deliver the proper service on those new, lower, easier to achieve targets?”

“What sprung to my mind when I was reading this was all the water authorities were not allowed to give bonuses because they missed all their targets. Do you think that would be a step too far, or would you be in favour of the Royal Mail not giving bonuses if it misses its targets?”

“Can I suggest that you might be asking the wrong question of your customers in rural, remote Scotland? I know when the letter that I take from my postman arrived; I just do not know when it was sent, so I pick it up and say, “Oh, good, my mum has written me”. If you asked small businesses, microbusinesses and other peo…”

“In the Scottish Affairs Committee in January last year, they talked about the cost of living in remote areas being up to 30% higher than in urban areas, and I am acutely aware of this. In your baseline targets for areas exempt from quality of service, there basically are no targets for those areas. Consumer Scotland ha…”

“The second part of my question is about failing to deliver in the quality of service targets in the past. Why would they now reach them on easier targets? The fine last time was £16 million. Royal Mail’s turnover is £8.5 billion. Perhaps it is just for them the cost of doing business.”

“I suggest that England is in an extraordinarily lucky position, because in Scotland we are not getting business rates relief. There is none for retail or leisure; there is some for hospitality, but only up to a point. The hon. Member should thank the Lord he lives in England.”

“May I posit the idea that what my hon. Friend is suggesting, and what the previous intervention was suggesting, is a slippery slope? It is an enormous concern, and I suspect that in a few years’ time we will see a very different Bill.”

“The domestic user of electricity pays 24p per kilowatt; the domestic user of mains gas pays 6p. People who live in urban Britain buy their energy for a quarter of the price paid by people in rural Britain. This is a massive problem, and I wonder whether the Minister could explain how the Government will address it.”

“Will the right hon. Lady give way?”

“We have been hearing all about monitoring in one hour and the huge amounts of discharges. We do not have any of that information in Scotland as it is not a requirement for Scottish Water to release that and the SNP Government are not taking any steps to do so. We have no idea about the extent of the problem, but we kno…”

“The decision to close the refinery has been described by Unite as a needless act of industrial vandalism. How do you react to that?”

“Taking the high number of people accepting voluntary redundancies as good, it suggests to me that 18 months is roughly the right sort of figure. I am just picking up on Antonia’s figure. Assuming that 50% of Petroineos is owned by INEOS, I cannot understand why you would not stand up and say that you were very supporti…”

“There are a lot of commentators and a lot of political parties that have a view that it is not environmentally friendly for us to extract oil in Scotland, but they do believe it is fine to import it from other countries. Then the opposing argument is that it is more environmentally friendly to drill here and extract it…”