Speeches by Maynard.

“Will you always know whether your cotton comes from China?”

“Cotton?”

“Okay, but sorry that was not the question. The question was are you asking by default all your cotton and tomato products whether the product has Chinese—Chinese not Xinjiang—cotton in it? Are you asking that question by default, given that you are worried about Xinjiang?”

“By default, are you asking all your suppliers whether their cotton and tomatoes come from China?”

“I apologise for interrupting but time and everything else—I am not trying to be rude. Given that we know that a lot of cotton comes out of Xinjiang and that a lot of tomatoes comes out of Xinjiang, would it not be safer to be saying that we do not want that in our supply chain if we are Tesco and therefore, we are goin…”

“I completely agree again but what I am trying to understand is, say for cotton or tomatoes, whether you are running a systematic process for all of your cotton products or all of your tomato products, by default, not to get a perfect answer, because I understand you will not get a perfect answer, but to raise your leve…”

“Okay. Obviously, you all know very well about the “Panorama” programme, Antonio Petti, shell companies and all this. What surprises me is this. Take the product coming out of Xinjiang, things like cotton, tomatoes, the well-known products. The “Panorama” programme used an origin verification firm to look at the tomatoe…”

“Many of us recognise that our drainage network is in disrepair in many places. Much of that stems from the Environment Agency’s main river designation; an enormous amount of bureaucracy is required in order to get permission to unblock what is nominally called a main river but to almost all of us is a ditch. These ditc…”

“Are there any parts of the proposed legislation that you are particularly concerned about?”

“Is there anything else that is particularly concerning?”

“Okay. They may have union members in them, but do any locations have an organised union inside the location?”

“That is almost exactly my question. Take four things: the Employment Rights Bill as is, labour costs, access to labour and access to skills. Where does the Bill sit on the scale of impact on your business, or of the trouble and headaches caused? I am trying to get the context of quite how big it is compared with all th…”

“Your comment about reasonableness on both sides strikes a chord. Has the CBI already published amendments that it would like to see in the Bill? If not, is it planning to?”

“Ben, looking at workers’ awareness of rights at work, are employers equipped to try to help their workforce understand their rights, powers and entitlements under the law?”

“Is there anything else that you would like to cover about how to drive cultural change in the area or get smaller enterprises up to speed on these things, or have you already done that?”

“Your statements are starkly different—unrecognisable—from what we heard an hour ago. We heard about the battle to get off £10 an hour, yet we have just heard what you said about pay. I guess what really sticks in the throat is the scale of the company. In 2023, Amazon paid £18.7 million of current tax on £27 billion of…”

“Do you think it is fair to be paying that little tax in the UK as a company?”

“I get it, but the question was “Do you think it is fair?” Just a yes or no would be good.”

“If you are not going to give me an answer, that is fine. We will leave it there.”

“May I ask whether that is an anonymous question that you ask your employees? Is it untraceable to them, and do they believe that it is?”