Speeches by Maynard.

“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…”

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

“You mentioned 100 locations. What proportion of those currently have union engagement?”

“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?”

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

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

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

“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…”

“What is your response to the proposed changes to industrial relations as part of the Employment Rights Bill?”

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

“Is there anything else that is particularly concerning?”

“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?”

“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?”

“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?”

“You mentioned 37 days of strike action. My interpretation is that people have to be pretty desperate to do that. You also mentioned health and safety. What else are the key triggers resulting in that activity?”

“We are about a month away from Thames Water signing up for another £3 billion of debt. If that happens, 46% of the bills of every customer in that catchment will be spent on interest expenses, and that is without even paying down the £20 billion of debt. How is that helping anyone?”

“I believe that this Bill is disappointing. It almost totally ignores the financials of the companies, and that is the root of the problem. Unless we fix the financials, we will not fix the problem. Thames Water, for example, has £17 billion of debt, and it is currently expected to have a further £3 billion of debt by t…”

“Sure—maybe let me finish my sentence. I am just trying to probe further as to why this does not qualify and why this is such an unknown. You have been seeing RAF flights flying over for more than 12 months now, so you are seeing day by day the destruction and you know that more than 50,000 buildings have been destroyed…”

“It seems that our contractual responsibilities to Lockheed Martin are trumping our responsibilities to international humanitarian law. That is what many people on this Committee object to. Do you agree with that?”

“I presume you are comfortable with the UN satellite imagery. You also have had hundreds of RAF flights flying over Gaza on a daily basis, so you can see the day-by-day destruction.”