Speeches by Edwards.

“So they were allowed unfettered access. They could speak with them at any point, any time they wanted.”

“What about the internal apps, TV screens and noticeboards that you could make use of? Did you allow the GMB to make use of those as well, to make sure that it was a free and fair ballot?”

“So what you are saying is that you had unlimited access to express management’s views on the ballot.”

“It is a simple question about how many times you organised meetings, which would be diarised, so you would have a list of how many times you had done that with employees. That is what the union would have to do.”

“Did you play by those rules or not?”

“You had to agree to it as well.”

“Did you agree a set number, and then give the union the same set number, to make that free and fair?”

“So you did not organise and invite them to any meetings directly.”

“The question was specifically about expressing the views on the ballot, not about what you generally talk about in running the business day to day. Specifically, how many times did you meet employees to express the management’s views, and how did you express those views?”

“In 2023, Amazon made about $575 billion in global sales. That equates to it being the 25th largest economy, equivalent to Ireland or Argentina, so there is a lot of power there, and perhaps we might say a lot of imbalances. You mentioned wanting to operate a free and fair ballot, so I wanted to ask a few questions abou…”

“There is a wider conversation to be had here about the level of unionisation across the workforce. In 1995, it was about 32%; that dropped to 22% in 2022. Should the reforms focus on the access, bargaining position or awareness of workers, or do we need a bigger conversation about the future of the UK’s industrial rela…”

“It is very nice to see you again, Amanda. We have both spent time outside Amazon. The pathway to get to recognition is a very long one, isn’t it? It takes years. On average, it takes two years or sometimes three years. You have been working on it that entire time, and so have your colleagues in the team, so you have ob…”

“You have touched on this a little bit, but I want to get a bit more detail on your approaches to industrial relations. Can you describe BAE versus JLR and give a bit of a flavour? Secondly, do you anticipate any change to your approaches due to the Bill?”

“Will you change your approaches? Can you describe your current approach to industrial relations and bring a bit of colour into that picture?”

“Would you describe it more as a partnership?”

“Did you bring any additional workers in to work for Amazon during that period of time, so change the number of people who worked for the company during the time that you received the notification for recognition?”

“So the timing was just complete happenstance—that the number of employees rose significantly during that time period?”

“Thank you for clarifying that. Is one breach not enough? Can you explain why there is a partial suspension over an entire blanket suspension and how that decision has been made? At the moment, you clearly have some information that has been applied in one particular way. Are you able to enlighten us on that?”

“Mr Doughty, can you provide us with information about the legal basis for the suspensions, and what specific evidence and analysis were used to support the Secretary of State’s view that breaches of international humanitarian law may have occurred?”

“Can you set out the evidence and reasoning that led to that—any of the information that you became aware of, because obviously that position has moved from where it was before? Is there new information that you have taken on board? Is it a new evaluation process that you are using, or is it about looking further over t…”