Speeches by Edwards.

“Are we confident that we can manage the risk of where that investment might come from? Are we going to accept it at any cost?”

“The point I was trying to make was more that, comparatively, it is a tiny amount of money. It is not about excluding them. It is more about whether it is really worth it. What are we gaining when we are talking about these national security risks?”

“I am interested in what you have been saying around the balancing act of how we manage those relationships. In particular, the recent visit that you were speaking about, where the Prime Minister went and took a delegation, was widely reported to be a positive step in those discussions. It is resulting in £600 million o…”

“Yes. We are quite interested in the potential opportunities that education has, but, as you have alluded to, there are a great number of universities whose entire business model is stacked upon Chinese students. What do we do? Do we encourage more of that? Do we have a problem whereby—we see some of these stories comin…”

“I wanted to ask Sabina about the tech situation in China and the opportunities for our firms and how well they are positioned. We know that we are the third most valuable in the world, according to one of the reports that techUK has published. How do you see some of these opportunities? Which might be the companies tha…”

“Picking up on the data point, for example, that has come up before and we have discussed it. Our Sub-Committee on Economic Security is very interested in all these different elements right through society. Do you see data as being the No. 1 challenge? Does it mean that we are more likely to receive Chinese products and…”

“Q12. On 16 July 2005, Private Leon Spicer and Private Phillip Hewett, both from Tamworth, and Second Lieutenant Richard Shearer from Nuneaton, were tragically killed in Iraq. More than 20 years on, our communities continue to remember their service and reflect on the ultimate sacrifice they made. The Staffordshire 3 Gr…”

“Mr Křetínský, I believe you are a billionaire. I have never met a billionaire. I was just wondering what made you buy Royal Mail. We have some figures in front of us—you said you are a numbers person, so I would appreciate your assistance here. In 2019, Royal Mail had an adjusted operating profit of £234 million. In 20…”

“Oh, another diagram, okay. They are very clearly given to—the management and the shop floor, is it?”

“They are given to everybody to look at and to use to prioritise. That clearly details that parcels are more important than letters. We have information that sometimes people can have 170 to 230 parcels a day, and they may take three minutes each to deliver. I am not that good at maths, but that sounds like much longer …”

“Has some of that been lifted since this Committee session was announced? Has there been a bit of an alleviation?”

“We heard in our last session that there has been a drive to prioritise parcels over letters. Now, some of that is clearly a logistical operation, but we also know there has been a boom in online shopping, and clearly lots of people are ordering parcels and the like. Is that something that attracted you to the business …”

“Thank you very much for the wide-ranging information you have given so far. I want to return to the issue of letters and parcels. You have brought a lovely diagram of a pyramid with you.”

“I want to pick up on your point, Ms Black, about USO reform, particularly because I think it is an interesting term to use, given that we are seeing it move in the wrong direction—the Committee would probably agree. At the moment, from 1 April this year, we are going to see first-class delivery targets dropping from 93…”

“The evidence we have heard suggests that the challenge is that that has not been happening. I was trying to establish whether it had been looked at as to whether, as an investor, the universal service obligation was actually a problem for the company and something that you are trying to overcome. At the moment, we do n…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward such an important debate. Constituents of mine have asked me to attend not just to thank him, but to support his calls for a co-ordinated strategy. They lost their son when he was three, so they share all such families’ feelings that more needs to be done to get to the bottom…”

“I do not necessarily think we want a race to the bottom, though; we want a good service for the entirety of the country. There is also an additional reliability target that effectively says that mail—if it is first class or second class—cannot be delivered two days later than the allotted time it is supposed to arrive …”

“How is that going to translate into the way in which you decide whether to issue a fine? Obviously, this is adding to a structure that you currently have, so you are broadening the KPIs, as such, that you use to measure its performance. How do you think you are going to use these reliability targets? How are you factor…”

“In the interests of brevity, Ofcom fined Royal Mail £21 million in October 2025—six months ago now—and asked you to urgently create an improvement plan. Where is it? Can we see it? When is it being published?”

“When do you think that will be?”