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Royal Mail: Industrial Dispute

My noble friend has been utterly consistent in his calls and demands for change, reform and modernisation in Royal Mail. He contributed to many of our debates during the passage of the legislation and I commend him now as I did then for his commitment to a prosperous, successful and viable future for Royal Mail, which, as he has always argued, must come with change and reform, not without them. On his point about casual workers, so far as I can see and have heard from the Royal Mail management, I do not think that there is any desire to recruit an army of strike-breakers. I point out to him that Royal Mail is at liberty to recruit directly employed casual workers—it does so every year at this time—and it is doing so in greater numbers because, if the strike goes ahead, there will be considerable backlogs to clear. It is also allowed to recruit temporary agency staff via an employment business so long as they do not do the work of striking workers. I think that that is the valid point.