Thank you. I appreciate your comments, and I would urge you to investigate this further and get more of the details, then, because if the allegations are proven to be true, I think it's a serious issue that needs investigation.

As someone who no doubt passionately reads The Socialist, the mouthpiece for the Socialist Party, formerly known as Militant, you would have been interested to see an article about a Llanelli postal worker who was sacked for whistleblowing to the Royal Mail internal investigations team regarding a fake working hours scam that was very similar to the one highlighted in my previous question. Apparently, according to this individual, senior managers have been paying delivery staff unworked overtime in order to manipulate their budget forecasts and to argue for higher departmental budgets over the summer months.

According to reports, the purpose of this fraud was to allow depots to build up reserves that would then be spent during peak seasons, with managers arguing that it allowed them to better manage a surge in parcel volume numbers. The whistleblower had allegedly been instructed by their managers to fraudulently pay staff for overtime that they had not worked, and the whistleblower was subsequently sacked after an internal probe discovered that they had reported this activity to the internal investigations team.

Thankfully, after a strike organised by the Communication Workers Union, the individual in question has now been reinstated to their role. But Minister, this begs us to ask several vital and fundamental questions. Firstly, given that whistleblowing policies are put in place to protect people, why was the identity of this individual made known so he could be sacked? Secondly, given that this practice seems to be quite widespread, why is it only after the individual was sacked that CWU became involved? Surely they would have known about these practices and actively opposed them. And third and finally, what assurances do we have that this fraudulent activity is no longer taking place in Royal Mail depots throughout  Wales?