1. To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what steps it is taking to ensure that offices receive post before the start of parliamentary business. (S5O-03045)

As members will appreciate, for security reasons it is important that we screen all mail that comes to the Parliament off site. In 2011, it was agreed that we would no longer pay Royal Mail for the early extraction of the Parliament’s mail and that we would bring the sorting in house. That means that screened mail from Royal Mail is now delivered to Holyrood at about 9.30 am. After time is allowed for our mail team to sort the mail, the first postal delivery is at 11. Those changes enabled us to operate one shift instead of two, which freed up a member of staff, who was redeployed in the facilities management team. We have no plans to reintroduce an early mail delivery, which could involve significant additional costs.

The Parliament’s posties do a fabulous job, and I do not want anyone to think for a moment that my question is a criticism of their work, because it is not.

The member mentioned shift changes, and the first post is now much later than it was before. That change is only recent—it did not happen a long time ago—so is there a possibility of restoring the earlier postal delivery, so that we can give our constituents a good service from the start of the day?

I appreciate that the member is a keen bean and that he wants to get to work as quickly as possible. However, returning to the old system would have an additional cost of about £100,000 every year. I ask him to carefully consider whether the additional time would be worth a cost of £100,000 to the Parliament. We made a saving and we managed to redeploy staff in the building.

If the member is desperate to see the newspapers, for example, they are available in the Scottish Parliament information centre from 8 in the morning—he does not have to wait until 11 to access them. The corporate body is pretty confident that taking this approach is the right and proper thing to do.