Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I welcome the all-new ministerial team to their positions. They have inherited a crisis, because business confidence has plunged to a record low since the Chancellor’s Halloween budget a year ago today. Will the Business Secretary assure this House that he will find and demonstrate his backbone, stand up to the Chancellor, and encourage business investment by following Conservative plans to reduce welfare spending so that we can scrap the family business tax and cut small business rates?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I associate myself with the remarks about British Beauty Week. In addition to beauty businesses, one of the key ingredients for growth on our high streets is having a post office in the mix. As Post Office Minister, he has inherited a network of 11,500 post offices across the country and a consultation on the size of that network. Can he echo what his predecessor said at the Dispatch Box, and commit to supporting our high streets by maintaining the scale of the post office network throughout this Parliament?

[Blair McDougall]

I thank the shadow Minister for her welcome. She is absolutely right about the anchoring effect of post offices on high streets all over the country. We know not just that, as we mentioned in the Green Paper, if people go to their post office they are likely to spend money in local shops, but that post offices are essential—as I found out during a visit to one the day before yesterday—in giving small businesses somewhere to take their takings. The Green Paper set out the options for maintenance of the post office network, and it is certainly our intention to maintain it.