Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if his Department will consult with relevant organisations before a decision is reached on how the Post Office subsidy will be allocated.

Through the November 2020 Spending Review a total of £227m of funding has been allocated to the Post Office to extend the network subsidy by £50 million and to provide £177 million to invest in the future of the network. This will ensure that post offices in every corner of the country, including our vital rural branches, can keep providing essential services for the people that rely on them – now and in the future.

The subsidy will be used to support the costs of loss-making post offices, in the same way that previous subsidies provided to the Post Office have been used. In order to support Spending Review decisions, the Department considered the impact of subsidy on subpostmasters across the Post Office network.

BEIS has a long track record of engaging with relevant organisations in relation to Post Office, including funding provided for the network, and it continues to meet with them on a regular basis.