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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of returning postal services into public ownership to ensure profits are reinvested into the service, in the context of Royal Mail’s announcement of a £400m payout to shareholders.

The Government has no plans to renationalise Royal Mail. Operational and commercial decisions are a matter for the company’s management.

One of the primary reasons for the sale was to enable Royal Mail to access the capital it needed to invest in and grow the business.

Royal Mail has invested £2 billion in the firm since privatisation, with a further £1.8 billion investment in the UK’s postal service announced in 2019 to transform and grow the UK business.