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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether (a) Ministers or (b) senior officials in his Department made representations to the Honours Committee on the appointment of a CBE to the role of chief executive of the Post Office in 2019.

Recommendations are made by independent specialist honours committees, who consider nominations put forward by members of the public and by Government departments. Each committee is chaired by and comprises a majority of independent members, all of whom were selected after open competition.’

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy fed Paula Vennells’s nomination in to the cross-Government process for honours, along with other citations for the round.