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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to prevent strikes by Post Office workers before Christmas.

This is an operational matter for Post Office Ltd.

In each of the last 3 one day strikes held by the CWU and Unite, 99% of post offices have been open as usual because the vast majority are independent franchises. This will mean that another strike at the Post Office will not have a material impact on customers’ ability to post parcels for Christmas as only about 80 post offices have been closed out of a network of over 11,500.

This strike will not affect Christmas mail deliveries which are handled by Royal Mail, which is a separate company to Post Office.

We encourage the unions to take up the Post Office’s offer to meet with its senior management team to discuss the future of the business rather than persist with strike action.