Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether she plans to take steps to help restore post offices that closed as a result of Horizon programme failures.

To address the Horizon scandal, the Government is focused on ensuring justice for those wrongly convicted and delivering financial compensation to all those affected.

In parallel, the Post Office has the freedom to deliver the branch network within the parameters Government sets. As such, Government does not intervene in decisions relating to managing the branch network at a local level.

More broadly, the post office network is not in decline and in fact, more post offices opened last year than closed, and the network is as large today as it has been for five years.