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Post Office Closures

I cannot give any polite logical explanation for the perceptive observations of my hon. Friend. The Secretary of State knows that our arguments are valid. He is very uncomfortable about the closure programme that has been forced on the Post Office. He knows, because he will have heard it every day from right hon. and hon. Members on the Labour Benches, that there is deep unhappiness across the entire House about the way that is progressing. He has a reputation in the Government. As shadow Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, I think that occasionally he speaks a lot of sense. However, the problem that he faces when he speaks that sense is that it is not necessarily popular with his Prime Minister—the very man whom he once described as someone who would make a ““bloomin' awful”” Prime Minister—[Interruption.] I translate for the sake of decency.