As the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster set out in his Ditchley Speech, the Government is determined to ensure the Civil Service is better distributed across the country. The Places for Growth Programme is working with departments and public bodies to firm up relocation plans and further details will be announced in due course. The Places for Growth programme is exploring opportunities across the whole of the UK.

The Government are providing significant funding for the bus industry at this time. Our covid-19 funding package for England’s buses totals £651 million. The Government provide £43 million annually to local authorities for supporting socially necessary services, plus £30 million of additional funding in 2021 to support, improve or restore services. Ministers and officials meet regularly with key stakeholders, including local transport authorities and operators to discuss a wide range of matters.

The new dairy response fund opened for applications on 18 June 2020. Full details of the application process can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/dairy-response-fund-2020. The funding will provide eligible dairy farmers in England with up to £10,000. Payments will commence from 6 July 2020. The scheme will help those dairy farmers most in need of support to sustain their businesses by maintaining production capacity without impacts on animal welfare.

Post Office has not prosecuted any cases relating to its Horizon system since 2015. According to Post Office’s records, no-one is currently imprisoned as a result of its historical prosecutions.

Records of cases prosecuted by the UK’s public prosecution agencies which may also relate to Horizon will be kept by the Crown Prosecution Service, Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service and the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland respectively.

Post Office has made those agencies aware of the concerns relating to Horizon and Judge Fraser’s findings in the recent Horizon court case.

Our thoughts are indeed with our colleague who was murdered, Jo Cox, and also with the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan); we wish her a safe return to this House.

We have introduced an unprecedented package of support for businesses across the country to get through this incredibly challenging period. More than £10 billion in grants—grants—has been paid to over 830,000 businesses of all sizes, including £100 million to over 8,000 businesses in Dorset. I want to thank the local leadership there for delivering that. This has explicitly been targeted at those in receipt of rural rate relief, as well as small business rate relief.

My department works with a number of network operators to deliver improved broadband to rural areas. This includes Openreach and their work in West Dorset.

We are also working closely with Openreach and other operators to prepare our £5 billion “Outside In” programme, as announced in the Spring Budget.

This programme will focus on delivering gigabit-capable broadband to the hardest to reach premises in the UK, which are mainly in rural areas.

The House of Bishops revised their guidance on access to churches on the 5th May 2020.
The new guidance can be read here: https://www.churchofengland.org/more/media-centre/news/house-bishops-backs-phased-approach-revising-access-church-buildings

Government guidance states that ‘a minister of religion or worship leader may leave their home to travel to their place of worship’. In most cases, they will do so in order to pray or to stream a service of worship. If clergy wish to mark VE Day by ringing a church bell or flying a flag from their church buildings, that is within government guidance. This advice does not extend to bell-ringers, sextons or other church officers or volunteers.

The parish church would usually be central to local commemorations of events such as Victory in Europe Day, but for this anniversary they will be honouring the sacrifice of all those who were involved in World War Two in a new way. Archbishops, Bishops and clergy will be participating in local and national virtual services to mark VE Day. The Church of England has released national resources for worship and prayer which can be used by local communities: https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/worship-resources-ve-day-2020

Additional resources have been released by Westminster Abbey to help churches shape their services over the anniversary weekend which can be found here: Service of Thanksgiving to mark the 70th Anniversary of VE Day

I continue to have regular conversations with ministerial colleagues across Government on all aspects of exiting the European Union. The Government have been clear that we will not weaken our current environmental protections as we leave the European Union, and that we will maintain, and even enhance, our already high environmental standards.