Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, how many and what proportion of her Department’s full time equivalent staff have been allocated to working on its response to failures of the Horizon Post Office IT system in each month of the last two years.

The table below shows the number and proportion of the Department's Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff over the last 2 years working solely on its response to the Post Office Horizon Scandal. The figures do not include a further 15 vacant roles for which recruitment is under way and expert cases assessment teams which are contracted by DBT and are not civil servants. Also, further recruitment will follow as the Department implements plans to create an appeals mechanism for the Horizon Shortfall Scheme, as announced in September.