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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of the Government providing compensation in addition to that recently awarded by the Post Office to sub-postmasters found to have been innocent of accusations of theft as a result of the Post Office's Horizon IT system fault.

Postmasters are the backbone of the Post Office, and their branches are vital to communities across the country. That is why Government takes Post Office Ltd’s relationship with its postmasters very seriously.

The settlement agreed with the Post Office included all legal and other costs. In those circumstances the Government cannot accept any further request for payment.

The Government wants to make sure lessons are learned from this case, so that such issues do not happen again, and it is of the upmost importance that the Post Office proceeds to undertake its dealings with postmasters openly and transparently. We will announce further details on this in due course.