Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of failures by the Horizon software on sub-postmasters who (a) found unexplained accounting losses that were not investigated by Post Office Limited (b) made up those losses from their own funds.

The Government is committed to providing full compensation to all those affected by the Horizon scandal.

Postmasters who paid shortfalls which were recorded in Horizon to the Post Office are paid those amounts back in their compensation claims, as well as any other financial and personal damage which they have suffered as a consequence of the IT system.

The full 2,417 postmasters who claimed through the original Horizon Shortfall Scheme have now all had offers of compensation. Offers have totalled over £107m and over £93 million has been paid out in this scheme, with Post Office now dealing with late applications and with those cases where the initial offer was not accepted.