Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they commissioned one or more independent legal opinions before deciding not to quash the convictions and prosecutions of sub-postmasters by the Department of Work and Pensions in relation to the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.

I can confirm that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) instructed Counsel to advise on its duty of post-conviction disclosure and that advice included a consideration of the nature of its prosecutions.

The advice considered cases that had been brought before the Court of Appeal in which DWP evidence was scrutinised.