Recommendation 21

The Department did not consider the Letter of Support to require separate notification to Parliament in line with the requirements of Managing Public Money on the basis of the following:35 • Issuing the Letter of Support is not outside of the Department’s normal course of business • The Department does not deal with Post Office on a commercial basis • The size of the liability (excluding redress which has separate budgetary cover) is not large relative to the Department’s overall budget • Issuing the letter is neither novel, contentious nor repercussive.