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Richard Sockett said the "losses started to increase" after he received a Horizon pin pad to use at the branch he ran in Barton, Cambridgeshire.

After "a very happy time", everything changed in 2012 with arrival of the Horizon pin pad.

Ms Kaur ran Lazy Hill Post Office in Aldridge in Walsall, and discovered that she had been using a faulty pin pad on the system which took money out of people's accounts twice - but she was being accused of stealing the second amount.

She recalled that it was over seven months into the pandemic before a hand sanitizing station was placed near a link bridge between the Cabinet Office and No 10 with a Pin pad regularly used by officials.

Earlier in the pandemic, Hudson said, management removed the PIN pad that customers had used to pay.