Sir Keir Starmer has said that only a “handful” of cases linked to the Horizon scandal may have been handled by the Crown Prosecution Service during his time in charge of the organisation.

The Labour leader, who led the CPS between 2008 and 2013, has said that he was not aware of Horizon cases brought against subpostmasters by the agency.

The overwhelming majority of cases against victims of the scandal were brought by the Post Office using its own private prosecutions powers.

That has prompted calls for the Post Office to be stripped of those powers in the future, as the fall-out from the scandal continues.

Speaking to broadcasters during a visit to Bury, Greater Manchester, Sir Keir said: “I think it’s very important to be clear that these were, or the vast majority of these were, Post Office prosecutions brought by the Post Office in relation to their cases.

“A small number, at the moment it looks like there may have been three or so, a handful of cases, in the five years that I was director of public prosecutions that were handled by the Crown Prosecution Service.”

He said it was “not even known what the detail of those cases are and it needs to be put in its context – in the five years I was director of public prosecutions I had 7,000 staff and we handled four million cases. So this was a handful, within that”.

He added: “More details will emerge no doubt … it’s not clear whether they’re in the cohort of cases of concern or not.”