More than 7,000 people have received over £1bn between them as part of the government’s promise to provide financial redress to victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal.
The government announced that the £1bn milestone shows “progress”, but the figure hides a continued struggle for many.
Hundreds still await fair redress, a quarter of a century after their lives began to fall apart as a result of a faulty computer system that caused accounting shortfalls they were blamed for.
Alan Bates, the former subpostmaster who spearheaded the fight for justice, asked: “Why are so many people still waiting to have their claims resolved?”
Bates himself has not accepted an offer made to him, which is under 50% of his claim – a claim put together by experts.
He also questioned how much lawyers have been paid, from the government purse, in relation to compensation schemes.
The latest government figures include all the compensation pots: the Horizon shortfall scheme (HSS), the overturned convictions scheme, the group litigation order (GLO) scheme, and the Horizon convictions redress scheme.
Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said: “Since entering government, it has been our priority to speed up the delivery of compensation to victims of the Horizon scandal, and today’s milestone shows how much progress has been made.
“We are settling cases every day and getting compensation out more quickly for the most complex cases, but the job isn’t done until every postmaster has received fair and just redress.”
A total of 316 of 488 claimants in the GLO scheme have received £167m in full and final financial redress. This scheme was designed for members of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), established by Bates and others in 2009.
This group, which reached a membership of 555, took the Post Office to the High Court over the Horizon issues and won, proving the computer was to blame for the accounting shortfalls they were forced to take responsibility for.
Over half of the £1,039m paid out so far is to 6,337 claimants in the HSS, who have received a total of £559m in full and final settlement. The HSS was set up as part of the GLO settlement agreement.
The Horizon convictions redress scheme has paid £245m so far to 463 claimants whose convictions were quashed by legislation, with 382 of these being a full and final settlement. In May last year, after the ITV dramatisation of the scandal, Parliament approved a law that saw hundreds of subpostmasters with wrongful convictions exonerated.
Meanwhile, £68m has been paid to those whose convictions were quashed in the courts, with 71 claimants having received a full and final settlement.
A statement from the Department for Business and Trade added: “Ministers continue to review each scheme to ensure the process is as smooth as it can be, and welcome feedback and scrutiny from postmasters, campaigners and Parliament, and recognise the tireless campaigning in this area over many years.”
The wait also goes on for former users of a system that pre-dates Horizon, known as Capture. Users of Capture also suffered unexplained losses, and some were convicted of financial crimes, while others were financially ruined. The government is currently creating a scheme to compensate them after admitting the computer software was at fault.
The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to the accounting software (see timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal below).
