Compensation schemes for victims of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal will be improved, with a new appeals process and funded legal advice for post office operators, the government has announced.
Responding to the first part of the findings from a two-year public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, regarded as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in UK legal history, the business secretary, Peter Kyle, said there would be anew appeals process for people who have accepted fixed-sum offers under the Horizon Shortfall Scheme, one of several compensation schemes. Funded legal advice will also be offered. The Post Office will close this scheme on 31 January, to give post office operators who have not yet applied more time to put in applications.
Volume 1 of the final inquiry report, published in July by Sir Wyn Williams, the retired judge who chaired the hearings, looked at the “disastrous human impact” on thousands of post office operators wrongly held responsible for shortfalls in their branches caused by faulty software.
The report said Post Office bosses either knew, or should have known, the Horizon software supplied by Fujitsu was faulty but “maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate” when prosecuting branch owner-operators.
The report found that more than 13 people may have killed themselves as a result of the scandal and it drove at least 59 more to contemplate suicide.
About 1,000 post office operators were prosecuted and convicted by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015, the report said. A further 50 to 60 people, possibly more, were prosecuted but not convicted. The total number wrongly held responsible for losses was in the thousands, with many making up the shortfall out of their own pockets without ever being charged.
The government said it had accepted all but one of the recommendations of the initial report.
Kyle said: “We must never lose sight of the wronged post office operators affected by the Horizon scandal, which the inquiry has highlighted so well.
“There is clearly more to do to bring justice to those affected. The recommendations we are accepting today will be a crucial step towards this.”
