Inquiry urges government to take action over Post Office submasters scandal

An inquiry into payments for wrongfully prosecuted mail workers has called on the government to ensure ‘full and fair’ compensation is paid out. 

Sir Wyn Williams, chair of the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, said in report lain out before parliament: ‘What has emerged is a patchwork quilt of compensation schemes. And unfortunately, it is a patchwork quilt with some holes in it.’ 

Roughly 730 former Post Office subpostmasters were wrongfully prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 on charges of theft, fraud and false accounting because of a simple computer system error. 

The system, provided by Horizon IT, meant wrong sums were provided for sales, giving the appearance that Post Office employees had been stealing money. 

Some victims even attempted to plug the gaps with their own money, even by remortgaging their homes. 

The scandal has been described by some as the ‘worst ever miscarriage of justice’ in UK history, with the Post Office maintaining for years afterwards that their systems were ‘robust’ and none of the losses owed to faults in the software. 

It took more than two decades of campaigning before victims finally won a legal battle to have their cases re-examined and convictions eventually quashed. 

At least 33 people are thought to have died before their names were cleared. 

Sir Wyn said in the recent report: ‘Many hundreds of people suffered disastrous consequences by reason of the misuse of data from Horizon, and thousands more suffered very significantly.’

The inquiry also raise concerns over a ‘lack of clarity’ as to the tax status of three schemes included within the structure of compensation for those affected.

It added the time period for making payments, which ends on August 7 2024, will not be met, given it would require more than 500 claims to be heard within just 20 months.

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