The chairman of the inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal has called for legislative change to resolve issues with what he described as “a patchwork quilt of compensation schemes… with some holes in it”.
Just short of £100 million has been paid out so far by the Post Office and the Government to subpostmasters affected by the scandal.
Inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams said his “strongly-held view” is that the scheme administrators will be “unable to deliver compensation payments to all applicants” by the deadline previously set – August 7 2024.
Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted based on information from the accounting system, which saw workers wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting.
However, in December 2019 a High Court judge ruled that the system contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were in fact caused by it.
Since then many subpostmasters have had criminal convictions overturned.
On Monday, Sir Wyn issued eight recommendations in an attempt to ensure “full and fair” compensation is paid to those affected by the scandal.
He said: “The evidence upon me hasn’t changed. It hasn’t lessened to a degree.
“Many hundreds of people suffered disastrous consequences by reason of the misuse of data from Horizon, and thousands more suffered very significantly.”
As of April 6 2023, the Post Office had paid out more than £80 million across the Historical Shortfall Scheme and the Overturned Historic Convictions Scheme.
The Government paid out an additional £19 million in interim compensation under the Group Litigation Scheme by the same date.
