By Jess Jones
Sir Wyn Williams, chair of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, has called on the government to address compensation issues faced by sub-postmasters affected by the scandal.
In an interim report presented to parliament today, Williams recommended legislative changes and stronger support for the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board.
He brought forward the investigation of compensation issues after hearing testimony from a “significant number” of affected sub-postmasters, who “demonstrated the scale of the suffering and financial loss” caused by the Horizon IT scandal.
Williams said the Post Office and government must fulfil their previous commitments to “promptly” deliver “full and fair” compensation, arguing there is not “any valid legal reason” hindering them.
The commitments should also apply to all three of the Historical Shortfall Scheme (HSS), the Overturned Historic Convictions Scheme (OHCS), and the Group Litigation Order Scheme (GLOS).
“The object of each scheme is to put the sub-postmaster into the position in which he/she would have been had he/she not been the victim of unlawful tortious behaviour,” the inquiry’s chair wrote.
To “maximise” the role of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, Williams suggested the board should monitor individual compensation cases to ensure that payments are fair.
The report requests prompt action from the Department for Business and Trade and urges the publication of proposals to ensure fair compensation for all postmasters entitled to it.
He later added that his final view on whether the schemes successfully delivered compensation will follow in a further investigation.
Responding to the interim report, the parliamentary under secretary of state, Kevin Hollinrake, said: “Government will review this report and consider how to respond to its content in due course.
“I would like to thank Sir Wyn Williams and to everyone in his team for their ongoing work and commitment to delivering the Inquiry’s work on these issues. It is vital that we establish the facts behind this scandal and learn the lessons so that something like this can never happen again.”
Over 700 branch managers are thought to have been wrongly convicted for false accounting and theft between 2000 and 2014 after a fault in an accounting software called Horizon made it appear as though money was missing. The scandal has been described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
