Horizon redress claims ‘bogged down’ in delays and red tape, MPs told

Alan Bates and other Horizon scandal campaigners have blamed red tape and bureaucracy amid anger over delays for subpostmasters accessing compensation.

The bosses of the Post Office and Fujitsu are set to be questioned by MPs on Tuesday as public and political anger continues over the Horizon scandal.

The Commons’ Business and Trade Committee is examining what more can be done to deliver compensation for victims of what has been labelled one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history.

Alan Bates, the campaigning former subpostmaster at the centre of the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, told MPs that compensation was “bogged down” and the pace of processing claims was “madness”.

I think it was 53 days before they asked three very simple questions. It’s madness, the whole thing is madness.

He said his own compensation process was beset with delays.

“I think it was 53 days before they asked three very simple questions. It’s madness, the whole thing is madness. And there’s no transparency behind it, which is even more frustrating. We do not know what’s happening to these cases once they disappear in there.”

Wrongfully-convicted former subpostmistress Jo Hamilton said it was “almost like you’re being retried … it just goes on and on and on”.

Solicitor Neil Hudgell told MPs only three of his former subpostmaster clients who had been criminally convicted had received compensation.

He said: “Within the convicted cohort of clients that we have, of the 73, three have been fully paid out.”

He told the Business and Trade Committee: “It sounds perverse to say this, but I’m not sure that enough resources are thrown at it in terms of the right results into the right areas.

“For example, routinely with the overturned conviction cases it’s taking three to four months to get a response to routine correspondence.”

Lord Arbuthnot, a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board and a long-time campaigner on the issue, said he wanted the redress process finalised by the end of the year.

The Horizon scandal saw more than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses handed criminal convictions after Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon software made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.

The Government has been scrambling to exonerate them and pay out compensation to those affected.

But attention has now turned to the Horizon software at the heart of the scandal, with Nick Read, chief executive of the Post Office, and Paul Patterson, Europe director at Fujitsu, both due to appear later.

Kevin Hollinrake, the Post Office minister who has argued that Post Office figures found responsible for the scandal should be jailed, is to appear in the afternoon.

MPs will interrogate what Fujitsu and the Post Office knew about problems with the Horizon system and when.

Mr Read took over at the Post Office in September 2019, after the scandal emerged, and last year handed back around £54,000 in bonus payments linked to the firm’s co-operation with the public inquiry into the crisis.

Mr Patterson has been in his current role since 2019 but has worked for Fujitsu since 2010.

The role played by Fujitsu has also come under the microscope at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry returns on Tuesday.

It heard that a Fujitsu software developer described issues with Post Office sale systems as “endemic” in 2008.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week announced that the wrongly prosecuted in England and Wales could have their names cleared by the end of the year under fast-tracked legislation after growing pressure to take more serious action.

Those whose convictions are quashed are eligible for a £600,000 compensation payment, while Mr Sunak offered £75,000 to subpostmasters involved in group legal action against the Post Office.

The Prime Minister has faced calls to go further and bar Fujitsu from securing Government contracts and pursue the firm for compensation payments.

The Horizon software started to be rolled out in Post Office branches across the UK in 1999 and over the subsequent years a series of subpostmasters were prosecuted over missing funds.

In 2019 the High Court ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects”, and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.