Glacial pace

The compensation scheme for GLO claimants was introduced more than three years ago, in March 2022, when the government agreed to fair compensation for the group after coming under pressure from victims, campaigners, MPs and peers.

This came two years after derisory compensation payments were made to the subpostmasters after they defeated the Post Office in the High Court in the 2018/19 trial, 13 years after Computer weekly exposed the problems with the Horizon system and 22 years after the subpostmasters began having problems.

The latest government figures are up to the end of last month, which was the deadline for payments to be complete set by former subpostmaster and campaigner Sir Alan Bates, who led the GLO.

In October last year, Bates told prime minister Keir Starmer that if the government is not capable of completing financial redress by March 2025, it should appoint an independent organisation to do the job, or face court action.

Sir Alan Bates, along with MPs on the business and trade select committee and lawyers representing claimants, have called on the government to introduce advanced dispute resolution meeting to overcome issues, but these have been rejected. “The department seems blind to the option of these meetings. I believe this is because they don’t want to meet victims face to face,” added Bates.

The Post Office is also facing challenges completing its first Horizon scandal compensation scheme, the Horizon Shortfall Scheme, originally known as the Historic Shortfalls Scheme. This was established after the conclusion of the GLO that proved unexplained accounting shortfalls – for which subpostmasters were blamed and forced to repay – were caused by errors in the Horizon computer system used in branches.

The scheme was designed for former subpostmasters who were not convicted of crimes but suffered losses from making payments to the Post Office to cover the shortfalls for which they were wrongly blamed.

After ITV’s dramatisation of the scandal, it was opened to new applicants and thousands applied. Claimants must prove they ran a Post Office branch during the period that Horizon caused unexplained errors, and the Post Office looks for evidence. But as Computer Weekly revealed last week, there are more than 1,000 claims where the Post Office cannot find evidence, and is pushing the government to give the claimants the benefit of the doubt.

Separately, the Law Gazette revealed that the government is advertising for a team of lawyers to work on the response to the Post Office Horizon scandal. This includes advising on compensation schemes.

Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).