The Post Office needs to be removed from running redress schemes for victims of the Horizon scandal to prevent justice from being further delayed, an influential parliamentary committee has said.
In a report published on Wednesday, one year to the day since the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office brought the scandal to widespread public attention, the Commons business and trade committee said compensation for victims was still not being paid quickly enough and that the government should face financial penalties if the process did not speed up.
It added that state-owned Post Office Ltd had spent £136m on legal fees relating to the four Horizon redress schemes, including £82m to just one firm, Herbert Smith Freehills, for legal advice on the two compensation schemes administered by the Post Office. The overall legal bill was equivalent to 27% of redress paid to date, the report said.
The Labour MP Liam Byrne, who chairs the committee, said: “Years on from the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, thousands of Post Office Horizon victims still don’t have the redress to which they’re entitled for the shatter and ruin of their lives.
“Ours is a nation that believes in fair play and the rule of law. Yet victims told us that seeking the redress to which they’re entitled is akin to a second trial. Payments are so slow that people are dying before they get justice. But the lawyers are walking away with millions. This is quite simply, wrong, wrong, wrong.”
There are four Horizon compensation schemes, including two run by the Post Office: the overturned convictions scheme, for victims who had convictions overturned by the courts; and the Horizon shortfall scheme (HSS), for post office operators who were not claimants in the high-profile group litigation fronted by the former operator Alan Bates.
Two further schemes – one for the group litigation claimants and the second for those with convictions overturned by parliament rather than the courts – are being run by the Department for Business and Trade.
Bates has said he will consider taking legal action if all claims are not resolved by March this year.
Byrne’s committee added that although there had been improvements, redress schemes were still “poorly designed”, payments “not fast enough” and the government should “remove the Post Office from administering any of the redress schemes”.
It added that £499m of the budgeted £1.8bn had been paid out so far, while 14% of those who had applied to the Post Office-run HSS before the original 2020 deadline had still not settled their claims.
A Post Office spokesperson said: “Working alongside government, we are focused on paying redress as swiftly as possible.
“Our spend with external law firms is kept under constant review with a significant portion having been spent on establishing the Horizon shortfall scheme and overturned convictions redress process, thus enabling us to pay redress to victims of the scandal.”
The Post Office would support the government taking over administration of the two Post Office-run schemes, the spokesperson added.
Herbert Smith Freehills said it was confident its legal fees were at the expected level for such work.
