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A group of MPs believes that compensation is not being paid quickly enough to victims of the Post Office scandal and is calling on the government to expose itself to financial sanctions if the process does not speed up.
The Business and Commerce Select Committee said binding deadlines were necessary, and money resulting from missed deadlines would go to claimants if they were not met.
The committee also called for the Post Office to be removed from its role in compensation schemes and called for more transparency on how much it pays lawyers.
The government said it was “working around the clock” to resolve claims “at a faster pace than ever before”.
Committee chairman, MP Liam Byrne, said: “The fault lies with the Post Office, but ultimately the Government is the shareholder of the Post Office and acts on our behalf.”
The government is already studying the role of the Post Office in compensation systems.
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of subpostmasters were prosecuted and convicted based on information from a faulty accounting system, Horizon, that made it appear money was missing.
Some sub-postmasters were unjustly imprisoned, many were financially ruined and some have since died.
One of the accused, Seema Misra, was eight weeks pregnant when she was wrongly imprisoned.
Speaking to the BBC after being named an OBE on the King’s New Year’s list for her role in campaigning for justice, she said it was recognition of “the scale of injustice and scandal “.
Seema Misra was wrongly sentenced to 15 months in prison due to breakdowns in the Horizon computer system used by the Post Office.
The scandal “is still not resolved”, she declared, recalling the “really very difficult period” she went through since the start of her legal battle with the Post Office in 2008, three years after buying the company. Western Post. Byfleet in Surrey.
She served four and a half months in Bronzefield Prison and gave birth to her second son with an electronic tag.
“Poorly designed”
A public inquiry into the scandal heard final findings in December, during which it took testimony from lawyers representing the Post Office, the creators of Horizon Fujitsu and the Commerce Ministry, as well as victims and former Post Office bosses.
The select committee report, published a year after an ITV drama about the scandal catapulted the issue to public attention, said redress schemes were still “poorly designed” and payments were not were always “not fast enough”.
He said the application process was akin to a second trial for victims, adding that the lawyers who administered the programs were making millions while the vast majority of the money earmarked for reparations had not yet been paid.
The committee’s recommendations include providing advance legal advice to victims and strict deadlines for administrators to approve claims – with financial penalties if they take too long.
Only around £499 million of the budgeted £1.8 billion has been paid out so far to more than 3,000 claimants. The commission said this meant 72% of the budget remained unpaid.
Many of those with the most complex claims have not yet been fully resolved.
“It’s just wrong, wrong, wrong,” Byrne said.
MP Liam Byrne said the postal pay system needed a ‘reboot’
“Thousands of victims have still not obtained the compensation to which they are entitled.
“This is the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history,” he said, adding that there were “exorbitant legal costs which, frankly, are skyrocketing.”
Speaking to the BBC, he said that “for every £4 the taxpayer pays in compensation, £1 goes to lawyers”.
Byrne added that strict deadlines and fines would help the government and the Post Office “take back control”.
A Post Office spokesperson said the firm was “endeavouring to pay for repairs as quickly as possible”, adding that its spending on external law firms was “under constant review”.
“Our president said at the October public inquiry that the redress programs we administer should be transferred to government, and we will support the Department of Business and Commerce in any decisions it may make regarding this matter “added the spokesperson.
There are four victim compensation programs, two of which are overseen by the Postal Service.
Government Postmaster General Gareth Thomas said in December that the Labor government was considering taking back responsibility for the company’s projects.
The Post Office told the select committee in December that legal costs accounted for £136 million of the cost of administering programs run by the Post Office since 2020, or around 27% of compensation paid.
Some of the committee’s recommendations for improvement had already been rejected by the former Conservative government.
Strict deadlines attached to financial sanctions were dismissed as having “no positive effect” on expediting claims and “could unfairly penalize lawyers for matters beyond their control”, the former government said in May.
Meanwhile, Hudgell Solicitors, which represents hundreds of former subpostmasters, welcomed the committee’s recommendations, saying they would simplify and speed up compensation systems by removing “unnecessary obstacles to justice” that ‘they have seen it repeated in hundreds of cases.
