Victims’ commissioner warns government that Horizon compensation scheme deepens original injustice
Lawyers acting for victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal have criticised the organisation’s approach to compensation, as the victims’ commissioner warned that the redress process has become “worse than the original injustice”.
Simon Goldberg, a partner at Simons Muirhead Burton, said the Post Office’s legal representatives continued to take an “intractable and stubborn” stance, despite repeated public commitments by both the government and the Post Office to ensure swift and fair compensation.
Goldberg, whose firm represents 15 individuals in some of the most complex Horizon-related claims, said:
“The spin from government is all about speeding up redress and giving the sub-postmasters the benefit of the doubt. At the coal face and on the ground, the exact opposite is happening: adversarial and technical arguments intended deliberately to grind the claimants down.”
He added that lawyers representing the Post Office appeared “oblivious” to the calls from the public and from Sir Wyn Williams, the Horizon Inquiry chair, to adopt a less adversarial approach.
The criticism follows confirmation that Baroness Helen Newlove, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, had written to the government earlier this month to raise serious concerns about the redress process.
According to the contents of the letter, which have been verified though not published in full, Newlove told ministers that the treatment of victims was “worse than the original injustice”.
She wrote:
“Far from offering catharsis, the compensation process was seen to be as bad as or even worse an experience than the initial investigation, prosecution and injustice itself.”
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Newlove said she was “shocked” by the number of victims reporting that the compensation process had been slow, complex, and distressing. She compared the experience to “fighting an insurance company rather than engaging with an arm of the state”.
The letter was sent shortly before the government published its formal response to the first part of the Horizon Inquiry report. In that response, ministers instructed Post Office decision-makers to take a “generous approach” when assessing claims, particularly where documents or evidence of loss were missing after many years.
The joint guidance, agreed between the government and the Post Office, states:
“If fairness demands it in a particular case, it is permissible to depart from the established legal principles which would normally govern the assessment of damages in civil litigation.”
The guidance followed criticism from inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams, who in his report earlier this year said that victims had faced “formidable difficulties” and that the Post Office and its advisers had adopted an “unnecessarily adversarial attitude” in making initial compensation offers.
The inquiry, chaired by Sir Wyn, is examining the wrongful prosecutions of hundreds of sub-postmasters based on faulty Horizon accounting software developed by Fujitsu. Many were convicted of false accounting or theft before their convictions were later quashed.
Baroness Newlove’s comments add to growing concern that, despite ministerial assurances, delays and disputes remain widespread in the administration of compensation schemes for those affected.
In response to Newlove’s letter, Blair McDougall, the Post Office Minister, said that the government had since taken steps to improve the redress process.
“I look forward to working with postmasters in making further improvements to the redress schemes so that they get the compensation they deserve,” he said.
A Post Office spokesperson said the organisation would welcome direct engagement with the victims’ commissioner.
“We would welcome contact with the victims’ commissioner directly to understand more about what she has been told and to work together so that current and former postmasters get their claims in as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.
The commissioner’s intervention underscores continued frustration among campaigners over the pace and handling of compensation, with calls for greater transparency and independent oversight of how payments are processed and assessed.