Fury as less than a THIRD of compensation is paid to victims of Post Office Horizon scandal so far_Nhy
The Post Office should no longer be in charge of the scheme to compensate victims of the Horizon postmaster scandal, MPs have said.
Labour MP Liam Byrne, the chair of the Commons Business and Trade Committee warned that too much money was being spent on lawyers.
He said the beleaguered Post Office should be ‘taken out’ of the process because victims were not being compensated quickly enough and the ‘legal bill appears to be racking up all the time’.
The committee said that the Government should face financial penalties if it does not speed up the rate of payments.
In its report on the matter, the MPs said that the redress schemes were ‘poorly designed’ and payment was ‘not fast enough’.
The report is published today on the anniversary of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which brought the scandal to the public’s attention.
Just £499million of the budgeted £1.8billion has been paid to victims so far, while 14per cent of those who had applied to the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (HSS) before the original 2020 deadline have still not settled their claims.
The committee was also scathing about the fees being paid to lawyers who are responsible for administering the compensation scheme.
The wrongful prosecution of more than 900 people was the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history (pictured: Alan Bates, former sub-postmaster and founder of Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance leaving Portcullis House in London)
Just £499million of the budgeted £1.8billion has been paid to victims so far, while 14per cent of those who had applied to the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (pictured: Postmasters accused of theft by Post Office celebrate outside the High Court In London)
Mr Byrne said: ‘The fault lies with the Post Office but ultimately Government is the shareholder in the Post Office and acts on our behalf.
‘And so the first thing that needs to happen is we need clear, regular monthly statements from the Post Office about how much they’re actually spending on lawyers, because it’s incredibly difficult for us to extract the information, and Parliament, frankly, has got the right to know, and so does the public.
‘And I think creating some of that transparency would also just create an incentive for the Post Office to actually get a grip.
‘But then what you need from ministers is really clear instructions to use best endeavours to get the cases settled quickly, because if the lawyers don’t have a budget that they’re having to work with, then it’s obviously in their interest to string the cases out and that would appear to us to be what’s going on.’
Legal firm Herbert Smith Freehills has received £82 million in fees for work so far for its work on the schemes linked to the scandal, the Post Office told the committee in December.
It said that legal fees have made up £136 million of the cost of administering the Post Office-led schemes since 2020 – 27per cent of the actual compensation paid out.
Post Office minister Gareth Thomas indicated earlier in December that the new Government was considering taking over responsibility for the compensation schemes
Mr Byrne added: ‘The legal bill appears to be racking up all the time, so the whole thing is just, frankly, out of control.
‘And when you’ve got so much being paid to lawyers and so little being paid to victims, then there’s only one conclusion you can draw, which is that the system isn’t working and it needs to change.’
The committee has also repeated its call for the Post Office to be removed from its role in the schemes, something the company has previously said it would have no objection to.
The last Government warned that designing a new scheme would ‘take months and cost millions which should instead be spent on redress for postmasters’.
However, Post Office minister Gareth Thomas indicated earlier in December that the new Government was considering taking over responsibility for the schemes from the company.
