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Post Office scandal redress echoes Windrush compensation problems

Campaigning former subpostmaster Sir Alan Bates met with Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) over financial redress scheme

Karl Flinders
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Published: 26 Nov 2024 9:15

There are “strong grounds” to raise a complaint against the government to the Parliamentary ombudsman, in regard to its handling of the scheme designed to compensate subpostmasters who defeated the Post Office in the High Court, a campaigning former subpostmaster has said.

Sir Alan Bates, who founded the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) in 2009, told members in a circular that he recently met with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) regarding the Windrush compensation scheme to discuss “a number of similarities between its findings and many of the problems being experienced by the JFSA members seeking financial redress”.

Bates also wrote that the end of the JFSA group could be near, after about 15 years of campaigning to expose the Post Office Horizon scandal, if it achieves its goal.

The JFSA members are part of the group litigation order (GLO) redress scheme for the hundreds of subpostmasters who sued the Post Office in the High Court in 2018/19.

They proved that the Horizon computer system used in branches caused unexplained accounting shortfalls, which they were originally blamed and punished for.

Bates said in a recent meeting of 150 members of the GLO group in Kineton, “the greater majority of those at the meeting were at different stages [in their redress claims], but were still awaiting or yet to agree their final settlements”.

He wrote in his circular to JFSA members: “Following a recent meeting with the PHSO, we may well have strong grounds to bring a new complaint against the department for business and trade.”

High Court powers

Taking complaints to the Parliamentary ombudsman is an option to get to the bottom of the government’s role in the scandal. The ombudsman has the right to summon people and papers, with powers analogous to those of a High Court judge.

Bates told JFSA members that while there may have been a change of political party in power, “the civil service never changes, and we all know who is really in charge of government”. 

In 2020, the JFSA made a complaint against the government’s handling of the Post Office during a period through the PHSO. In the complaint, subpostmasters accused the government of failing in its duty to oversee and regulate the Post Office, allowing it to wrongly prosecute subpostmasters for unexplained losses, rather than investigating possible computer errors. The complaint is still in process, but on hold until the Post Office scandal statutory public inquiry completes its work.

Return to court possible for JFSA

Bates also said during the Kineton meeting it was agreed the JFSA would wait until the end of the year to assess the position with regards to financial redress, and could take further legal action. He said if “nothing has greatly improved and no deadline or no date for the end of the scheme” has been set, a further JFSA meeting will be called for January.

“At which time, a specialist law firm will be invited to address the group on how we can swiftly move this whole matter back to the courts to resolve,” he wrote. “This might also involve the other schemes as well as our own, and it would mean we would have to fundraise once again, but this time nationally, and I have no doubt we could raise the money required with the support of the media.”

Bates also said it’s “hopefully” getting close to the time to pack up the JFSA, which was set up in 2009, following Computer Weekly’s investigation into the Post Office, to seek justice and redress for victims of the scandal.

He said there could be a final meeting in August 2025, “which, again, hopefully will be the time for the JFSA to close, having eventually achieved what it was set up to do”. 

Timeline: Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009

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