Government sets aside £233 million for postmasters wrongly convicted of crimes

The Post Office had said it is unable to compensate victims of the Horizon scandal without help

The government has disclosed in its accounts that it is setting aside £233 million to cover compensation to hundreds of Post Office workers who were wrongly accused of theft and false accounting in 1999 and 2000 as a result of the Fujitsu Horizon scandal.

According to The Guardian, the government's share of funding for the restitution could be much larger than the £153 million, which the Post Office has set aside for compensating subpostmasters.

The Post Office will pay an undisclosed amount for the cost of the payouts, while the government will cover the rest, with an upper estimate of £233 million.

Previously, the Post Office had warned that costs linked to the payout scheme could be more than £300 million, and that it was unable to compensate the victims without help.

The BBC reported earlier this month that the Post Office has already made 400 compensation payments, with more than 2,000 other claims 'progressing'.

Last week, the government also said that the affected individuals would be offered an interim compensation of up to £100,000 as the Post Office works with victims towards their final settlement.

The long-running Post Office accounting scandal stemmed from the use of the Horizon accounting system from Fujitsu, which was used to record transactions across Post Office branches.

The system, which has been in use since 1999, was intended to automate many previously manual processes, but many technical issues in the system saw it destroy the lives of hundreds of subpostmasters, who were wrongly accused of fraud.

Dozens of subpostmasters were imprisoned for the crimes they did not commit, while hundreds were asked to pay back for unexplained accounting shortfalls.

The case turned into a political issue in 2009, when reports emerged that glitches with Horizon computer system were at fault were the cause of the accounting anomalies rather than the subpostmasters who had been accused of theft and fraud.

In 2019, a group litigation brought by the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, a campaign group of 555 subpostmasters, ended after the Post Office admitted that its computer system was faulty and had led to accounting errors.

The case, known as the Post Office Horizon scandal, is considered one of the biggest single miscarriages of justice in British history.

Last week, 12 former subpostmasters had their wrongful convictions overturned in the Court of Appeal, taking the total number of subpostmasters who have had convictions quashed to 59.

"The Horizon dispute and court case has been a terrible ordeal for many postmasters and their families who were unfairly penalised," a government spokesperson said.

"We want to see that all postmasters whose convictions have been overturned are fairly compensated as quickly as possible, and will work with Post Office towards this goal," the spokesperson added.

A Post Office spokesperson said: "We are committed to fairly resolving claims in the historical shortfall scheme, with assessment by an independent panel."

"We will continue to transparently provide information in our published accounts."