Fujitsu will have to pay compensation to the hundreds of Post Office sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted of theft if a public inquiry into the Horizon scandal finds the Japanese tech giant culpable, a UK government minister has said.
Today former Post Office boss Paula Vennells said she is returning her CBE in response to protests about Horizon scandal and yesterday the government said a "collective exoneration" was being examined for those who had been wrongly convicted of fraud as the current process has proved painfully slow to allow them to secure compensation.
The Post Office is managing two compensation routes: the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (HSS) and the Overturned Convictions Scheme, with the government responsible for a third scheme, with total offers of compensation totalling more than £138 million said to have been made to around 2,700 postmasters so far.
Compensation is currently being funded by the taxpayer, as the Post Office is owned by the state, while Royal Mail separated in 2012 and is now part of International Distributions Services PLC (LSE:IDS).
Work and pensions minister Mel Stride suggested Fujitsu should take the burden.
“To the extent that culpability rests upon the shoulders of others than government, then I think you can expect ministers to come to the appropriate conclusions. And perhaps it won’t be just the taxpayer that is on the hook for those costs,” he told LBC Radio.
A public inquiry is ongoing into the Horizon scandal and who was culpable, with Fujitsu's Horizon computer system introduced in 2000 and with hundreds of sub-postmasters blamed by the Post Office for financial discrepancies that quickly appeared in the system, which turned out to be caused by the software.
After more than 700 prosecutions for theft, some involving prison sentences, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) organisation was established in 2009 but it was not until 2012 that an independent investigation was launched, though the final report was terminated by the Post Office in 2015, leading to the first civil litigation proceedings in 2015, which reached court in 2017 and saw an initial victory in 2018, which was appealed by the Post Office.
In 2019, the High Court ruled in the case brought by former sub-postmaster Alan Bates that the Horizon system was faulty, finding "bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system caused discrepancies in postmasters' branch accounts".
A public inquiry was launched in 2020 but the ITV drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office has brought the issue into wider public consciousness and led to renewed attention.