MINISTERS BRACED FOR COMPENSATION CLAIMS AFTER SECOND POST OFFICE SCANDAL REPORT

The Government is bracing for a fresh set of Post Office compensation claims after receiving a report into a second IT scandal dating back more than 30 years.

i first revealed in January how sub-postmasters were claiming they lost money and were wrongly pursued by the Post Office because of Capture, an IT system which pre-dated the notorious Horizon software.

Steve Marston, 68, told i he was pressured into pleading guilty to criminal offences of theft and false accounting after auditors claimed around £79,000 was missing from his books in 1998.

He claims he “never stole a penny” but started suffering accounting problems when the Post Office rolled out its first IT system Capture in the 1990s.

Others have since come forward with similar stories including the family of June Tooby, a sub-postmistress based in the North East who battled the Post Office for decades over supposedly missing money.

Ms Tooby, who died in 2020, kept hold of boxes of documents including numerous staff bulletins which reveal how the Post Office was well aware Capture was prone to bugs and glitches, but prosecuted sub-postmasters anyway.

In May, the government asked US firm Kroll to carry out an independent investigation into Capture and agreed to abide by its findings.

Kroll has now delivered its report to the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) where it is being assessed by civil servants.

They will then make recommendations to ministers of how to proceed before making the report public via the gov.uk website.

It is understood the new Post Office minister Gareth Thomas had yet to have sight of the review, as of earlier this week.

The new Labour government has previously told i it remains “supportive” of the investigation launched by its predecessors and said that it will help inform “what next steps should be taken”.

Kevan Jones, the former Labour MP who has campaigned for years for sub-postmasters and now sits in the House of Lords, said he expects the government to publish the report within “two or three weeks”, and certainly not before the conclusion of Labour’s party conference which takes place between 22 to 25 September.

“I suspect it will be early October,” Mr Jones told i.

There are thought to be at least 40 sub-postmasters and families to have come forward to claim they suffered at the hands of the Post Office while using Capture.

They include Steve Lewis, 63, who told i how he lost his job, his home and felt shamed in his community for years after being accused of stealing money.

Documents suggest Capture was rolled out to at least 1,000 sub-postmasters in the early 90s and continued to be used until 1999.

“If we get a positive result [from the Kroll report], I think we will get a lot more [sub-postmasters] coming out of the woodwork,” Mr Jones added.

The government has previously budgeted for around £1billion to be paid out over the Horizon scandal, although victims continue to complain of the slow and painful process of acquiring compensation.

For Mr Marston, however, the most important step is attempting to clear his name.

“It’s such an important part of it, the stigma has been there for 30 years,” he told i.

“[Overturning my conviction] is vital.

“I’m confident that the Kroll report will mirror our own findings.

“It’s very much a case of wanting the process to be fast-tracked if that’s at all possible.”

A spokesperson has said previously that the Post Office is “concerned” by further claims of wrongful prosecutions that pre-date Horizon and that it is taking them “very seriously”.

2024-09-15T12:06:28Z dg43tfdfdgfd