{"id":13102,"date":"2024-10-02T16:29:44","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T16:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/post-office-scandal-payouts-wont-be-done-by-march-says-minister\/"},"modified":"2024-10-02T16:29:44","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T16:29:44","slug":"post-office-scandal-payouts-wont-be-done-by-march-says-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/post-office-scandal-payouts-wont-be-done-by-march-says-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Post Office scandal payouts won’t be done by March, says minister"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Post Office Horizon scandal victim Jo Hamilton has hit out at delays to compensation for sub-postmasters, saying the government should “just pay”.<\/p>\n

It comes after Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said not all payments would be made by March next year.<\/p>\n

Former sub-postmaster Sir Alan Bates had called for a March 2025 deadline to compensate all involved in the initial legal action against the Post Office.<\/p>\n

Thomas agreed with Sir Alan that faster progress was needed, but said it would be “difficult” to achieve that deadline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I wish I could commit to Sir Alan\u2019s time frame,” he told BBC Breakfast. “I think we will have made substantial progress by next summer.”<\/p>\n

But Ms Hamilton hit back, saying Thomas “could pay by the end of March”, adding that the whole process is “just nonsense”.<\/p>\n

Sub-postmasters have already submitted claims on previous occasions – some as early as 2013 – and are having to re-submit them.<\/p>\n

“They could apply a broad brush approach, and if claims are reasonable, just pay them,” she said, adding: “It\u2019s almost like we\u2019re being treated like criminals all over again.”<\/p>\n

Speaking for other scandal victims – Ms Hamilton settled for an undisclosed sum<\/a> – she said some claims have not been submitted because sub-postmasters have to go to the Post Office, “who is a bit like the fox in the hen house”, for evidence.<\/p>\n

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted after the faulty Horizon IT accounting system made it look like money was missing from branch accounts.<\/p>\n

It has been described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.<\/p>\n

Some sub-postmasters ended up going to prison, while many more were financially ruined and lost their livelihoods. Some died while waiting for justice.<\/p>\n

Sir Alan leads the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, campaigning for financial redress for the 555 victims who took part in the landmark group legal action against the Post Office that culminated in 2019.<\/p>\n

Their compensation was, however, swallowed up by the huge legal costs involved in bringing their case.<\/p>\n

The government went on to set up a specific compensation fund to give these sub-postmasters the redress like others affected, but Sir Alan has said the deadline is needed as three years have passed since.<\/p>\n

Last month, Sir Alan questioned whether the government was dragging the “issue out to exhaust victims until their deaths” and if the scheme has become a “gravy train” for its lawyers.<\/p>\n

A total of \u00a3265m has been spent on lawyers relating to the Post Office scandal from 2014 to 2024.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Post Office minister Thomas told the BBC: “I agree with him, [Sir Alan] we need to make faster progress. <\/p>\n

“We are trying to unblock the blockages and speed up the process of compensation,” he added.<\/p>\n

“There are four compensation schemes in place, two of which the government runs, and two of which the post office runs. I have looked at whether we should just start afresh but that would lead to further delays in getting money out of the door.”<\/p>\n

“My message…to him [Sir Alan] is keep holding our feet to the fire.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Post Office Horizon scandal victim Jo Hamilton has hit out at delays to compensation for sub-postmasters, saying the government should “just pay”. It comes after Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said not all payments would be made by March next year. Former sub-postmaster Sir Alan Bates had called for a March 2025 deadline to compensate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1321,1830,833,4358,2562,148,2856],"class_list":["post-13102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-march","tag-minister","tag-office","tag-payouts","tag-post","tag-scandal","tag-wont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13104,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13102\/revisions\/13104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}