Post Office scandal: Government fails to commit to Sir Alan Bates' compensation deadline for sub-postmasters

The Business Secretary told the Horizon IT inquiry yesterday that he takes “ultimate responsibility” at governmental level for full, fair and prompt redress for subpostmasters.

He said there had been a “significant increase in the pace at which compensation has been paid” since the general election, and told the probe he did not believe it had been “at the cost of fair or accurate compensation being made.”

More than 900 sub-postmasters were given criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software made it appear as though money was missing from their shops.

Many more were left destitute, losing their homes and livelihoods, as the Post Office relentlessly pursued them, continually claiming there were no issues with its computer system.

The scandal has been described as the UK’s “biggest miscarriage of justice”, and burst into the public consciousness with the ITV drama called Mr Bates vs the Post Office starring Toby Jones.

Lead campaigner and former subpostmaster Sir Alan Bates previously told MPs he wanted the Department for Business and Trade to set a deadline of March next year for redress payments for claimants who took the Post Office to the High Court between 2017 and 2019 – also known as the GLO scheme.

Sir Alan claimed the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, had failed to respond to two letters he had sent about a March 2025 deadline for GLO claimants.

Asked if he could commit to the deadline set by Sir Alan, Mr Reynolds said: “I’ve thought about this a great deal and obviously anything put forward by Sir Alan in particular is something I’ll consider to a significant degree.

“The position I’m in is I’m trying to make sure people get redress for a horrendous scandal … at a minimum, I don’t want to do anything that makes that injustice even worse.

“And the worry about a deadline – can you imagine a situation where, for whatever reason, a claim has not come in?

“I think it will be unconscionable to say that that is not going to be considered.”

Mr Reynolds added: “If my frustration at those claims not arriving in the department meant that I felt that was the only way to speed those up, and I felt that wasn’t going to prejudice any individual claim … it will be something that I will consider.”

The Business Secretary said there had been a “significant increase in the pace at which compensation has been paid” since the general election, and told the probe he did not believe it had been “at the cost of fair or accurate compensation being made.”

He also commented on the culture within the Post Office in his witness statement to the inquiry, saying: “It is clear that the Post Office’s corporate culture is at the root of this scandal, and I want to make sure the system works for subpostmasters.

“I am supportive of a reform agenda which seeks to turn this ambition into reality.”

While the new Conservative leader and former business secretary Kemi Badenoch told the inquiry that the government allowed “bureaucracy to get in the way of redress” for wronged subpostmasters.

Ms Badenoch said she, alongside ex-postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake, “wanted to get the money out there” but were “always given a reason why we couldn’t” by government officials.

In her witness statement to the inquiry yesterday, she said the Post Office would have “disappeared in its current form long ago” if it was a private organisation, adding that it is a “20th century organisation that is struggling to evolve in a 21st century world”.

Commenting on why the redress process was slow, Ms Badenoch said in her statement: “We had briefings on the issue with officials, and it was quite clear to me that we were allowing bureaucracy to get in the way of redress too much of the time.

“Kevin (Hollinrake) and I wanted to get the money out there, and we were always given a reason why we couldn’t.”

Explaining why she felt bureaucracy was getting in the way of redress, Mrs Badenoch told the probe: “I feel that there is often too much bureaucracy in the way of getting things done, because people are worried about process.

“They are worried about: if things go wrong, they’ll be on the hook for that.

“So they carry out lots of checks and balances well beyond what I think is required in order to deliver the right outcome.”