Hundreds of people were prosecuted by the Post Office for theft, fraud and false accounting after wrongly being blamed for financial issues at their branches that were actually caused by the organisation’s Horizon IT system.

A total of 72 have had their convictions quashed so far.

Business Minister Lord Callanan told the House of Lords, 66 of that number have applied for interim payments of which 62 have received offers and 57 of those have been paid.

Lord Callanan said 57 subpostmasters have now received interim compensation payments.

Baroness Whitaker said that the scandal had involved 732 prosecutions over a 20-year period and asked what the total cost to the taxpayer of compensation is likely to be.

Lord Callanan said payments will be made as quickly as possible but did not give an estimate of what the final cost may be.

He subsequently said it was “in the hands of the courts” when the other wrongful convictions will be formally overturned.

“Of course as soon as the others have had their convictions overturned then we will proceed with offering compensation to them as well,” he said.

When asked by Lord Arbuthnot whether the compensation scheme will take account of reputational loss and “pain and suffering” as well as financial loss, Lord Callanan replied: “I can confirm that when negotiating compensation for postmasters with overturned convictions, the Post Office will consider claims for financial loss and consequential losses, but also non-financial losses such as reputational damage and mental distress.

“In terms of consistency of course, each case will necessarily be decided on the particular circumstances of the individual postmaster, but to ensure a broad consistency the Post Office and its legal advisers will seek to agree a consistent approach in assessing the different heads of loss with legal representatives.”

Baroness Hoey asked whether anyone within the Post Office had yet taken responsibility or been reprimanded over the scandal.

Lord Callanan said: “Senior executives at the Post Office who were responsible are not there any more. But the appropriate mechanism to find out exactly who was to blame, who is responsible, is the independent public inquiry, which has full statutory powers.”

Lord McNicol asked if any action had been or would be taken action against Government representatives who sat on the Post Office board during the scandal.

Lord Callanan repeated that it is important to await the outcome of the inquiry.

He added: “It is a hugely complicated issue. Many of the people that were responsible are no longer either in Government or in the Department or in the Post Office. But it will be important to find out exactly who was responsible over a long period of time and then we can pin the appropriate blame.”

Post Office CEO to face MPs

The debate in the House of Lords yesterday comes ahead of current Post Office chief executive Nick Read facing questions from MPs about the scandal and compensation for sub-postmasters today.

He will take questions from the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee during an evidence sessions which will also be addressed by Small Business Minister Paul Scully.

MPs are set to ask Mr Read and Mr Scully how effective the Post Office and the Government have been in attempting to address the financial loss suffered by sub-postmasters affected by the scandal as their inquiry into the matter continues.

The Yorkshire victims of huge miscarriage of justice that ruined lives

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Post Office scandal: Compensation paid to 57 victims - but hundreds more cases expected