Sub-postmasters won’t get payouts by March, says minister

“I wish I could commit to Sir Alan’s time frame,” he told BBC Breakfast, adding: “I think we will have made substantial progress by next summer.”

Sir Alan has been heavily critical of the length of time it is taking for victims of what has been described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history to receive financial redress.

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.

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

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.

Their compensation was, however, swallowed up by the huge legal costs involved in bringing their case.

The government went on to set up a specific compensation fund involved in the Group Litigation Order (GLO) to give these sub-postmasters the redress like others affected, but progress has been slow.

Last month, Sir Alan said the Department for Business appeared to be trying to get away with paying out as little as possible to victims while maximising the income for the legal firms involved.

He 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.

A total of £265m has been spent on lawyers relating to the Post Office scandal from 2014 to 2024.

Sir Alan said said the March deadline was needed for the GLO redress as it was three years since that particular compensation scheme was announced.