Hundreds of victims of the Post Office IT scandal will be excluded from new compensation scheme and will not receive a payout
- Postmasters were sacked, bankrupted or wrongfully convicted due to IT failures
- Chirag Sidhpura, 37, is going to court after being sacked from a Surrey branch
- Nearly 2,200 victims put in claims to the Historical Shortfall Scheme last month
- Tory peer Lord Arbuthnot said the scheme is designed to save face, not pay out
Hundreds of victims of the Post Office IT scandal will be excluded from a new compensation scheme.
Over 15 years, postmasters were sacked, bankrupted or wrongfully convicted after bosses pursued them for money ‘missing’ from their accounts.
But it later emerged that shortfalls at local branches, some running to more than £100,000, were likely to be the result of flaws in the Horizon computer system.
People queue outside a branch of the Post Office near London Bridge, London, in May. The Post Office’s new compensation scheme for workers affected by the IT scandal will exclude shop workers and 555 postmasters who won a High Court battle last year. Close to 2,200 victims put in claims to the Historic Shortfall Scheme but the Post Office says postmasters are ineligible because of the £85m settlement they were awarded.
Critics said it was unfair and worrying that the new scheme excludes Post Office workers in shops and 555 postmasters who won a High Court fight last year.
At the same time, the Post Office faces a fresh court challenge from a postmaster who said the scheme ‘is rogue and will not deliver justice’.
Father-of-three Chirag Sidhpura, 37, claims bosses have never proven he was at fault for a £57,000 loss found in 2017.
It led to him being sacked from his branch in Farncombe, Surrey, and he said: ‘Overnight I lost everything.’
There are also concerns that postmasters will have to sign gagging clauses, known as non-disclosure agreements, to get their cash.
The Historical Shortfall Scheme closed to applicants last month as the Post Office tries to draw a line under the scandal dubbed the UK’s biggest miscarriage of justice.
Close to 2,200 victims put in claims, taking the total number of those who could have lost out to more than 2,755.
But the Post Office, wholly owned by the Government, says the postmasters in the High Court case are not eligible as they won a settlement of £58million.
However, most of this went to legal funders and lawyers’ fees.
Post Office workers in shops are also not eligible as their contract of employment was with companies such as McColl’s, WH Smith and the Co-op, not the central Post Office company.
Tory peer Lord Arbuthnot said: ‘This compensation scheme is designed to save the Post Office’s face rather than to give genuine compensation to those who really need and deserve it.’
Karl Turner MP, Labour’s former legal spokesman, said: ‘This risks becoming yet another betrayal.’
A previous mediation bid collapsed after losing the confidence of postmasters in 2015.
The new scheme runs parallel to postmasters’ attempts to overturn their convictions. In June, the cases of 47 found guilty of false accounting, theft or fraud were sent to the Court of Appeal while the Post Office is reviewing 960 convictions.
The Post Office said it was committed to resolving claims fairly.