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Ministers have finally signed off on a compensation scheme for postmasters who were wrongfully convicted of theft and fraud in one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice.
Sky News has learnt that the government will confirm as soon as Tuesday that it has agreed the terms of a programme to award financial payouts to hundreds of Post Office managers who were caught up in the Horizon IT scandal.
One source said a written ministerial statement would be made to confirm that a compensation scheme for overturned convictions had been agreed.
Although a final sum remained unclear on Monday, insiders expect it to require hundreds of millions of pounds of funding from taxpayers.
Initial test cases are expected to establish the parameters for a swathe of payouts, according to one person close to the process.
The latest move from ministers follows an announcement in July that postmasters who had had their convictions overturned would be offered interim compensation payments of up to £100,000.
Those payments were in addition to sums paid out under the Historic Shortfalls Scheme, which was established by the Post Office to compensate those who were forced to cover Horizon-related shortfalls in their accounts but were not prosecuted.
A government inquiry into the scandal was placed on a statutory footing in May.
Tuesday’s parliamentary statement, which is likely to be made by the business minister Paul Scully, will come on the same day that the business, energy and industrial strategy select committee hears evidence from prominent sub-postmasters including Jo Hamilton and Paul Harry.
That session is expected to focus on the group of sub-postmasters who brought the original litigation against the Post Office, but saw the vast majority of the settlement swallowed by up litigation funders and…
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Source : skynews
