13 folks took their very own lives and dozens extra contemplated suicide as lives had been wrecked on a large scale by the Submit Workplace Horizon scandal, a damning Inquiry report has discovered.
Sir Wyn Williams, a retired choose, delivered a devastating evaluation on Tuesday of the injury finished by the scandal, which is likely one of the largest miscarriages of justice in British historical past.
The Submit Workplace accused its personal subpostmasters of stealing cash, based mostly on accounting information from the Horizon IT system which it knew was defective.
In a 162-page report, Sir Wyn laid out the horrific penalties for victims and their households, who had been wrongly accused of theft, fraud, and false accounting, made into pariahs in their very own communities, confronted monetary damage and homelessness, and in 236 circumstances served jail sentences.
The Inquiry chair revealed for the primary time that 13 folks – six former subpostmasters and 7 others – took their very own lives, whereas at the least 59 folks contemplated suicide.
He stated round 1,000 folks confronted legal prosecution based mostly on proof from the flawed Horizon system, whereas greater than 10,000 individuals are eligible for compensation on account of the scandal.
Sir Wyn stated Submit Workplace had taken an “unnecessarily adversarial angle” to compensating victims, in a saga which has dragged on for years even within the face of widespread public anger.
- ‘Full and truthful’ compensation for all victims, together with members of the family of these wrongly accused
- Free authorized recommendation for these caught up within the scandal
- A brand new impartial physique to cope with compensation for folks wronged by public our bodies
- Pressing motion on his report by October
“Many tons of of individuals have been convicted, wrongly, of legal offences, and lots of 1000’s of individuals have been held accountable, wrongly, for losses which had been illusory, versus actual”, he set out.
“All of those individuals are correctly to be considered victims of wholly unacceptable behaviour perpetrated by various people employed by and/or related to the Submit Workplace and Fujitsu sometimes and by the Submit Workplace and Fujitsu as establishments.”
Many subpostmasters are nonetheless but to obtain full redress (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)
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Sir Wyn delivered his findings on the impression of the scandal and the compensation scheme in a primary report from the Inquiry, and made it clear he expects pressing motion – this 12 months – reasonably ready for the second half of his report back to be delivered in 2026.
He additionally delivered a style of the final word verdict he’ll attain on the Submit Workplace and its pursuit of subpostmasters between 1999 and 2015.
“Though lots of the people who gave proof earlier than me had been very reluctant to just accept it, I’m happy from the proof that I’ve heard that various senior, and never so senior, workers of Submit Workplace knew or, on the very least, ought to have recognized that Legacy Horizon was able to error”, he stated.
“But, for all sensible functions, all through the lifetime of Legacy Horizon, the Submit Workplace maintained the fiction that its information was at all times correct.”
Senior Submit Workplace figures, together with former boss Paula Vennells, gave proof to the Inquiry. Sir Wyn’s second report is anticipated to establish these he believes are responsible for the scandal.
https://www.youtube.com/reside/78bM-n7xiGk
Responding to the report, the Submit Workplace issued an apology for “a shameful interval in our historical past”.
One of many victims, Ravinder Naga, who pleaded responsible to the theft of £35,000 after his mom was wrongly accused, stated the Inquiry report will grow to be “simply one other ebook” until it delivers actual change.
He stated Submit Workplace and Fujitsu should be “held accountable”.
Chris Head, one other falsely accused subpostmaster, stated of the “damning” report’s publication: “It’s a monumental day.”
“It’s fairly clear that there was a deliberate try to cowl this complete scandal up and now, clearly, the additional traumatic expertise of individuals making an attempt to obtain redress”, he stated.
Victims publicly shamed, bankrupted, and jailed
The Submit Workplace Inquiry was launched in 2020, after years of campaigning from victims led by Sir Alan Bates and devoted work by journalists. It lastly struck a chord with the general public after ITV’s 2024 dramatisation ‘Mr Bates vs The Submit Workplace’.
The drama depicted the cruel justice meted out to victims, and confirmed the 2019 landmark Excessive Court docket judgment that the Horizon system had “bugs, errors and defects”, regardless of years of Submit Workplace insistence that its information was unquestionable.
Sir Alan Bates is asking for an impartial physique to be created to manage compensation schemes (Yui Mok/PA)
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Sir Wyn revealed in his report the experiences of 17 victims, as an example what number of had misplaced their houses, been publicly shamed, confronted prosecution and imprisonment, and in some case, had misplaced their lives.
Martin Griffiths was accused of mysterious shortfalls on the Horizon system in 2009, and he was suspended from his position as a subpostmaster in Ellesmere Port in 2011.
Sir Wyn stated Mr Griffiths, accused over greater than £100,000 of supposedly lacking cash, then fell sufferer to a theft at his department during which he was injured, and he was blamed by Submit Workplace for the incident.
In 2013, when going through termination from his position, Mr Griffiths walked in entrance of a bus and took his personal life.
“Mr Griffiths’ dying was and stays devastating for his spouse, youngsters, and different shut household”, stated the chair.
COLLECT
Tracy Felstead was simply 19-years-old when she was accused, as a Submit Workplace clerk in Camberwell Inexperienced, south London, of stealing £11,503.28.
Sir Wyn set out how she “tried to take her personal life on two separate events” after being accused, and ended up in a safe psychiatric unit at hospital.
“Ms Felstead contested the fees. Following a trial on the Crown Court docket at Kingston-upon-Thames, she was convicted of theft.
“Previous to sentence, Ms Felstead’s household raised the sum of £11,500 so as that she would possibly repay to the Submit Workplace a sum equal to that which she had allegedly stolen.
“The hope was that by paying to the Submit Workplace that sum she would keep away from a direct custodial sentence. That was to not be.
“On 20 June 2022, Ms Felstead was sentenced to a interval of six months at a younger offender establishment.”
The Inquiry heard how {the teenager} was held in Holloway Jail with grownup offenders as an alternative of at a younger offenders establishment.
“Ms Felstead was deployed to serve meals to prisoners”, stated the chair. “On an event which, little question, can be eternally seared on her thoughts, she opened a cell door to search out {that a} prisoner had hanged herself and was useless.
“Ms Felstead maintains – and I’ve no problem accepting – that her experiences at Holloway Jail will reside along with her eternally.”
She instructed the Inquiry she misplaced job alternatives on account of her conviction, and when in employment she would “habitually make sure that there was one other particular person current if she was required to ‘money up’ on a until.”
Ms Felstead was denied entry to a compensation scheme in 2013 due to her conviction, and her conviction was in the end
quashed on April 23, 2021, round 20 years after she had been jailed.
Submit Workplace courtroom case
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Kamran Ashraf was jailed for 9 months in 2004 after being accused of stealing round £25,000 from the Submit Workplace he ran together with his spouse, Siema Kamran, in Hampstead Heath.
The couple had been each charged with legal offences over the supposed shortfall, and Mr Ashraf pleaded responsible after they are saying they had been suggested by a solicitor that he would get a “slap on the wrist”.
The Submit Workplace began chasing the £25,000, even whereas Mr Ashraf was nonetheless in jail, and it led to the couple shedding their newsagent enterprise and in the end their residence.
Mrs Kamran instructed the inquiry her husband has PTSD, and he or she had suffered from melancholy and suicidal ideas.
“The wedding between Mrs Kamran and Mr Ashraf nonetheless subsists”, stated Sir Wyn. “However Mrs Kamran describes it as ‘damaged’.
“Though she has contemplated divorce, she ‘would by no means depart him’.”
The inquiry additionally heard that Mr Ashraf’s conviction – which was in the end overturned in December 2020 – introduced “vital antagonistic publicity” on the household.
Kamran and his household misplaced their residence due to the Submit Workplace saga
Daniel Hambury/Stella Photos Ltd
Households of victims ‘deserved compensation’
Geoffrey Pound was a postmaster in Lynmouth in Devon from 2005 to 2007, when he was suspended over an unexplained shortfall of £3,000.
Sir Wyn stated he is likely one of the examples of “disproportionately harsh penalties endured by some postmasters who had been held accountable for comparatively ‘small’ shortfalls.
He and his household – together with his six-year-old daughter – lived concerning the store, and after his suspension they misplaced the enterprise and had been made homeless.
“Mr Pound and his household had been excluded from the neighborhood”, stated the Inquiry chair.
“He was ignored by many and on one event an area store proprietor who was hosing down the whole avenue cleaned in every single place besides for outdoor Mr Pound’s store.
“It was clear to him from this occasion that his household had been not welcome.”
The Inquiry heard he tried to take his personal life and spent a month in a psychological well being hospital, and took anti-depressants for 3 years.
Mr Pound stated he continues to battle financially to at the present time, dwelling in remoted social housing on a small pension.
Victims of the scandal “need assistance simply to reside a primary life”, he stated.
The Submit Workplace Horizon IT Inquiry concluded in December (Jonathan Brady/PA Archive)
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One of many Inquiry’s key suggestions is for households of subpostmasters to be given entry to the compensation scheme.
Millie Castleton was simply eight-years-old when her father Lee was wrongly accused by the Submit Workplace over alleged shortfalls at his department in Bridlington in Yorkshire.
Mr Castleton, now an OBE, was performed by Will Mellor within the ITV drama concerning the scandal, which depicted his therapy as he was sued within the Excessive Court docket by the Submit Workplace and ordered to pay greater than £300,000.
Millie Castleton instructed the Inquiry she was conscious as a toddler of “confusion, frustration, and nervousness that was leeching into my residence”, as her household had been publicly branded “thieves and liars”.
She stated she was verbally and bodily bullied at college, together with being requested on her first week at secondary faculty: “Didn’t your dad steal a great deal of cash or one thing?”
“Faculty turned a spot of loneliness and distress”, stated Sir Wyn.
Millie needed to look after her mom when she developed epilepsy, and her personal psychological well being declined at 17 when she slipped into “melancholy and self-loathing”.
Former Submit Workplace employee Lee Castleton exterior the Submit Workplace Horizon IT Inquiry (PA)
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She dropped out of college early after affected by an consuming dysfunction, and detailed to the Inquiry the trauma she has endured on account of the Submit Workplace’s pursuit of her father.
“A part of me will at all times really feel just a little damaged”, she stated. “I nonetheless really feel a burning concern of spending bigger sums of cash or doing one thing purely for myself.
“That nagging voice in my head nonetheless says ugly issues typically. It nonetheless tells me that my previous and my household’s battle will outline me, that it is going to be a branding on my pores and skin eternally. Broke, thief, or liar.”
A Submit Workplace spokesperson stated: “The Inquiry has dropped at life the devastating tales of these impacted by the Horizon Scandal. Their experiences signify a shameful interval in our historical past. At this time, we apologise unreservedly for the struggling which Submit Workplace triggered to postmasters and their family members. We’ll rigorously think about the report and its suggestions.”
‘Take pressing motion’, calls for Inquiry chair
In his report, Sir Wyn demanded a response by Authorities, Submit Workplace, and Fujitsu by October 10, insisting: “No objective could be served by HM Authorities or the Division delaying consideration of my suggestions till the rest of my report is delivered.
“The entire purpose for delivering this quantity of my report prematurely of the remaining quantity is that applicable motion in relation to the schemes for redress might be taken as quickly as fairly attainable.”
Sir Wyn Williams (Submit Workplace Horizon IT Inquiry/PA)
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He has beneficial restorative justice for victims, together with a memorial scheme, bursaries for retraining subpostmasters and serving to their youngsters with training, and psychiatric assist for victims.
Sir Wyn stated some claimants have confronted a “concern issue”, that they’d lose the possibility of any compensation in the event that they sought to attraction the low figures being provided.
He concluded: “I’m persuaded that within the troublesome and substantial claims, on too many events, the Submit Workplace and its advisors have adopted an unnecessarily adversarial angle in the direction of making preliminary provides which have had the impact of miserable the extent at which settlements have been achieved.”
In a earlier assertion addressing the compensation schemes, the Division for Enterprise and Commerce stated: “This Authorities has quadrupled the entire quantity paid to affected postmasters to supply them with full and truthful redress, with greater than £1 billion having now been paid to over 7,300 claimants.”
