Post Office staff who pursued Horizon victims handling compensation claims
Post Office staff who pursued victims in the Horizon IT scandal are still working in departments handling the falsely accused sub-postmasters' compensation claims, it has emerged.
Sir Alan Bates, the former sub-postmaster who played a leading role in the campaign for justice for the Horizon victims, describes the staff's involvement as 'without a doubt a conflict of interest'.
More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after Fujitsu's faulty Horizon system incorrectly recorded inaccurate shortfalls on their branch accounts.
The final report of the public inquiry into the scandal, which finished hearing evidence in December, is expected to be published later this year, and several schemes have been set up to provide redress to victims.
But the Post Office is now under fire for allowing staff whose roles were 'relevant to the scandal' to be involved in compensating victims. None of the staff are accused of wrongdoing.
Among them is a former Post Office auditor who visited Baljeet Singh Sandhu's sub-post office in West Boldon, near Sunderland, in 2016.
By this point, the Post Office had stopped prosecuting sub-postmasters. However, Mr Sandhu still had his contract terminated on the evidence of the reported shortfalls.
Sir Alan told The Telegraph: 'Without doubt this has been a conflict of interest, but it is only one of the many that have occurred, and continue to occur with these financial redress schemes.
'The lack of transparency and parity within these schemes is why there should be some sort of outside body overseeing all of this, or actually putting the structure together and running it.'
Post Office 'did not act quickly enough'
Sir Alan, whose High Court fight for justice was dramatised in the ITV series Mr Bates vs the Post Office last year, is not the first to criticise the staff being involved in remediation schemes.
Giving evidence at the inquiry in November last year, Simon Recaldin, director of the remediation unit, admitted that the Post Office had not acted quickly enough to identify staff with 'past roles' that may lead them to have a 'conflict of interest' when working on redress.
A month later, the Post Office assured the Government's independent Horizon Compensation Advisory Board that it had 'agreed a plan to address the issue of remediation unit staff who had previously been employed in roles of interest to the inquiry'.
However, minutes from a Horizon Compensation Advisory Board meeting held last month detailed 'concern' over a 'remaining handful of individuals'.
The notes read: 'The board has previously expressed concern that some Post Office staff involved in redress had previously had roles relevant to the scandal (although it is not known whether they were actually involved in it).
'The Board welcomed the Post Office's assurance that the great majority of these individuals are no longer involved in redress work.
'It has asked the Post Office for clarification in respect of the remaining handful of individuals and, whilst they recognised the sensitivities involved, expressed concern at the length of time this had taken.'
'Rightly held to account'
A Post Office spokesman said: 'We are sincerely sorry for past failings that have caused suffering to postmasters and are focused, alongside Government, on paying redress as quickly as possible so that people can move forward with their lives.
'The Horizon Compensation Advisory Board are rightly holding us to account in ensuring that no individuals currently working on redress matters had any previous role that could be of interest to the Horizon IT Inquiry.
'As the advisory board's minutes note, the vast majority of individuals flagged as potentially having a previous role that could cause a conflict have been redeployed or have left the business. We will continue to keep the board updated on this matter.'
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