Police investigate Post Office over ‘potential fraud offences’ during Horizon IT scandal

Chancellor vows to look at speeding up compensation payments to victims

Protesters outside a hearing of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)

The Post Office is being investigated by police over “potential fraud offences” committed during the Horizon IT scandal.

More than 700 branch managers were given criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software made it appear as though money was missing.

It has been described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history.

Scotland Yard said on Friday evening that Metropolitan Police officers were investigating “potential fraud offences” arising from the prosecutions, for example “monies recovered from subpostmasters as a result of prosecutions or civil actions”.

The chancellor Jeremy Hunt has also vowed to investigate how compensation payments to victims can be made more swiftly. He told BBC Breakfast: “We will look into doing everything we can to speed up that compensation.”

The Met has already been looking into other potential offences, including perjury and perverting the course of justice.

Two people have been interviewed under caution but nobody has been arrested since the investigation was launched in 2020.

There has been renewed public attention on the scandal since ITV aired a drama, Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, starring Toby Jones, and 50 new potential victims have approached lawyers.

Neil Hudgell, a lawyer acting for claimants, told the BBC the new enquiries include former subpostmasters who were given convictions.

He said: “The majority of (those 50 new enquiries) were not prosecuted but lost their livelihoods, lost their homes.

“But there’s a small handful of people who were convicted that have come forward, three in total at the moment, which is obviously a tiny number proportionate to those that are still out there.

“And I think the common feature of these is totally unsurprising. It’s people that have been so heavily damaged by [the] Post Office psychologically that they have been so fearful of coming forward and going through the process again.”

Earlier this week, a Tory minister said the former boss of the Post Office should hand back her CBE over the scandal.

Paula Vennells, who was chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, should give up the honour voluntarily, Kevin Hollinrake told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

Retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams is currently chairing an inquiry into the Post Office scandal.