Sir Wyn's address after publishing Volume 1 of his final report (8 July)
Those of you with good memories may remember that I have made video recorded speeches about aspects of the work of the Inquiry on two occasions. The first video was made available as long ago as 30 September 2022, shortly before the beginning of Phase 2 of the Inquiry. The second became available on 17 July 2023, the day my Interim Report was laid before Parliament.
In each of those videos, I emphasised the importance of two strands of investigation which were inextricably linked, and which would be crucial parts of the work of the Inquiry. Those strands were:
(1) discovering and explaining the nature and extent of the adverse consequences suffered by so many as a result of the misplaced reliance upon the dependability and accuracy of Horizon-what we have called “the human impact” and
(2) discovering and assessing whether the Department for Business and Trade and the Post Office had made good or were making good upon the often repeated assurances from Ministers, Departmental officials and senior personnel within the Post Office that financial redress for those who had suffered adverse consequences would be full fair and prompt. Over the nearly three years since I first highlighted those strands of investigation nothing has occurred which has led me to change my view of their importance.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, to those who have been following the progress of the Inquiry that as soon as I had completed the oral evidence gathering phases, I turned my mind to whether I should deal with the issues of human impact and redress as part of a much larger report when all aspects of my report had been completed or whether I should produce a part of my report – Volume 1 – dealing discretely with human impact and redress as soon as it was written. As will now be obvious I chose the latter course.
I chose this path because I regarded it as essential that I provide a detailed report about the schemes which have been developed to deliver financial redress as soon as I reasonably could. That way, I would be able to report upon how they had performed historically and also attempt to predict how they were likely to perform going forward. Having heard and read a very substantial amount of evidence, I concluded that some aspects of the schemes could be improved substantially. In those circumstances, it made no sense for me to wait until the whole of my report had been completed and was ready for publication before revealing my views.
However, I was also firmly of the view that a report which considered and reached conclusions about the schemes without first describing the adverse consequences which gave rise to the need for redress would be sadly lacking in context. I appreciate, of course, that much has been written and said about the adverse consequences suffered by postmasters and others over the last 25+ years.
Nonetheless, in the early months of 2022, I heard sworn evidence from a large number of people who allowed themselves to be questioned about deeply personal issues in the full glare of a statutory public inquiry. Throughout the whole length of the Inquiry, I have received written evidence and other sources of information about the nature and scale of the human impact visited upon so many. The picture which has emerged is profoundly disturbing. It would have been wholly wrong of me to present this volume of my report without describing in some detail the human suffering which has given rise to the need for complex schemes for providing financial redress to those who have been wronged.
Let me turn then to describe what this volume contains for those you have not yet seen it.
Following an introduction, I list my recommendations. The introduction and the list are sections 1 and 2 respectively. Section 3 is devoted to human impact. It has three subsections: a short introduction; a summary of the main types of impact suffered by the various categories of people who were adversely affected; and then there are 17 case illustrations which I chose because it seemed to me that, between them, they provided a cogent basis for all or virtually all of the adverse consequences which I already described
I acknowledge the possibility that the case illustrations may contain the odd factual inaccuracy. I say that because, in the main, they are based upon the recollections of persons who were seeking to describe events which had occurred many years ago and often without contemporaneous documents to prompt their memories. But such inaccuracies as exist do not matter. The case illustrations are intended to paint a very broad but compelling picture of the type of harm which very many people have suffered. I am completely satisfied that they achieve that purpose. As I have said once already, but I repeat, the picture which has emerged, and which is described in my report is profoundly disturbing.
In summary, what does that picture reveal. Many thousands of people have suffered serious financial detriment and for a sizable proportion that detriment subsists. Many people have, inevitably, suffered emotional turmoil and significant stress in consequence. Many businesses and homes have been lost. Bankruptcies have occurred. Marriages and families have been wrecked. Between 2000 and 2013 in England and Wales, and for some time after 2013 in Northern Ireland and Scotland, postmasters and others suffered the trauma of criminal prosecution, conviction, and punishment and, for some, punishment meant lengthy periods of imprisonment. I received reports that some people held liable for shortfalls became ill as a consequence; tragically I heard, too, of people of whom it is said that they were driven to take their own lives.
Section 4 is a very long and detailed section which contains a summary of the evidence which I heard and read relating to redress. I readily acknowledge that it is a difficult read for all except the most committed. It deals primarily with the schemes which have evolved for delivering financial redress to those who are entitled to it, but it also covers other discrete issues which relate to financial redress. The section ends with a short section on “restorative justice” a concept with which I was unfamiliar until it was introduced to me in this Inquiry.
In section 5, I identify those Core Participants from whom I have received written and oral submissions about financial and other forms of redress.
And then we have section 6, which contains my conclusions and recommendations.
Early on in that section, I pose the following question: “Have the Post Office, the Department and Ministers delivered financial redress to claimants which is full and fair, and have they done so promptly?”
In much of the remainder of that section, I set out my answers to all the component parts of that question. Before spending a few minutes summarising some of those answers, however, let me explain how section 6 begins. No more than a few lines have gone by before I produce my first recommendation, and that says this: ‘His Majesty’s Government and all the departments and where appreciate the Post Office and Fujitsu, shall provide written responses to my recommendations by the 10th of October 2025’.
Some may think that this recommendation is some kind of challenge to the Government in general, the Department, in particular, the Post Office and Fujitsu. It is not. Rather, I categorise it as more in the nature of a plea by me to all those who need to make decisions about my remaining recommendations to do so as quickly as they can.
It would not be appropriate, in my view, to kick the can down the road and wait for the remainder of my Report before deciding upon whether to accept my recommendations. I suggest that a period of 3 months in order make a decision about whether to accept or reject them is quite sufficient in all the circumstances.
All the recommendations formulated except that first recommendation and number 17 and 19, are concerned with the schemes for financial redress. If my recommendations are to have their maximum effect, decisions about recommendations 2 to 16 and 18 must be made swiftly and if, as I hope, of course the recommendations are accepted the sooner they are implemented the better.
What are some of the conclusions I have reached about the schemes for providing financial redress.
This is a thumbnail sketch, I’m afraid if you want the real meat of it you will have to read section 6.
I am going to deal with each scheme in turn quite shortly.
First of all, the Horizon Shortfall Scheme
This scheme has always been administered and delivered by the Post Office, although, to a degree, the Department has pulled some strings too. Between May 2020 and 30 July 2024 all claims were assessed. The picture which emerges in relation to settlements within that period is as follows. A high percentage of the most modest claims were settled for the sums which were claimed or for sums very close to those claimed. Whether some of those settlements were, in reality, full and fair can only be a matter of conjecture. Many claims in the bracket £20,000 to £60,000 were likely assessed at sums which were not full and fair. On the available evidence, I cannot confirm that a majority of high value claims which were resolved on or before that date (the 31 July 2024) were settled for sums which were full and fair. On any view, many of the larger claims have proved very difficult to settle. To illustrate that point, as of 30 January of this year. There were 314 claims which had been submitted between May 2020 and 27 November 2020 that had still not been settled. A large proportion of those claims have been and continue to be very difficult to resolve because of their complexity and potential value.
A Fixed Sum Offer of £75,000 has been available to claimants since 31 July 2024. A significant number of claimants have opted to accept that sum. It is widely acknowledged that some of those claimants will have received sums which exceed the true value of their claims.
It is, as yet, unclear whether the claims which have been assessed since 31 July 2024 have resulted in settlements which would be proper to categorise as full and fair.
As of the 30 April 2025, HSS (as I use the acronym in shorthand form) had received 9437 eligible claims, 6644 offers had been made and 5812 had been accepted. Those in my legal team who assist me to keep track of recent events have discovered that HSS had received a total of 9887 eligible claims by early June; there had been 7188 offers and 6426 acceptances. There are still more than 3000 claims to resolve, and the likelihood is that there are approximately 1500 complex and standard claims which are either in the process of assessment or waiting for the process to begin. In my view, if HSS is closed, as I recommend it should be on the 27 November of this year, a number of years would still be necessary to deal with all the claims which would be unresolved on that date.
On any view, there have been egregious delays in HSS for which the Post Office and the Department have frequently apologised.
The Overturned Conviction Scheme and the more recently announced Horizon Conviction Redress Scheme.
Until 3 June 2025 OCS, as I call the Overturned Conviction Scheme, was administered and delivered by the Post Office. 111 persons have had their convictions quashed by the courts and are eligible for financial redress. Three persons who were prosecuted but not convicted are also eligible for redress under the scheme.
The scheme opened in July 2021 following the quashing of convictions In December 2020 at the Southwark Crown Court and in April 2021 at the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division).
Interim payments were made promptly to those whose convictions were quashed – except for three Claimants who were denied interim payments, unfairly in my view, on what were described as public interest grounds.
Between the opening of the scheme and the publication of my Interim Report in July 2023 there were a number of partial settlements – especially relating to non-pecuniary losses but there had been no more than a handful of settlements of both pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses.
In September 2023, a Fixed Sum Offer of £600,000 became available to those in the scheme whose convictions had been quashed.
I understand the current position to be that 71 claims have been settled in full. 62 claimants have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer of £600,000 and 9 claimants have had their claims assessed and accepted offers in settlement following assessment. That figure includes one claimant who was prosecuted but not convicted. 13 claimants have yet to submit particularised claims, and the remaining claims are in various stages of partial settlement or negotiation.
It is impossible for me to tell you whether the settlements so far achieved can be categorised as full and fair since I have not thought it appropriate to compel evidence from individuals about their settlements and very little information has been volunteered by the claimants who obviously value their privacy.
The more recent scheme which I would call HCRS was constituted as a discrete scheme administered and delivered by the Department in July 2024. It was set up to deliver redress to those whose convictions were quashed by legislation. The Fixed Sum Offer of £600,000 has been a feature of HCRS from its inception and, so far as I am aware, all claimants whose claims have been settled or at least whose settled prior to 3 June 2025 opted to accept the Fixed Sum Offer.
On 3 June 2025, the Overturned Conviction Scheme was amalgamated with HCRS. From the date of amalgamation, the scheme has been administered and delivered by the Department.
The amalgamation of those two schemes was obviously sensible which, I suppose, begs the question:
“Why were there ever two distinct schemes for claimants whose convictions had been quashed one operated and delivered by the Post Office and one operated and delivered by the Department?”
OCS has not been without unjustified delay. The time taken to formulate “pecuniary principles” was described as a tortuous process, that is, in plain English it took far too long. Furthermore, the process to formulate those principles did not begin until approximately 18 months after the scheme had been announced.
The Group Litigation Order Scheme (GLOS)
This scheme was set up to provide financial redress to those claimants who had been party to the group litigation brought against the Post Office and which was settled in late 2019. As is now well known, the claimants in the litigation appeared to have won a famous victory. Unfortunately, the compensation they received under the Deed of Settlement did not properly reflect their losses. After a period of reflection, the Government of the day agreed to provide funds so that additional financial redress could be made to those claimants.
The scheme was announced in March 2022. Unfortunately, a year went by after the announcement before the scheme was opened. It has always been administered and delivered by the Department. There are, potentially, 492 claimants. By 30 April of this year the number of fully particularised claims submitted to the Department stood at 450; 445 offers had been made of which 304 had been accepted. 42 claimants had not submitted their claims.
By my reckoning, as of 30 April 2025 there were 146 claims unresolved. My team tell me that at least 4 further claimants had submitted particularised claims by early June but that would still leave 38 claimants who have yet to start the process of presenting a claim.
A Fixed Sum Offer of £75,000 was introduced in this scheme in January 2024. Of the 304 claimants who had accepted their offers by 30 April 2025 approximately 50% had opted to accept the Fixed Sum Offer with obviously the same percentage or thereabouts opting for assessment. I have received no information about individual settlements although I have been made aware that a number of claimants have expressed their unhappiness with the level of offers made to them.
You should know that people continue to correspond with me right up to very recently about these matters.
The likelihood is that most if not all of the claims which are unresolved are to be assessed. That means in my view there is a great deal of work to be done if these cases are to be resolved satisfactorily within any kind of reasonable timescale. I say that because it appears clear that in many cases in which assessment is taking place the valuations placed upon the claims by the claimants and their advisors on the one hand and the Department and its advisors on the other is markedly different. I would like to emphasise that a number of the recommendations I make are aimed at removing some of the obstacles which currently exist along the path to achieving settlements which are full and fair.
Even if those recommendations are accepted and implemented swiftly, however, it is difficult to imagine that the unresolved cases can be settled any time soon. I am loathe to predict when all the claims in that scheme will be resolved but I very much doubt whether settlements of every claim can be achieved before the end of next year. To repeat there are likely to be 150 claims or thereabouts in the process of assessment, which is a large number, still.
There is one last point which I wish to stress about each scheme. Although it is correct to say that the schemes are administered and delivered by either the Post Office or The Department, everyone should understand that the persons who ultimately decide upon the awards to be made to claimants are not employees of the Post Office or The Department.
In both HSS and the Group Litigation Scheme, the ultimate decision makers are independently appointed panels of appropriate experts. If their decisions are flawed, there is an entitlement to seek review before a very experienced, retired judge. In fact, there are two judges one for each scheme. Those whose convictions have been quashed, that is the claimants in OCS and HCRS, are not obliged to expect offers of made to them by the Department. They have preserved rights to seek redress in the courts.
I turn finally to say something about my recommendations. Recommendations 2 to 16 all relate to the existing financial redress schemes. They are all intended to improve these schemes, but I readily accept that even if my recommendations are accepted and implemented as quickly as I would like, they will not constitute some magic formula for removing all the problems from which the schemes suffer.
As my Report makes clear I am critical of the Post Office and the Department in relation to the development and evolution of these schemes in a number of important respects, not least in relation to some of the egregious delays which have occurred. I cannot say plainly enough that there should not have been four distinct and separate schemes for delivering financial redress.
It is true that recently two of the schemes have been merged so that the number of schemes with which I am concerned is three, but that improvement is likely to make very little difference to the time it will take to provide financial redress to all claimants. However, to use that ultra-modern phrase, “we are where we are” and I, for one, cannot imagine scrapping all the schemes and starting again. Such a step would likely add many years to the period of time which would elapse before redress is paid out to all claimants and I cannot contemplate that.
I do not propose to discuss, in what I thought would be a short speech but seems to be longer than I anticipated, the substance of recommendations 2 to 16. The details of each of the schemes are set out in section four of my report and the reasoning which underpins each recommendation is set out in section 6. That said, I would like to make two points.
First, many of the recommendations are directed at the Horizon Shortfall Scheme and the newly created appeals process within that scheme and, accordingly, those recommendations should be viewed and considered as a package and not just individually. I make it clear that I share the view of the Business and Trade Committee that the Horizon Shortfall Scheme is the scheme which is in most need of remedial attention. That of, course, is not surprising given that it has had to handle close to 10,000 claims and there may be more to come. There can be no doubt that but for the availability of the Fixed Sum Offer in that scheme it would have been overwhelmed. Second, recommendations 2,3 and 5 which apply to all schemes and recommendations 11 and 12 which apply to the Group Litigation Order Scheme are made so as to seek to ensure, so far as possible, that the main processes in each scheme are at least similar or broadly comparable.
That leaves recommendations 17, 18 and 19. I have been persuaded that the victims of wrongdoing, and the public at large, will never be convinced by words from lawyers that financial redress schemes which are administered and delivered by the alleged wrongdoer are truly independent. Furthermore, with the growing appetite which undoubtedly appears to exist for redress schemes to operate without reference to the courts or a formal arbitration structure it is, in my view, necessary to create a body which has the expertise and capability to administer and deliver redress schemes which are and are seen to be wholly independent of the public body alleged to be responsible for the wrongdoing which has created the need for redress.
However, and this may disappoint some, let me stress now that I do not believe that such a body could be created sufficiently quickly to make it viable for that body to take over the administration and delivery of financial redress in the existing schemes. Recommendation 17, if accepted, must be implemented with considerable care and with a clear set of objectives laid out from the start.
As will become obvious from a careful reading of my Report there are, literally, thousands of claimants in Horizon Shortfall Scheme who are waiting for their claims to be assessed and some of those (and there may still be more than three hundred) have been waiting for five years and there is still no end in sight. There are claimants in the Overturned Conviction Scheme whose convictions were quashed by the courts in 2020 and 2021 who are still to be fully compensated and there are still about 150 people who were parties to the Group Litigation who are waiting for the assessment process to run its course. I do not believe there is any justification for all those persons to be put on hold while a new body is created. As I describe in my Report, the existing schemes are flawed but in my view the schemes can be improved significantly, says he, if my recommendations are accepted and implemented.
Let me say a word about recommendation 19. As I have implied, the phrase “restorative justice” was new to me when I began my work on this Inquiry. Yet as the work of the Inquiry gathered pace and, particularly, during the course of the hearings last year the call for measures which are associated with the umbrella phrase “restorative justice” became louder and more persistent. The Post Office and Fujitsu embraced the concept with what I might describe as varying degrees of enthusiasm. I was left with the impression, however, that they would both at least consider what sort of package of measures would be appropriate. Yet to date I have heard nothing hence the need for a specific recommendation. In my view, Departmental involvement in this process would also be very welcome
I have said nothing about recommendation 18 as yet. Without doubt I found the issue of financial redress for family members to be very difficult to resolve. I have been acutely conscious of the difficulties which family members would face if they were seeking to pursue claims against the Post Office, the Department or Fujitsu in the courts. That said, I am also mindful that these schemes are not and have never been constrained by established legal principles. Accordingly, I have reached the conclusion that fairness demands that financial redress should be provided for those family members who have suffered serious adverse consequences as a result of the treatment meted out to their loved ones.
I would like to conclude by paying a special tribute to all those who have helped me compile this first volume of our report. They are here, they are in this room, they are all the lawyers who made compelling submissions to me. The Inquiry I trust has gone smoothly to date and in huge measure this is down to you and not me. Thank you very much.
