Advisory board goal for Post Office scandal victims to be returned to rightful financial position | Computer Weekly
Summary
In its first meeting, the GLO Compensation Scheme Advisory Board met representatives of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). The board agreed: “As with the general law, the goal should be to restore the claimants to the position that they would have been in if the scandal had not happened.” The 555 former subpostmasters and Post Office branch workers were part of a Group Litigation Order (GLO), which in 2019 proved that the software used by Post Office branches, known as Horizon, was causing the unexplained shortfalls they were blamed for. The judgements in the High Court case, which was paid for by the victims, also triggered the unravelling of one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history. The court ruling also forced the Post Office to set up a compensation scheme for any subpostmaster affected by the Horizon errors. But the Post Office and its government backer did not allow any of the 555 that took part in the court action to apply, citing that the compensation that was already paid was “full and final”.