Findings from a mandatory public inquiry into the Post Office scandal show it cost less to run it for four years than what the Post Office paid one law firm to represent it.
In his latest financial reportThe public inquiry reported that spending totaled £26 million in the last financial year.
Investigation costs include the salaries of the investigation chairman and experts, secretariat, lawyers and attorney fees. The victims of the scandal, who are the main participants in the investigation, were paid legal fees as part of the investigation, as well as expenses including the rental of venues.
The latest figures, added to the total cost of the investigation between 2000 and 2024 of around £48 million, are still £12 million less than the £86 million the Post Office paid Herbert Smith Freehills for his role in the investigation.
As Computer Weekly reported last monthA response to a Freedom of Information request from a campaigner known on X as Monsieur Cholet revealed that from 2020 to 2025 inclusive, the Post Office spent £83 million with HSF on support as the Post Office's legal representative in a public inquiry and £3 million on supporting Post Office witnesses to give evidence during investigations. This figure also dwarfs Metropolitan Police national investigation cost £50m into the Post Office scandal known as Operation Olympos. “Accountants need to be held accountable,” said a campaigner.
When they told me the numbers for last month, campaigning by former Deputy Postmaster Sir Alan Bates said: “It is completely insane that a publicly owned corporation is allowed to waste so much public money trying to justify years of incompetence and mismanagement and cover the backs of its executives, who appear to be suffering from corporate amnesia.”
He called for an investigation into the expenses by the Public Accounts Commission.
Collection of evidence
The public inquiry began in 2021 and has gone through seven stages of evidence collection. In July, publishing its first report, Inquiry chairman Wyn Williams said he could not rule out the “real possibility” that 13 people had committed suicide as a result of their treatment by the post office.
Last month, when Computer Weekly asked the Department of Business and Commerce whether taxpayer funds paid to HSF for its investigation work were justified, it said it would not comment because it was a Post Office matter.
In total, the Post Office paid HSF £188 million between September 2014 and March 2025. This includes £72 million for the Horizon Shortfall Scheme, which was set up to compensate subpostmasters affected by the scandal.
There was a mail scandal first published in Computer Weekly magazine in 2009.revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they faced due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history (see below for a timeline of Computer Weekly articles on the scandal since 2009.).
Read: Everything you need to know about the Post Office scandal.
