The Department of Business and Trade (DBT) is paying the Post Office up to £2 million to search its own records in anticipation of up to 1,500 compensation claims from former users of its faulty Capture software.
The award of the contract aims to gather evidence required by claimants for compensation under the Capture Redress Scheme, set up for former sub-postmasters who suffered due to software flaws.
The Capture system was used in post offices in the 1990s to replace paper accounting, as was the case with the controversial Horizon system at the center of post offices. Scandal at the post officein which sub-postmasters were blamed for unexplained losses. More than 30 years later, it is difficult to find information about the often life-changing problems of many of these victims.
Additionally, there are Horizon users who have also used Capture, including Sir Alan Batesa former deputy postmaster who led the fight against the Post Office and the government over Horizon, exposing the scandal. Bates, part of a group of 150 potential claimants represented by Hudgell Solicitors, has experience of the “incredibly difficult” task of obtaining information from the Post Office. “We've had problems with disclosure for years.”
Government notification of winning the tender said: “The capture is problematic due to the passage of time and the lack of contemporaneous evidence. [The] Only the Post Office holds the information of potential applicants under the scheme and therefore, in order to process such claims, DBT needs to enter into an agreement with the Post Office to be able to request and receive the required details of the applicants.”
DBT said it expects 1,500 claims will require documentation, but “it is possible that this amount may be exceeded.” The contract will be for a maximum of five years, but will end if all valid claims are processed sooner, the contract award notice said.
Capture system controversy appeared in January 2024 after the ITV drama Mr Bates v Post Office told the stories of subpostmasters affected by the Horizon system. That same month, Kevan Jones, then a Member of Parliament and now a member of the House of Lords, highlighted evidence of injustice caused by losses during capture.
The campaign begins
This marked the beginning of the campaign, and by December the government promised financial redress and justice for subpostmasters affected by Capture issues. This follows an independent investigation by forensic experts Kroll, which found that there was a “reasonable probability” Post Office Capture software caused accounting losses.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission is currently reviewing 30 cases of potential wrongful convictions based on Capture evidence. It still is transferred one claim to the Court of Appeal.
On appeals, lawyer Neil Hudgell of Hudgell Solicitors, which represents many former Capture users who have appealed their convictions, said it was difficult to find evidence of Capture use after all these years. “We're pretty confident that we've established that Capture can have bugs, bugs and defects,” he said. “Now we have to establish that the subpostmasters used Capture.
“It is very important that the Post Office provide any information they have on this matter. In the absence of any documentation, postmasters should have the presumption of innocence.”
Computer weekly first exposed the Post Office scandal in 2009.revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they faced due to Horizon accounting software.
Read: Everything you need to know about the Post Office scandal.
