Victims of second Post Office accounting software scandal 'to be offered compensation'
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The government will offer compensation to Post Office Capture victims - while refusing to rule out blanket exoneration for those convicted. In an exclusive interview with Sky News, Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said his department is "working at pace" and is committed to providing redress as quickly as possible.
Capture accounting software, which predates the scandal-hit Horizon IT system, was used by sub-postmasters in their branches between 1992 and 1999. Under Horizon, hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015. Earlier this year the government-commissioned Kroll report found there was a "reasonable likelihood" that Capture caused accounting losses and errors, although the report did not make any conclusions about the safety of criminal convictions.
A number of sub-postmasters were convicted of theft and false accounting while using the Capture IT system in the 1990s. "This is the first time the government has confirmed it is going to offer redress," Gareth Thomas told Sky News. "We recognise that there were significant problems for some sub-postmasters, at least some of whom used the Capture software, and had real difficulties in their branches.
"We're now going to work at pace across government, and with the Post Office and sub-postmasters directly, to try to understand how many people were affected and how we can offer redress most effectively going forward.". He insisted that once as much information as possible had been received from the Post Office the government would "be able to work through on a [redress] scheme".
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