Justice Secretary Alex Chalk is also “looking at” removing the Post Office’s ability to prosecute, the Prime Minister confirmed.
More than 700 branch managers were wrongly convicted of theft and false accounting after faulty Fujitsu software called Horizon made it appear as though money was missing from their shops.
The scandal – which unfolded between 1999 and 2015 – was thrust back into the spotlight and national conversation by four-part ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, screened over consecutive nights last week.
Mr Sunak said yesterday: “Everyone has been shocked by watching what they have done.
“It’s something that happened in the ’90s but seeing and hearing about it again just shows what an appalling miscarriage of justice it is for everyone affected.
“It’s important that those people now get the justice they deserve and that’s what the compensation schemes are about. The Government has paid out about £150million to thousands of people already. Of course we want to get the money to the people as quickly as possible, that’s why there are interim payments of up to, I think, £600,000 that can be made.
“There are three different schemes available and for anyone affected they should come forward.”
Some 50 new potential victims have reportedly come forward since Mr Bates vs the Post Office, starring Toby Jones, was broadcast.
Victims are calling on the Government to speed up redress.
The Post Office is owned by the Government and a public inquiry into the Horizon system is ongoing.
The PM said the scandal should “never have happened”. When asked on BBC One’s Laura Kuenssberg On Sunday if ministers would remove the Post Office’s ability to investigate and prosecute, Mr Sunak replied: “The Justice Secretary is looking at the things you have described. It wouldn’t be right to pre-empt that process.”
Former subpostmaster Susan Knight, who lost her shop, savings and became homeless after being deemed accountable for a missing £22,500, confronted Mr Sunak on the show about the “snail’s pace” of compensation. She said: “What are you going to do to ensure we get fair and final compensation, not in dribs and drabs? Please stop making us feel – still feel – like victims.”
Ms Knight’s case was dropped in 2013. But of some 700 convictions, only 93 have so far been overturned and, of those, only 27 people have been fully compensated.
Former subpostmaster and leading campaigner Alan Bates told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “about 60 or 70 have died along the way so far”.
Of these, it has been reported that four people took their own lives.
The ITV depiction has prompted outrage on behalf of the victims. More than 955,000 people have signed a petition calling for former Post Office boss Paula Vennells to be stripped of her CBE. Mr Bates, 68, turned down an OBE because Ms Vennells retains her honour, saying it would have been “a slap in the face” to victims.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats’ leader Sir Ed Davey is under mounting pressure after renewed scrutiny of his actions as a Coalition minister.
He has been accused of “fobbing off” campaigners as Postal Affairs Minister between 2010 to 2012 after his replies to Mr Bates were revealed.
The former subpostmaster is said to have written to Sir Ed five times until they met. In his first letter, on May 20, 2010, Mr Bates urged Sir Ed to intervene and called for an “independent external investigation”. He said this would “without any doubt easily find evidence of the error-ridden system”.
In his reply, Sir Ed told Mr Bates a meeting would not serve “any useful purpose” and suggested the matter was not a Government issue as the Post Office was treated as an “arm’s length” body by ministers.
SNP MP Joanna Cherry tweeted yesterday: “With Government comes responsibility. Lib Dems in frame for fobbing off victims of Post Office miscarriages of justice but Tory Governments shouldn’t be off the hook & it falls to them to finally sort this out.”
A Lib Dem spokesman said: “Ed’s heart goes out to the families caught up in this scandal and his focus is on getting justice and compensation for those impacted.”
Scotland Yard confirmed it was “investigating potential fraud offences arising out of prosecutions”, including “monies recovered from sub-postmasters as a result of prosecutions or civil actions”. The Met was probing potential offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice in relation to Post Office prosecutions before the ITV drama aired.
Two people have been interviewed under caution but no one has been arrested since the investigation was launched in January 2020.
