Nigel Farage has highlighted the horrors of the “ordinary folk getting crushed” after it was revealed that Post Office executives were offered bonuses for pursuing the convictions of sub-postmasters during the Horizon scandal.
More than 700 Post Office branch managers were convicted after Horizon’s faulty Fujitsu accounting software made it appear as though money was going missing from their shops. But investigators with the Post Office have revealed that cash bonuses were “part of the incentive” for members of the security team pushing for convictions of the accused sub-postmasters.
Alan Bates, who led the campaign for justice on behalf of the sub-postmasters, said yesterday that offering financial incentives for prosecutions was “appalling”. Sharing the revelation on X, formerly Twitter, arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage said: “This story gets even worse.
“The rich and powerful get honours and cash whilst ordinary folk get crushed.”
Everyone on the security team was “on a bonus” as they sought convictions, investigators said. Multiple members of the security team said the bonuses actively impacted how they carried out their work.
Gary Thomas, who worked in the Post Office security team between 2000 and 2012, even branded all sub-postmasters “crooks” in an email that was given to the inquiry into the scandal.
He told the inquiry last month: “There were bonus objectives. I don’t know if they were individual, team-based, but there was some kind of bonus worthy, dependent, as far as I can recall, on percentage amounts recovered for the business, something along those lines.”
Asked if the incentives affected how he acted as an investigator, Mr Thomas said: “I’d probably be lying if I said no because I probably – you know, it was part of the business, the culture of the business of recoveries or even under the terms of a postmaster’s contract with the contracts manager.
“It was, rightly or wrongly, within the contact that they were responsible for making good losses.”
In a 2021 email sent from Mr Thomas to Post Office boss Nick Read, he wrote: “My yearly objectives that were bonus worthy at the time were based on numbers of successful prosecutions and recovery amounts of money to the business.”
According to evidence shown to the inquiry, obtaining 40 percent of the “missing” money would give the team a bonus. Another investigator, David Posnett, said the recovery of money would impact the PDR score of employees and therefore their bonuses.
Rishi Sunak has confirmed new legislation will be brought in to “exonerate and compensate” wrongly convicted postmasters during the scandal.
But some postmasters said they will continue their battle following an initial offer of just £75,000 in compensation for those who were made to pay back cash, despite having not been convicted of any offences.
Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said the £75,000 would offer immediate help to a third of people with smaller claims but acknowledged that for many it would not be enough.
Mr Bates said the decision was “a leap forward” but warned campaigners to see the “devil in the detail”, the Daily Mail reported.
“Don’t forget they lost their houses, their businesses, their earning capacity for many, many years as well – a number of them cashed in pensions and all sorts,” he said.
The Post Office said the bonus scheme was rightly being investigated by the public inquiry. A spokesman said: “We share fully the aims of the public inquiry to get to the truth of what went wrong in the past and establish accountability. It’s for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions after consideration of all the evidence on the issues that it is examining.”
