The Post Office Horizon scandal likely drove at least 13 people to suicide, the public inquiry has found.
Chairman Sir Wyn Williams said a further 59 victims considered taking their own life after being accused of wrongdoing based the faulty software.
A first tranche of the public inquiry’s final report into the scandal laid bare the devastating consequences for victims and their families, from police investigations to convictions and imprisonment.
Sir Wyn said around 10,000 people are eligible to submit compensation claims following what has been dubbed as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history.
It is thought approximately 1,000 people have been wrongly prosecuted and convicted across the UK between 1999 and 2015, with somewhere between 50 and 60 people prosecuted but not convicted, he said.
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Those who walked free from court still faced being ‘ostracised in their local community’, the report noted.
Lead campaigner and former subpostmistress Jo Hamilton said the report ‘shows the full scale of the horror that they unleashed on us’.
The scandal was propelled into the spotlight in January last year following the airing of ITV’s drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, starring actor Toby Jones about Sir Alan Bates, former sub-postmaster and founder of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance.
Ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells is accused of overseeing a huge number of wrongful prosecutions and convictions, and was in post at the time Sir Wyn said bosses should have known Horizon was faulty.
The chairman’s 162-page report criticised the ‘unnecessarily adversarial attitude’ of the Post Office and its advisers towards making compensation offers to victims and that the organisation and the Government ‘simply failed to grasp how difficult it would be to provide appropriate financial redress’.
Sir Wyn’s report said 59 victims of the scandal contemplated suicide with 10 attempting to take their own lives.
The retired judge said there was a ‘real possibility’ 13 people took their own lives as a result of the suffering they endured.
He said: ‘I should stress that whilst I cannot make a definitive finding that there is a causal connection between the deaths of all 13 persons and Horizon, I do not rule it out as a real possibility.
‘It is also possible that more than 13 persons, as indicated by the Post Office in response to the inquiry’s requests in March 2025, died by suicide but that some deaths have not been reported to the Post Office or the inquiry.’
Martin Griffiths deliberately stepped in front of an oncoming bus on September 23, 2013.
He had begun to suffer shortfalls in branch accounts in 2009 and, in the four years which followed, sought assistance from the IT helpdesk without success, the report said, adding that he was given notice in July 2013 that his postmaster contract was to be terminated.
A Post Office investigator had advised the Post Office that Mr Griffiths was partly to blame for the loss incurred from a robbery – during which he was injured – at his Hope Farm Post Office branch in Cheshire in May 2013, the report said.
His death, aged 59, ‘was and remains devastating for his wife, children and other close family’, it added.
Sir Wyn wrote: ‘Nearly all the persons interviewed under caution by Post Office investigators will have been in wholly unfamiliar territory and they will have found the experience to be troubling at best and harrowing at worst.’
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Teasing his conclusions for the final overarching report, which is still likely to be some months away, Sir Wyn said: ‘Although many of the individuals who gave evidence before me were very reluctant to accept it, I am satisfied from the evidence that I have heard that a number of senior, and not-so-senior employees of the Post Office knew or, at the very least should have known, that Legacy Horizon was capable of error.
‘Yet for all practical purposes, throughout the lifetime of Legacy Horizon, the Post Office maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate.’
He made a total of 19 recommendations as part of his report, including that the Government and the Post Office should make a public announcement about what they mean by ‘full and fair redress’.
In a statement issued after the publication of the report, Sir Wyn said he is ‘critical’ of the Post Office and the Government for the ‘development and evolution’ of the compensation schemes.
He also said the main scheme, the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (HSS), had been subjected to ‘egregious delays’.
In his recommendations, Sir Wyn said claimants who apply for compensation as part of HSS, should be entitled to free legal advice.
The chairman also addressed criticism of another scheme, the Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme, saying claimants should be entitled to the £600,000 fixed offer even if they submit their own detailed individual claim.
What are the recommendations from Sir Wyn Williams’ report?
The first volume of the Post Office inquiry’s final report has published 19 recommendations.
Here is a summary of the main recommendations:
– The Government and the Post Office should make a public announcement explaining their meaning of the phrase ‘full and fair financial redress’.
– The Government and the Post Office should make sure all decision-makers across the compensation schemes apply the meaning of ‘full and fair’ when considering amounts awarded to claimants.
– Claimants who are part of the main redress scheme, the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (HSS), should be entitled to free legal advice.
– Claimants across all schemes should have the option to accept fixed offers regardless of whether they have made an individual detailed claim or not.
– A senior lawyer should be appointed to HSS to ensure offers are full and fair and made promptly.
– No claims for redress under HSS should be considered after midnight on November 27, 2025.
– The Government should establish a public body to administer and deliver schemes for providing redress to people wronged by public bodies.
– The Government should devise a redress process for close family members affected by the Horizon scandal.
– The Government, Fujitsu and the Post Office should publish a report outlining a programme of restorative justice.
– The Government, Post Office and Fujitsu should respond to the recommendations by October 10.
Sir Wyn urged the Government to establish a public body to devise, administer and deliver compensation to those wronged by authorities.
The report said the number of people eligible to submit compensation claims as part of the scandal is likely to rise ‘by at least hundreds, if not more, over the coming months’.
In a statement, the Post Office said: ‘The inquiry has brought to life the devastating stories of those impacted by the Horizon Scandal.
‘Their experiences represent a shameful period in our history.
‘Today, we apologise unreservedly for the suffering which Post Office caused to postmasters and their loved ones.
‘We will carefully consider the report and its recommendations.’
Chairman Nigel Railton vowed to ‘do everything in my power to make sure that affected postmasters receive the redress they are entitled to, as soon as possible’.
Business minister Gareth Thomas said the government is ‘sympathetic’ to Sir Wyn’s recommendations.
He told the Commons: ‘Blameless people were impoverished, bankrupted, stressed beyond belief, lost their jobs, their marriages, their reputations, their mental health, in some cases lost their lives.’
Mr Thomas later added: ‘To be clear, I am very sympathetic to Sir Wyn’s 19 recommendations today.
‘Clearly, a number of them require careful consideration.
‘We will respond to them properly, as some concern the ongoing delivery of Horizon redress schemes.
‘Sir Wyn has set us a deadline of October 10, and we will beat it.’
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