Post Office workers implicated in the Horizon IT scandal have said they are no closer to gaining compensation a year after the first convictions were overturned.
Neil Hudgell, the lawyer leading compensation negotiations, has called for cases to be settled by the end of the year to prevent the victims facing further financial ruin.
Thirty-nine long-standing convictions were quashed at the Court of Appeal in central London on April 23 last year, and the number has since risen to 73.
Mr Hudgell said: “We need to bring these cases to a close in the course of this calendar year so these decent, honest people can move on with their lives and finally enjoy some peace of mind.
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Rui Vieira
“Many feel strongly that their ongoing suffering continues to be used as a lever to make derisory settlement offers.
“For some poor subpostmasters time has beaten them, they have died or lost capacity. For others the clock is ticking quickly too.
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Stefan Rousseau
“Perhaps the words of one subpostmaster to me best sums up the current position.
“They said: ‘I’m concerned now that the interim payment has run out, just settling personal loans, debts and essential house repairs – my freezer, washer and microwave have all packed up over recent months, and now my boiler.
“I may no longer be a criminal but I’m still very much a victim.
“The Post Office continues to control my life and cause me stress and sleepless nights’.”
Mr Hudgell added that although most subpostmasters have received interim payments from the Post Office, they feel that these payments have only been given so the institution can feel like “they have been doing them a favour” instead of handing back money wrongly taken.
He called for another round of interim payments to settle agreed losses, and an early dispute resolution with Post Office lawyers to resolve ongoing issues, adding: “We are poles apart in how we value some of the losses suffered by the subpostmasters.”
The Court of Appeal has previously heard that many subpostmasters’ lives were “irreparably ruined” as they lost their jobs, homes and marriages after they were prosecuted by the Post Office – which knew the Fujitsu-developed Horizon system had “faults and bugs from the earliest days of its operation”.
Hundreds of people who ran Post Office branches were convicted of offences – including theft and false accounting – during the period of time the system was being used.