MPs urge Fujitsu to make ‘immediate’ payment to Post Office Horizon victims

The government must ‘help bring this shameful chapter to a close’, says Liam Byrne. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty View image in fullscreen The government must ‘help bring this shameful chapter to a close’, says Liam Byrne. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty MPs urge Fujitsu to make ‘immediate’ payment to Post Office Horizon victims Liam Byrne, who chairs Commons business committee, says too many operators are still waiting for redress The Japanese tech company at the centre of the Post Office IT scandal is facing calls from a parliamentary committee to make an “immediate” payment towards the compensation bill for victims. Fujitsu supplied the faulty Horizon software to the UK Post Office, which led to branch operators being wrongly prosecuted over discrepancies in their business accounts. The scandal has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British history and was the subject of the acclaimed ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Thousands of post office operators are waiting for redress. Liam Byrne, the Labour MP who chairs the business and trade committee, said “justice delayed has become justice denied” for too many victims, and urged the government to “do whatever” it took to help them. “Years after this scandal was exposed, far too many people are still waiting for the redress they deserve,” he said. “The government must now throw whatever resource is needed at these schemes to ensure every outstanding Horizon shortfall claim is settled by the end of this year. Complexity is no longer an excuse for delay.” Byrne said Fujitsu must “stop sitting on the sidelines”, adding: “It is extraordinary that a company at the heart of the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history has still failed to set out either the scale or the timetable for its contribution to compensation. “It should make an immediate interim payment, commit to a timetable for meeting its full liability, and help bring this shameful chapter to a close.” The tech company is negotiating a settlement with the UK government, but has not yet contributed towards the £1.5bn compensation bill for victims, footed by UK taxpayers, even though it admitted it had known since the 1990s that the Horizon system was faulty. There are three Horizon-related redress schemes for victims: the Horizon shortfall scheme (HSS) , the group litigation order and the Horizon convictions redress scheme. The HSS, the biggest, is administered by the Post Office . Under the scheme, operators with a successful claim can receive a fixed sum of £75,000 or choose to pursue a higher amount. In March, the business and trade committee found the scheme’s offers for redress were routinely overturned and increased after an appeal . Last year, the first tranche of findings from the public inquiry into the scandal by the retired judge Sir Wyn Williams found the Post Office and its advisers had in many cases adopted an “unnecessarily adversarial attitude” to those seeking financial redress. No date has been s