The Department of Business and Trade (DBT) is paying the Post Office up to £2m to search its own records, in anticipation of up to 1,500 compensation claims by former users of its faulty Capture software.
The contract award is aimed at digging up the evidence required by claimants to a compensation scheme, the Capture Redress Scheme, established for former subpostmasters who suffered at the hands of the software’s flaws.
Capture was used in Post Office branches in the 1990s to replace paper-based accounting, as with the controversial Horizon system at the centre of the Post Office scandal, which saw subpostmasters blamed for unexplained losses. As over 30 years has passed, information around many of these victims’ often life-changing problems is difficult to retrieve.
There are additionally Horizon users who also used Capture, including Sir Alan Bates, the former subpostmaster who led the fight against the Post Office and the government over Horizon, exposing the scandal. Bates, who is in a group of 150 potential claimants, represented by Hudgell Solicitors, has experience of the “incredibly difficult” task of getting information from the Post Office. “We had problems with disclosure for many years.”
The government tender award notice said: “Capture presents challenges due to the time elapsed and the lack of contemporaneous evidence. [The] Post Office alone holds information on the potential claimants of the scheme, and therefore, in order to process such claims, DBT needs to put in place a contract with Post Office to be able to request and receive the necessary claimant details.”
The DBT said it anticipates that 1,500 claims will require documentation, but that it is “possible that this amount may be exceeded”. The contract will be put in place for a maximum of five years, but will end if all valid claims are processed sooner, said the award notice.
The controversy over the Capture system emerged in January 2024 after ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office told the stories of subpostmasters who had suffered at the hands of the Horizon system. It was the same month that Kevan Jones, an MP at the time who now sits in the House of Lords, highlighted evidence of injustices triggered by Capture losses.
Campaign begins
This ignited a campaign and, by December, the government promised financial redress and justice for subpostmasters affected by Capture problems. This followed an independent investigation by forensic experts at Kroll, which found there was a “reasonable likelihood” the Post Office Capture software had caused accounting losses.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission is currently reviewing 30 cases of potential wrongful convictions based on Capture evidence. It has so far referred one claim to the Court of Appeal.
In regard to appeals, solicitor Neil Hudgell of Hudgell Solicitors, which represents many of former Capture users appealing convictions, said finding proof of the use of Capture after so many years is difficult. “We are pretty confident we have established that Capture could suffer bugs, errors and defects,” he said. “We now have to establish that the subpostmasters used Capture.
“It is vital that the Post Office provide any information they have on that. In the absence of any documentation, the subpostmasters should be given the benefit of the doubt.”
Computer Weekly first exposed the Post Office scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software.
Read: Everything you need to know about the Post Office scandal.
