DELIVER JUSTICE

Wrongly accused demand payouts are speeded up

- MATT ROPER

VICTIMS still waiting for payouts in the Post Office IT scandal fear they may never see the cash they deserve for having their lives ruined by false claims.

And they accused the Government of dragging its heels over the compensation, 24 years after their wrongful convictions for stealing.

One, Alan Bates, demanded the cash be handed over before more people die of old age, after more than 60 people have already passed away without getting a penny.

He said: "Get moving with the compensation. Don't extend the deadline for payments because you can't extend people's lives."

The former sub-postmaster, who is played by Toby Jones in the new ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, has campaigned for two decades to expose the truth about the IT system glitches that devastated 3,500 staff.

More than 230 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were jailed after 700 had been prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting and four killed themselves. They were blamed for mistakes by the defective Horizon computer system.

In 2019, Alan and five other staff took the Post Office to the High Court where a judge ruled the IT was at fault in the UK's worst miscarriages of justice.