Over 2,000 new Post Office scandal compensation claims

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Over 2,000 new Post Office scandal compensation claims

More than 2,000 new compensation claims have been made in the last month by people who believe they are also victims of the Post Office scandal, a government minister has said.

Post Office minister Gareth Thomas

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that new claims came after the Post Office contacted former sub-postmasters who may have been affected but had not yet applied for compensation.

Many of the more than 4,000 original claimants are still waiting for compensation to be paid, including 92-year-old Betty Brown, who told the BBC that the government needed to “get it done”.

Thomas said the process of compensation was getting faster, and being made “less legalistic, less adversarial”.

Mrs Brown told the programme on Monday that she had so far been offered less than a third of what she had claimed in compensation.

“We have waited and waited. Time is getting shorter. We’re getting older,” she said. “Get it done.”

She added that she wanted a “fair and just hearing”.

Mrs Brown and her husband spent more than £50,000 of their savings to cover money that appeared to be missing from their branch in County Durham due to the faulty Horizon software.

She was hounded out of her job and forced to sell her post office at a knockdown price in 2003.

Thomas said he was “keen to find solutions” and would meet her and another former sub-postmaster, Shazia Saddiq, who told Newsnight she had been offered just 10% of her claim.

Ms Saddiq ran three Post Offices in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but “lost everything” and had to move away from the area where she lived after she was assaulted in street.

The former sub-postmasters spoke to Newsnight a year after an ITV drama shone a light on the scandal.

Earlier this month, Parliament’s Business and Trade Select Committee called for changes to the way compensation was being delivered, due to the ongoing delays.

Thomas said he was “pleased to say” more victims were coming forward and that the government was looking at ways of speeding up redress.

He said the amount of compensation being paid out had doubled in the last six months and the government was trying to make the compensation schemes “less legalistic, less adversarial”.

Claimants can choose to take a £75,000 fixed sum compensation and avoid a lengthy assessment process, which should help the claims be processed more quickly, he added.

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