Post Office is paying lawyers too much, admits minister

A government minister has admitted the Post Office is spending too much on lawyers regarding the Horizon IT scandal.

The total bill for lawyers related to the scandal has reached £268m so far.

During the latest Parliamentary Business and Trade Committee hearing focused on the Post Office scandal financial redress, Department for Business and Trade minister Gareth Thomas was asked about the Post Office’s legal bill.

Committee chair Liam Byrne MP noted the total spend on lawyers by the Post Office in relation to the Horizon scandal, and asked Thomas whether the Post Office was “spending too much on lawyers”.

Thomas said: “We could encourage them to look again, if I could put it like that, at how much they are paying and what they are asking lawyers to do. I think some of the tasks that the lawyers are doing could be done in a less costly way.”

Pushed by Byrne that his answer “sounds like yes”, Thomas admitted: “Yes, it probably is.”

Byrne also highlighted recently published figures that reveal legal costs for the scheme set up to provide financial redress for members of the group litigation order (GLO) are over £15m so far, while £106m has been paid out to subpostmasters.

He asked: “The implication is that one pound in every seven is being spent on lawyers. That’s why these questions are about whether you have a grip on the lawyers and whether you thought that legal bill is good value for money?” 

Thomas said legal advice is a vital part of the scheme.

Sir Alan Bates recently requested the government put a deadline on when it will pay members of the GLO redress scheme, but the government refused.

The GLO scheme is made up of members of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, which fought to expose the Post Office scandal in the High Court in 2018/19.

Bates told Computer Weekly that the group is planning a meeting to discuss an approach following the government’s refusal to set a deadline. One option being considered is to take legal action.

“There are concerns about that, and everybody is worried about the time it is taking – it could go on for years and we can’t get a deadline from them,” he said.

“We discussed other options if we didn’t get a deadline for financial redress, and we are going to look at that more seriously and perhaps call a special meeting to agree a way forward.”

Bates is confident that public support would make raising the money for legal action possible.

The government would have to use yet more taxpayers’ money to support any action against the Post Office. During the High Court battle of 2018/19, the Post Office spent over £100m of taxpayers’ money on its defence, which was torn apart by the subpostmasters’ legal team.

Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).