b. Has “Full and Fair Redress” been delivered to Claimants in all schemes?
6.24. I deal with this issue scheme by scheme.
HSS
6.25. Between the spring of 2021 and the summer of 2024 all claims in HSS were assessed. I propose to consider first whether the claimants who submitted claims during that period received financial redress which was full and fair.
6.26. By 31 July 2024 at least 4,087 eligible claims had been made in HSS. A total of 2,895 offers in settlement had been made to those claimants of which 2,424 offers had been accepted i.e. nearly 84% of claimants had accepted the offers which had been made to them.[313] The figure of 84%, derived from data supplied by Mr Recaldin, is very similar to the percentage of claimants who had accepted offers as derived from the survey evidence (87%). On any view therefore, the available evidence shows that a very large proportion of the claimants who submitted claims before 31 July 2024 and had received offers in respect of their claims had accepted those offers. That statistic is sometimes used to justify or support the conclusion that full and fair redress had been delivered to a substantial majority of claimants, at the very least, whose claims were received by the Post Office before 31 July 2024.
6.27. In my view, the evidence before me, taken as a whole, does not justify that conclusion.
6.28. My starting point is the survey evidence. It just so happens that it was commissioned in July and August 2024, so that it is probable that virtually all of those responding will have submitted their claims prior to 31 July 2024.
6.29. 59% of those who responded to the survey and who had accepted the offers which had been made to them, were either very or fairly dissatisfied with the amount they had been offered. A mere 15% of those responding who had accepted offers had done so because they were satisfied with the amount offered.
6.30. The survey evidence also provided important data about offers made as compared with the amounts originally claimed. 39% of claimants who responded to the survey had originally claimed less than £20,000. 73% of those claimants received an offer which was identical to their own valuation of their claims. Of those claimants who had submitted claims in the bracket £20,000 to £60,000, 37% received an offer which was identical to the claim which they had submitted, and 8% received offers which exceeded their claims. Only 26% of those who had submitted claims valued at more than £100,000 received an offer which was equivalent to the claim submitted.[314]
6.31. This survey evidence points clearly to the following. In claims under £20,000, a high percentage of claimants received an offer which was equivalent to the claim submitted. A small but significant percentage of claimants who had made claims in the bracket £20,000 to £60,000 received offers which exceeded their claims. In my view, that statistic provided some support for the proposition that the Post Office, and/or their advisors, and/or the independent panels making recommendations to them were sometimes astute to identify legitimate heads of loss which had not been claimed. However, overall, the survey evidence clearly demonstrated that the higher the value placed upon a claim by a claimant, the less likely it was that the claimant would receive an offer which was equivalent to the claim which had been submitted to the Post Office.
6.32. The conclusion which I have just derived from the survey evidence chimes with much of the other evidence I received, and the submissions made to me on behalf of claimants who are also Core Participants. I say that for the following reasons.
6.33. I am persuaded that in the difficult and substantial claims, on too many occasions, the Post Office and its advisors have adopted an unnecessarily adversarial attitude towards making initial offers which have had the effect of depressing the level at which settlements have been achieved. I accept the evidence to that effect given to me by Ms Gratton, who, as I previously noted has been a director of the Post Office since 2023 and continues in that role.[315] I accept too, that although it has been open to the Post Office, the Department and their advisors to depart from established legal principles when appropriate in order to achieve an outcome which was fair, based upon the evidence explored at paragraph 4.37 above, such departures have likely been quite rare and usually confined to decisions about the weight to be attached to evidence (or the lack of it) as opposed to whether or not substantive legal principles should be applied or disapplied. In my view, I received no evidence (statistical or otherwise) which demonstrated unequivocally that there had been a departure from a substantive legal principle in order to achieve fairness in a particular case. Certainly, there is no such evidence in the written statements of those persons, such as Mr Recaldin or Mr Creswell who might be expected to know if such departures had occurred.
6.34. I pause at this stage to make a tangential point about the power conferred upon decision makers to depart from established legal principles. In some respects, I have sympathy with the view that offers to postmasters and others should only be formulated by reference to established legal principles. I can see why some might question whether wronged postmasters and others wronged by Horizon should be in a better position in terms of financial redress than if their redress had been adjudicated upon in the courts. That thought process has troubled me on more than one occasion. However, in my view, the answer to this troubling thought, in the end, is quite straightforward. It was the Post Office, the Department and Ministers who committed to providing financial redress which was full and fair. On any view, the Post Office, as a corporate entity, was substantially to blame for the wrongs perpetrated upon postmasters and others, and it was the Post Office which announced publicly that fairness might justify a departure from established legal principles. The Department is and was at all material times, the only shareholder of the Post Office and it was the Department which committed to funding all the financial redress. It has never contradicted what the Post Office has said about departing from established legal principles in order to achieve fairness. If a corporate body has caused harm on a very substantial scale, it, and its sole shareholder, is entitled to provide redress as it thinks appropriate in all the circumstances, subject only of course, to acting within its lawful powers.
6.35. There is a substantial body of evidence produced to the Inquiry which suggests that a first offer made on behalf of the Post Office, once rejected, is sometimes followed by an offer which is substantially increased. Those who act for claimants who are also Core Participants have demonstrated (primarily by examples set out in their written submissions) that first offers are sometimes increased very substantially if rejected; they have pointed to increases exceeding £100,000 between first and subsequent offers.[316] Obviously, such increases suggest that there are instances in which those who have been involved with advising and deciding upon an appropriate initial offer have not been sufficiently focussed upon making offers in settlement which are “full and fair”.
6.36. In the Progress Update, I wrote that the commitment to provide financial redress which was “full and fair” was not the traditional stance adopted by a Defendant in our adversarial system of civil litigation. I made it clear that by using that phraseology, the Post Office, the Minister and the Department had created an expectation that the offers made to claimants in all financial redress schemes would be a genuine appraisal by the Post Office and/or the Department of what was full and fair monetary compensation. When I was told by Ms Gallafent KC that, if appropriate, offers would be made to claimants that were based upon fairness as opposed to strict legal principle, that reinforced the view that compensation would be “full and fair”. Yet, according to Mr Cooper, from more or less the launch of the scheme, the expectation was that apart from taking a more relaxed stance towards certain evidential issues (because it was realised that postmasters had often been deprived by the Post Office of important records) the independent panels would determine offers on the basis of the likely awards which would be made if the issues before the panels were instead being litigated in court.
6.37. There are approximately 1500 complex and standard cases to be resolved in HSS. Of those cases, 314 were submitted to the Post Office between May 2020 and 27 November 2020, less any claims settled recently.[317] I will return to that state of affairs in the context of the speed of delivery of financial redress later in this volume. However, the number of unresolved cases submitted so long ago is also relevant to an appraisal of whether financial redress is being delivered which is full and fair. In my view, the number of such unresolved cases demonstrates quite clearly that the resolution of the high value claims causes significant difficulties because the claimants on the one hand, and the Post Office on the other, have markedly different views about what constitutes full and fair. Furthermore, at least some of these cases are still at various stages of negotiation under the current Dispute Resolution Procedure and, so far as I can judge, they are stuck, or they are proceeding very slowly. That demonstrates further, the difficulties involved in valuing some of the substantial claims.
6.38. When the Fixed Sum Offer became available in HSS, top-up payments were made to those who had already settled their claims for less than £75,000. In total 1,800 claimants became eligible to receive such payments.[318] What, if any, significance does that statistic have? It might tend to show that a large number of claimants settled their claims at too low a sum. That is at least possible given that very few had obtained legal advice before submitting a claim and many accepted offers without obtaining the paid for legal advice which was available. Alternatively, of course, it might demonstrate that very many claimants received a total payment of £75,000 when that was not justified. In their written closing submissions, the Department in particular, acknowledged this latter possibility as being more probable than not.[319] My own view is that it is very likely that a significant number of claimants had undervalued their claims, especially in the claims valued at under £20,000 and claims valued in the bracket £20,000 to £60,000. However, it is also likely that many claimants who received the top-up payment received something of a windfall.
6.39. I return to the significance which should be given to the high rate of accepted offers. Common sense dictates that there is very likely to be a whole host of reasons as to why a claimant may accept an offer. One such reason of course, is that the claimant is satisfied with the offer. That happy state of affairs is most usual in my experience, when the offer matches the claim submitted or is very close to it. Experience has taught me however, that offers are sometimes accepted which are substantially less than the sum claimed. There can be a variety of reasons why claimants accept offers in these circumstances. For example, they might be worn down by negotiating tactics and/or delay, they may be desperate to receive redress in order to avoid financial ruin, they may be unduly anxious about the process or just unwilling, for a combination of reasons, to carry on the struggle to achieve a better offer.
6.40. Just as a claimant may accept an offer which is less than the sum claimed, there will no doubt, be instances in which the decision maker makes an offer to a claimant which is less than the claim submitted for proper and appropriate reasons. Two obvious examples are when a claimant erroneously calculates the claim, or makes claims which are, on any view, unsustainable.
6.41. Making reasonable allowances for all these possibilities, the evidence adduced before me does not support the view that the Post Office and the Department successfully implemented their aim of providing financial redress which was full and fair by the process of assessment which was undertaken prior to 31 July 2024. In my view, the true picture is that a high percentage of the most modest claims were settled for sums which were claimed. Whether some of those settlements were, in reality, full and fair is a matter of conjecture. Many claims in the bracket £20,000 to £60,000 were likely assessed at sums which were not full and fair. On any view, many of the larger claims have proved very difficult to settle. On the available evidence, I certainly cannot confirm that a majority of those high value claims which were resolved on, or before 31 July 2024 were settled for sums which were full and fair.
6.42. I am fortified in these conclusions because legal advice, paid for by the Post Office or the Department, has never been available prior to an offer being made by the Post Office. Undoubtedly, in my view, that has meant that some claimants have failed to particularise all potential heads of claim either fully, or at all. It is likely, too, that some claims have been formulated much less persuasively than would have been the case had a lawyer been involved.
6.43. The advent of the Fixed Sum Offer in HSS has brought about a very significant transformation for many of those claimants whose claims were resolved on, or before 31 July 2024. To repeat, 1,800 claimants became eligible for top-up payments up to £75,000.[320] That is a figure of some interest. As I have said, by 31 July 2024 the number of claims which had been settled was 2,424. It follows that just under 75% of claimants who had settled their claims in HSS became entitled to top-up payments on the introduction of the Fixed Sum Offer.
6.44. That statistic raises a number of possibilities each of which is plausible, but two of which, at least, would be unpalatable. The first unpalatable possibility is that many of the claimants who settled their claims with the Post Office received awards which were neither full nor fair. If that is right, these claimants have, very belatedly, received more appropriate redress. The second unpalatable possibility is that many of the claimants who reached settlements with the Post Office have now received additional payments which in reality, have provided them with financial redress which is more, and in some instances, substantially more, than their entitlement. There is of course a third possibility which is somewhat less troubling. Some claimants have received too much, some have received (more or less) the correct amount and some have still received too little. The evidence before me is not sufficiently clear for me to make a definitive judgment, but my strong inclination is to conclude that the top-up payments have resulted in many claimants receiving more than their entitlement.
6.45. Be that as it may, I should record that those who accepted an offer in settlement which was for a sum greater than £75,000, but who may consider that the sum accepted was not full and fair will be able to mount an appeal in HSSA. In consequence, if my rather gloomy conclusion about how complex and standard claims have been concluded thus far is correct, there will be an opportunity to put right any failures to deliver redress which is full and fair.
6.46. Over the last nine months or thereabouts, the number of claimants in HSS has more than doubled. As of 30 April 2025, the total number of eligible claims submitted to HSS stood at 9,437. I understand that 4,699 of those claims have opted for the Fixed Sum Offer.[321] It follows that it is likely that about 50% of all the claims in HSS are for the Fixed Sum Offer.
6.47. Most of those who have come forward since 31 July 2024 in order to claim the Fixed Sum Offer, have done so because they have been actively encouraged by the Post Office to apply. All the claimants must demonstrate that they suffered shortfalls due to Horizon before they qualify for a payment, so they will have suffered some harm which should be the subject of redress. However, I find it very difficult to believe that thousands of people who have always had eligible claims under HSS would have decided against making a claim during the period between May 2020 and July 2024 if their true losses were anything like £75,000. Of course, I understand that some former or current postmasters would have been deterred by completing the claim form, assembling the relevant evidence and dealing with the Post Office. I very much doubt however, whether such matters would have deterred approximately 5,000 people. In my view, it is far more likely that many of the claimants who have emerged recently, i.e. since July 2024, have done so because (a) they have been actively encouraged to apply and (b) £75,000 represents for them a substantial windfall as opposed to full and fair financial redress.
6.48. I have thought it appropriate to dwell on this possible adverse consequence of Fixed Sum Offers in HSS not to criticise the claimants who have benefitted from the way the scheme has unfolded, but rather to introduce a fear which has grown stronger as the Inquiry has delved deeper into all issues related to financial redress. My fear is that the advent of Fixed Sum Offers in HSS (and perhaps in other schemes) has made it more difficult for claimants with genuine substantial claims which exceed the Fixed Sum Offer to receive offers which are full and fair.
6.49. Why do I say that? First and foremost because it seems very likely to me that as the bill to pay the thousands of claims for Fixed Sums Offers grows, so there will be an instinctive reaction amongst decision makers to draw in the purse strings in assessed claims in HSS, in particular. Such a reaction would be wrong, and I hope that my fear is unfounded. The rejection or acceptance of Recommendations 2 and 3 may be an early indicator of whether the Post Office and the Department are willing to take steps to minimise the possibility which I fear may exist. Second, the fear that I have expressed is a sentiment that has been articulated to me in representations I have received since the evidence gathering closed in November 2024. At the moment, such representations are a trickle, but I can readily understand that the sentiment expressed is held by a significant number of Core Participants who are still fighting hard for what they see as appropriate redress.
6.50. An issue which arises in all schemes, but which can be dealt with conveniently at this juncture, is encapsulated by the following questions. Should claimants who opt to have their claims assessed be able to change course and accept the Fixed Sum Offer? If the answer to that question is Yes, at what point in the assessment process, if any, should that entitlement cease?
6.51. Currently, claimants make an irrevocable decision about whether or not to accept the Fixed Sum Offer when they submit their claim for financial redress. Once the assessment process is started and the Fixed Sum Offer is rejected (or technically, not accepted) there is no going back.
6.52. What is the justification for this inflexible approach? I have scrutinised paragraphs 233 to 240 of the written closing submissions made on behalf of the Department with care, but I can find no reasoned justification for the current approach. Paragraph 274 of the closing submissions of the Post Office is more instructive:
“274. … it is POL’s view that leaving the fixed sum offer open for acceptance while the Postmaster proceeded down the full assessment route would defeat the purpose of the new offer. It is more likely than not that, understandably, a number of applicants would proceed to individual assessment given the potential to receive an amount higher than £75,000, which would incur further cost and time delay. Such a proposal cannot be compared to a version of the Part 36 regime in the Civil Procedure Rules where the cost consequences are ignored because it is the costs consequences built into CPR Part 36 which makes the regime effective. If the £75,000 offer was open for acceptance at any time, applicants would not be incentivised to accept the offer and the administrative burden and delay associated with the HSS would be unlikely to be reduced.”[322]
6.53. At first blush, there appears to be much force in what the Post Office say about this issue. However, I remain instinctively, uncomfortable about the inflexibility of the current position. Indeed, my instinctive discomfort has grown in recent weeks following the announcement of HSSA, given one of its specific provisions. I refer here to the so-called ‘best offer’ principle.
6.54. Under this principle an eligible claimants in HSSA will never receive less redress than was offered at the HSS Panel Stage or if they have entered the Dispute Resolution Procedure, the best offer made in that Procedure. That is so even if the appellate panel determines that a lesser sum would be full and fair redress. To an extent, at least, the “fear factor” to use the words of the Business and Trade Committee, has been removed from the appeal process. Every claimant who chose to have a claim assessed (and who was not topped-up to £75,000) may appeal the offer made or the settlement concluded, safe in the knowledge that there is no risk of losing a prior better offer made in the stages I have mentioned. Going forward, every claimant who has yet to receive an offer will know that the offer “at first instance” (when it comes) is in the bag, and there is nothing to lose by appealing.
6.55. Why is it appropriate to remove the fear factor from HSSA but rigidly retain it in relation to the choice made by claimants between the Fixed Sum Offer and assessment? Try as I might, I cannot see the justification for these different approaches.
6.56. Some may think that I should hold another hearing to deal with this and other redress issues. There have certainly been calls for such a hearing. As I have explained however, I have decided against convening such a hearing.
6.57. I have reached that conclusion for two interlinked reasons. First, as I have said already, I consider it more appropriate to publish this volume as soon as I reasonably can rather than risk any kind delay to its publication in order that a further hearing can be convened. Second, I have reached a clear conclusion about whether the fear factor should be removed or, at least reduced, in respect of the choice for claimants between the Fixed Sum Offer and assessment.
6.58. I think it reasonable to suppose that no claimant in HSS would choose assessment over the Fixed Sum Offer if the value of the claim to be presented was less than £75,000. I very much doubt whether assessment would be chosen, with all that it entails, if the claim as calculated came out at say 10% or 15% above £75,000. If the claim as formulated was substantially above £75,000 – say at least £100,000 – I can well imagine that many claimants would pursue assessment. The number opting for assessment would no doubt, grow as their claims increase in value beyond £100,000.
6.59. If the supposition advanced above is correct, it must follow that there are likely to be a comparatively modest number of claimants who have a genuinely difficult choice to make about whether to opt for the Fixed Sum Offer or assessment.
6.60. At the moment of course, claimants have to make their choice without the benefit of legal advice unless they are prepared to pay for it themselves. The survey evidence demonstrates that about 12% of those who responded to the survey obtained legal advice at some stage during the process of making their initial claims. A slightly smaller percentage (9%) obtained legal advice prior to formulating their claims. This was at a time when the Fixed Sum Offer was not available to claimants, but it is a useful reminder that claimants in HSS have been reluctant to obtain legal advice when no funding for such advice has been made available by the Department.
6.61. I regard it as unconscionable and wholly unfair that claimants in HSS are unable to obtain legal advice, paid for by the Department, about whether they should opt for the Fixed Sum Offer or assessment of their claims. Yet the Department continues to resist this as if its life depended upon it.
6.62. In OCS, GLOS and HCRS claimants can obtain legal advice paid for by the Department before deciding whether to accept the Fixed Sum Offer. All that distinguishes those claimants from the claimants in HSS is that the numbers of claimants in HSS are many times more than the combined numbers in OCS, GLOS and HCRS. Presumably, the Department is worried about the potential cost of funding the legal fees payable in respect of large numbers of HSS claimants. Yet it is prepared to spend up to £30,000 for each claimant to have advice about whether to accept the Fixed Sum Offer in HCRS!
6.63. In my view, the Department’s stance on this issue is indefensible. I appreciate that in most cases the choice of Fixed Sum Offer or assessment facing a claimant will be easily resolved, as the Department maintains. That is not really the point. The decision is equally easy to resolve in most instances in the other schemes. Just as in the other schemes, however, there will be claimants who will face really difficult decisions, those decisions, inevitably, will be much easier to make with legal assistance.
6.64. It is of some note that the Department’s stance on this issue is not even defended by the Post Office. In its written closing submissions, the Post Office supported unequivocally, the suggestion that claimants in HSS should be entitled to legal advice funded by the Department before making a choice between assessment and the Fixed Sum Offer.[323]
6.65. It is also worth stressing that if funded legal advice is made available (for those who wish to take it up) in order to choose between the Fixed Sum Offer and assessment, the need for funded legal advice “up front” probably becomes unnecessary. The process of choosing between the Fixed Sum Offer and assessment, with the aid of a lawyer, should inevitably, ensure that a claimant’s claim is properly evaluated from the outset.
6.66. I recommend that:
4. All claimants in HSS shall be entitled to obtain legal advice funded by the Department prior to choosing between accepting the Fixed Sum Offer or seeking financial redress which is assessed. The remuneration for such advice shall be in accordance with a scale of fees commensurate with the scale which is operative in GLOS.
6.67. If, as I hope, the recommendation above is accepted and implemented swiftly, claimants will choose between the Fixed Sum Offer and assessment only after they have had the benefit of legal advice (or having made a conscious decision that such advice is unnecessary). In those circumstances is there a need to reduce still further or remove the fear factor which currently subsists in relation to the choice between the Fixed Sum Offer and assessment? I have found this a very difficult issue to determine. I am acutely aware that there are many who think that the Fixed Sum Offer in HSS (and all the other schemes) should be the bottom rung of a ladder below which no eligible claimant should fall. I am aware too, of the cogent arguments to the opposite effect which are succinctly summarised in the written closing submissions of the Post Office. (See paragraph 6.52 above).
6.68. After much thought, I have reached the following conclusions. First, it is not appropriate for all eligible claimants in all schemes to be able to abandon assessment at any stage of the process of assessment and opt to take the Fixed Sum Offer instead. I cannot convince myself that the Fixed Sum Offer should, in effect, become a guaranteed minimum payment for all claimants regardless of when they make a choice to revert from assessment to the fixed sum. Second, the current position whereby claimants must make an irrevocable choice between the Fixed Sum Offer and assessment at the very beginning of the process i.e. when claim is submitted too inflexible. Third, claimants who opt for assessment when submitting a claim should be able to revert to a Fixed Sum Offer once a first assessed offer is made. If, however, they do not make that choice within a reasonable time of the first offer being made, there can be no going back to the Fixed Sum Offer at a later stage. In this context I would regard three months after receipt of the first assessed offer as being a reasonable time in which to make a decision. In my view an arrangement of this sort would provide a sufficient degree of flexibility and greater fairness without, at the same time, driving a coach and horses through the rationale of Fixed Sum Offers.
6.69. Accordingly, I recommend:
5. Any claimant who opts to have a claim assessed when the claim is submitted to the Post Office or the Department may decide to accept the Fixed Sum Offer at any time thereafter, up to and including the date which is three calendar months following the receipt by the claimant of a first assessed offer. For the avoidance of any doubt, (1) this recommendation applies to all relevant schemes i.e. HSS, OCS/ HCRS and GLOS and (2) once the time period specified in the first sentence hereof has expired, the claimant will have no right to accept the Fixed Sum Offer.
6.70. There are currently many hundreds of claims in HSS which are still to be assessed. There may yet be a significant number of additional claims to be assessed over and above those which exist. The aim will be to deliver assessments which result in financial redress which is full and fair for each claimant. Self-evidently, all these will be claims in which the claimant has reached the decision that the offer of £75,000 does not constitute full and fair financial redress i.e. the claims which remain to be assessed will all be substantial claims and no doubt, some will be very substantial. This will undoubtedly prove to be quite some test for the claimants and their advisors and the decision makers.
6.71. That said, I anticipate that the greater clarity relating to the application of the phrase full and fair which I recommend (Recommendations 2 and 3) will have a significant beneficial impact upon the offers which are made to claimants following assessments by the independent advisory panels.
6.72. On its own however, the implementation of those recommendations will not be enough. I say that because over a period of very nearly five years HSS has had no completely independent person or organisation tasked with facilitating or, if necessary, imposing a settlement upon the claimants and/or the Post Office and the Department which can, objectively be regarded as being full and fair. In my view, that has been a serious omission in respect of the governance, administration and delivery of HSS. It has also been a serious obstacle to the aim of ensuring that all offers made by the Post Office to claimants are full and fair. In OCS/HCRS and GLOS former distinguished judges have been brought in to perform such functions as I describe in this paragraph.
6.73. I stress that I am not suggesting that the independent advisory panels lack impartiality. Much of the evidence I have heard suggest that they seek to perform their function objectively and appropriately. No one has suggested that they should be removed from the process of formulating offers to claimants. However, given that they are convened for specific cases only, it is difficult for individual panels to take a broader view as to how they should operate.
6.74. Accordingly, I recommend:
6. A suitably qualified senior lawyer shall be appointed to HSS as soon as is practicable with the aim that any such appointee will take appropriate action to ensure that first offers to claimants (a) are full and fair (b) made to those who have submitted claims to the Post Office and which are to be assessed as soon as is reasonably practicable and (c) are made to future claimants whose claims are to be assessed within a reasonable time.
7. The appointed person shall be given appropriate powers to ensure that these tasks can be performed and carried into effect. If it is considered necessary by the appointing authority, it should consult with the Advisory Board, Dentons, Sir Gary Hickinbottom, Sir Ross Cranston and an appropriate number of claimants’ representatives (as well as its own advisors) before determining the appropriate powers.
6.75. I am conscious, of course, that the number of cases which it will be necessary for the appointee to supervise will run into four figures. Accordingly, powers of delegation to selected panel chairs will be essential in order that the monitoring and supervisory functions of the appointee can be carried out expeditiously. I return to the functions of the person appointed in accordance with Recommendations 6 and 7 at paragraph 6.177 below.
6.76. Currently, the advisory panels are just that. Their determinations about offers to be made do not bind the Post Office and/or the Department. I accept the evidence that to date, the Post Office has never made an offer to a claimant which is less than the offer suggested by a panel. I accept too, that the Post Office occasionally makes an offer which exceeds that which has been suggested by a panel. However, I can see that the fact that the Post Office and the Department has the discretion, in effect, to veto the view of a panel (albeit it has not been exercised) could lead some to question the independence and impartiality of the process as a whole. I consider that confidence in HSS would be enhanced if the Post Office and the Department were bound to make an offer which was at least equivalent to the offer suggested by a panel. Accordingly, I recommend:
8. In HSS the Post Office shall be obliged to make, and the Department shall be obliged to approve (when necessary) a first offer to a claimant which is no less than the sum recommended by the Independent Advisory Panel.
6.77. I record, specifically, that this recommendation does not preclude the Post Office from making an offer which exceeds the sum suggested by a panel.
6.78. In my view, Recommendations 2 to 8 inclusive should be seen as a package of measures which, if implemented together, would substantially improve the prospect that first offers in HSS will be full and fair going forward.
6.79. I turn to evaluate the newly created appeals process, so far as that is possible, given that it has been created very recently. An attempt at evaluation is necessary, however, since it is at least possible that there will be quite a substantial number of appeals under HSSA, especially given the introduction of the ‘best offer principle’. If there are obvious problems which need to be fixed, the sooner they are identified (and the fix applied) the better. Each appeal will involve an intricate assessment process which ultimately, will have as its goal the delivery of financial redress which is full and fair. A substantial number of claims under appeal will prove to be quite a test for all those involved both numerically and substantively.
6.80. The principle of an appeal process is welcomed by all Core Participants, who responded to my invitation to make written submissions about HSSA. That is hardly a surprise given the length of time the process has been under consideration and the level of support it received as soon as it was announced approximately two years ago. Nonetheless, Core Participants have, through their representatives, voiced a number of criticisms or concerns. I list those which I regard as most important. First, the suggestion is made that the Department should be removed from the appeal process and, instead, it should be administered and delivered by a body or group of persons which is completely independent of the Post Office and the Department. Second, a number of concerns are expressed about the eligibility criteria. It is suggested that there are cohorts of claimants in HSS who are excluded from the appeal process. Numerically the most significant number who are excluded are those who have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer, and/or will accept such an offer in the future.
6.81. The involvement of the Department in the appeal process relates to its early stages. Immediately following the submission of an appeal, the Department will carry out what is described as a “fresh assessment of [the] case” which may result in an increased offer or a decision to the effect that the Department is satisfied with the offer previously made. Negotiations may then ensue between the claimant and the Department facilitated by Dentons. If those steps fail to produce an agreement the dispute reaches a panel which is appointed by Dentons.
6.82. I am not surprised that some Core Participants consider that any re-assessment should be undertaken by an independent third party given that the Department may have been involved in decision making in relation to previous offers. However, this is in effect, the model which is followed in GLOS. In that scheme the Department formulates and makes a first offer. If that is unacceptable to the claimant, a negotiation between the claimant and the Department takes place which either culminates in a settlement or a referral to an independent panel. I would be loathe to suggest that there should be different processes as between HSSA and GLOS five years on from the launch of HSS, and three years on from the launch of GLOS.
6.83. I have reached the view that if the first stage of the appeal process is to be a re-assessment followed by a negotiation, there is no need to remove the Department from that part of the process. The decisions made by the Department at this stage do not bind anyone and, in reality, this stage is no more than a facilitated negotiation. I do not accept that the Department is, in reality, the arbiter of appeals, as suggested on behalf of the clients of Hodge Jones & Allen. Only the independent appeals panel (and/or the reviewer) can issue a binding determination.
6.84. I have given close consideration to whether this re-assessment stage is necessary at all. I infer that its main justification is that it avoids all appeals being considered by an independent panel with all the attendant expense, time and effort that will entail. However, set against that consideration it should be noted that an assessment process will already have been undertaken by an advisory panel constituted by independent experts in their respective fields. Assuming that the basis of the appeal is not “additional or fresh evidence” what is the purpose of the Department carrying out its own fresh review? That is particularly so if the offer made by the Post Office (on the advice of the independent panel) is one that has been approved by the Department. It might well be argued with some cogency that this first step is unnecessary, and its main effect, in practice, will be to introduce avoidable delay.
6.85. However, no one has suggested that the re-assessment stage should be removed from the process. In these circumstances, I have decided against making any recommendation which would alter the process envisaged for HSSA very significantly and which could have a knock-on effect upon what occurs in GLOS. I note too, that the Department intends to produce its response in 90% of cases within 40 working days “of submission of a substantially completed appeal”. While I acknowledge that this target may not always be met, the period of time spent on this first phase is likely to be comparatively short.
6.86. I turn to the criticisms which are levelled against the eligibility criteria for an appeal.
6.87. There is substantial support for the view that those who accept the Fixed Sum Offer should not be prevented from appealing against their award. It is said that claimants who accept the fixed sum may have undervalued their claim very substantially and, accordingly, fairness demands that the settlement at undervalue should be put right on appeal.
6.88. I acknowledge the possibility that claimants may opt for the Fixed Sum Offer when, in reality, their true claims are worth more. That possibility is greater if, as is currently the case, it is unlikely that a claimant will be in receipt of legal advice before making the decision to accept the Fixed Sum Offer. On the other hand, the possibility will recede significantly going forward, if Recommendation 4 is accepted.
6.89. Until the arrival of the Fixed Sum Offer option all settled claims in HSS had been assessed. 1800 of those claims (out of a total of approximately 2,400) were settled for less than £75,000 and, as I understand it, the majority of those claimants have now received top-up payments. On the evidence made available to the Inquiry, there is no means of knowing whether any of those claimants had seriously undervalued their claims. I simply do not know whether the possibility I referred to in the first sentence of the last paragraph is theoretical or real life. The same applies to those who have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer since July 2024 to the present time. Going forward, as I have said, Recommendation 4, if implemented, would reduce the risk very greatly if it turns out that in some circumstances it is real life.
6.90. In these circumstances, I cannot persuade myself to recommend that all claimants who accepted the Fixed Sum Offer should have an unrestricted right of appeal to HSSA.
6.91. However, that does not mean that I rule out the possibility that claimants who have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer should be afforded a right to appeal against their acceptance of the offer if they are granted permission to do so. I appreciate that the appeal rights created in HSSA are currently unrestricted in the sense that permission to appeal is not required.
That is to be contrasted with the process for appealing in the courts in which permission to appeal is much more often than not required as a first step both in civil and criminal cases. A right to appeal only if permission is granted has the considerable advantage that proper arguments have to be advanced at an early stage to justify an appeal.
6.92. On the basis of the available evidence, I do not feel able to recommend without reservation that there should be a right of appeal relating to the acceptance of the Fixed Sum Offer, provided permission for such an appeal is granted. I do consider however, that this possibility should be considered as a matter of urgency by the Department following consultation with the Advisory Board, claimants’ legal representatives and others considered appropriate by the Department. About one thing however, I have no doubt. If an appeal with permission is introduced, the person considering the issue of permission must be wholly independent of the Department and the Post Office. An obvious candidate would be the person appointed in accordance with Recommendation 6 (if that Recommendation is accepted) but it could just as easily be the Reviewer. Accordingly, I recommend:
9. The Department, following consultation with the Advisory Board, claimants’ representatives and any other persons or bodies it thinks appropriate, shall give urgent consideration to whether claimants who have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer in HSS should be afforded the opportunity to appeal against their acceptance of such an offer, if they are granted permission so to do. If a right of appeal with permission is introduced, the issue of permission to pursue such an appeal must be considered by a person who is wholly independent of the Department and the Post Office.
6.93. As I have already said, HSSA is described as operating under the ‘best offer’ principle.[324] There are however, two scenarios in which this statement may need clarification.
6.94. In scenario one the claimant has received an offer at the HSS Panel Stage and has also received an offer in the Dispute Resolution Procedure. If the offer in the Dispute Resolution Procedure is greater than the offer at HSS Panel stage no problem arises. If however, the offer in the Dispute Resolution Procedure is less than the offer at the HSS Panel Stage, what follows? Is the offer at the HSS Panel stage still the ‘best offer’ if the appeal produces no better result than the offer at the Dispute Resolution Stage? While this scenario may be more theoretical than real there is a need for clarity.
6.95. In scenario two the claimant has received an offer at the HSS Panel Stage and then an offer in the Dispute Resolution Procedure which is higher. The claimant is not satisfied and so appeals. The Department makes an offer which is higher than any offer received thus far, but it still proves unsatisfactory to the claimant who take the claim to the independent appeal panel which recommends an offer which is lower than the offer made by the Department. All subsequent attempts to have the offer first made by the panel increased, fail. As a matter of fact, the ‘best offer’ made to the claimant is the offer made to the claimant by the Department. On a strict reading of HSSA however, that offer will have been lost by the claimant taking the claim to the appeal panel. Further, which is the ‘best offer’ which can be accepted – the offer at the HSS Panel Stage, or the offer at the Dispute Resolution Stage?
6.96. The Department’s written submissions of 14 May 2025 are silent on these points relating to the ‘best offer’ principle. Indeed, they do not mention the principle at all. The sum total of the relevant written material about the ‘best offer’ principle is that which I have set out at paragraphs 4.89 to 4.91 above. I recommend:
10. The Department shall issue a supplementary document/announcement clarifying the meaning and intent of the ‘best offer’ principle in the Horizon Shortfall Scheme Appeal (“HSSA”) process demonstrating how it is intended to operate in practice with appropriate examples, if thought necessary.
OCS
6.97. There are currently a total of 114 claimants in OCS. 111 claimants are persons whose convictions were quashed by the Courts. Three claimants were prosecuted but not convicted. All the claimants in OCS (save one) are represented by experienced barristers and solicitors. The fees of those lawyers are paid for by the Department. Inevitably, all the claimants who are eligible in OCS have suffered very severe detriment and all of them have very substantial claims.
6.98. The Fixed Sum Offer of £600,000 in OCS was the first to be introduced in any scheme. It was announced on 18 September 2023. The Inquiry has not explored in detail the basis upon which the sum of £600,000 was determined but, no doubt, it was based upon an acceptance of Lord Dyson’s evaluation of likely awards in the courts for non-pecuniary losses for the tort of malicious prosecution together with an assessment of an appropriate additional sum to cover likely pecuniary claims.
6.99. The Fixed Sum Offer is open only to persons who were convicted and whose convictions have been quashed. The three claimants in OCS who were prosecuted but acquitted cannot opt to accept it.
6.100. At the time of writing, 62 claimants have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer. Assuming that remains the case, there are a total of 49 claimants who are eligible for the Fixed Sum Offer but who have yet to decide whether to accept it, or have taken the decision to have their claims assessed.[325] I shall assume that to be accurate for the purposes my Report.
6.101. Of those who have chosen assessment, eight claimants have reached full and final settlements of their entire claims, seven claimants have reached settlements of parts of their claims, and there are seven claimants who are in dispute over all aspects of their claims (22 claimants in total). I am aware that there are 14 claimants who have made claims in respect of certain heads of loss (nine of which have been settled) but who must have opted for their claims to be assessed. There are 13 claimants who have yet to make any claims (save for claims for interim payments).
6.102. In summary, of the 111 claimants eligible to accept the Fixed Sum Offer (i) a majority of claimants have opted for the Fixed Sum Offer (62) (ii) 36 claimants have opted to have their claims assessed and (iii) 13 claimants have yet to make a decision about assessment compared with the Fixed Sum Offer. Of those who have opted to have their claims assessed, there are still only eight claimants who have reached full and final settlements.
6.103. One of the claimants who was prosecuted but not convicted has reached a full and final settlement following an assessment. The other two claimants have yet to submit their claims (save in respect of interim payments).
6.104. It is impossible for me to judge whether the Fixed Sum Offer in OCS provides financial redress which is full and fair in respect of all the of claimants who have accepted it. I say that because there are many possible reasons why claimants will have accepted the Offer. For some, the Fixed Sum Offer may represent an over-payment of redress. For those claimants, the decision to accept the Offer would be very easy. For many claimants (I hope) the sum of £600,000 was sufficiently close to the true value of their claims (one way or the other) that it was an easy decision to accept it. For others (I hope very few) they could not endure the prospect of a long, drawn-out assessment process and so they concluded that they should accept a substantial sum (albeit less than their full entitlement). Unless I were to investigate the details of every claim (which is neither permissible nor practicable within any kind of reasonable timescale) I simply cannot determine the true position.
6.105. All that said, I believe that all those claimants who have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer have instructed lawyers to act for them throughout the process. While I acknowledge that lawyers are no more likely to be infallible than other professional advisors, I am satisfied that the majority of claimants will have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer having received full advice on the merits of so doing. That, at least, provides a degree of comfort that most claimants who have accepted the fixed sum will have considered all the pros and cons of so doing before they make their decision.
6.106. I have no means of knowing whether those claimants who have opted for assessed claims have received financial redress which is full and fair. The number of claimants who have negotiated settlements of both pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses is still a very low percentage of those who have chosen to have their claims assessed. They have not disclosed their settlement sum to the Inquiry and I have not thought it appropriate to ask for that information or to compel its disclosure. It has been obvious throughout the life of OCS that most of the claimants value their privacy on the topic of financial redress.
6.107. In any event, of course, all the claimants who have opted for assessment of their claims have, as a backstop, the right to bring a claim for damages against the Post Office in civil proceedings. Further, since the appointment of Sir Gary Hickinbottom in February 2024, they have the right to bring that part of their claim which is concerned with pecuniary losses before the panel chaired by Sir Gary. Although the panel’s view of the amount to be awarded to a claimant for pecuniary losses does not bind either the claimant or the Post Office, I would anticipate that the panel’s view would be very persuasive. I should say that this view was reinforced when I read the report of Sir Gary to the Department referred to at paragraph 4.177 above. It is clear that the independent panel which determined a point of principle relating to “loss of opportunity” did so after receiving both oral and written submissions from parties.
6.108. Naturally, I have thought about why the neutral evaluation of Lord Dyson, in relation to non-pecuniary losses, and the decisions of the panel chaired by Sir Gary, in respect of pecuniary losses, do no bind the claimants and the Post Office. I have not explored this in evidence at the Inquiry because none of those Core Participants who are claimants in OCS have invited me to do so and, in the main, they have always conveyed the impression via their recognised legal representatives that they are content with the process in OCS, if not necessarily the speed of delivery of redress.
6.109. However, I assume that claimants are not bound by the evaluation of Lord Dyson and the decisions of the panel because the Post Office and the Department recognise that this would cut across the preserved rights of the claimants to bring claims for malicious prosecution in civil proceedings. It is less obvious to me why the Post Office should not be bound by Lord Dyson’s evaluations or the decisions of the panel. Indeed, I have given serious consideration to whether I should recommend that a proposed offer which is the product of the application of Lord Dyson’s neutral evaluation and a decision by the panel on pecuniary loss should bind the Post Office and the Department. However, I have decided against such a recommendation because, in my view, the same is unnecessary. I simply cannot think of any circumstances in which the Post Office and the Department would seek to avoid making such an offer given their commitment to providing financial redress which is full and fair.
6.110. All the claims which are now unresolved in OCS will, shortly, be transferred to HCRS and the two schemes will, in effect, be merged. The Minister had announced that Sir Gary had been appointed to chair the panel which was to come into existence in HCRS to issue non-binding decisions about claims for pecuniary losses before the merger of the two schemes had been announced. My assumption is that Sir Gary will now chair a panel which deals with all assessed claims for pecuniary losses in the merged scheme. I have seen or heard no indication to the contrary. The panel’s decision in the merged scheme will not bind the claimant.
6.111. I understand that the merged scheme will be administered and delivered by the Department. On the face of it, that is a significant difference for those claimants who would otherwise have initiated claims in OCS since their first offers will now come from the Department as opposed to the Post Office. That, however, may well prove to be a change more of form than substance. Offers in all the complex or exceptional cases in OCS had always to be approved by the Department before they were made to claimants.
6.112. As the recommendation itself makes clear, Recommendation 5 set out at paragraph 6.69 above should be equally applicable in the merged OCS/HCRS scheme. I can think of no reason why it should be confined to HSS.
GLOS
6.113. There are 492 eligible claimants in GLOS. By 30 April 2025 450 claims had been submitted to the Department. Offers had been made to 445 claimants of which 304 had been accepted.
6.114. A Fixed Sum Offer of £75,000 has been available for claimants to accept since January 2024. When Mr Creswell gave oral evidence on 6 November 2024 approximately 150 claimants had opted to accept the fixed sum. As of 30 April 2025, the number of claimants who had accepted the fixed sum was 156. That must mean that 148 claimants had accepted offers following an assessment of their claims.
6.115. By my calculation, 188 claims remain unresolved, less any that have been settled since 30 April 2025. It is reasonable to infer that all of those claims are made up of those who are yet to submit a claim and those who have opted for assessment.[326]
6.116. All the claimants in GLOS are represented by lawyers and all claimants have and will have had access to legal advice paid for by the Department before choosing whether to opt for the fixed sum.
6.117. The Fixed Sum Offer in GLOS is likely to be much closer to the true value of the claims of those who have accepted it than has been the case in HSS. I say that simply because the majority of claimants in the Group Litigation were likely to have been pursing claims which ran into many tens of thousands of pounds as a minimum. The likelihood of many of the claimants pursuing very modest claims in such litigation seems to me to be quite remote.
6.118. It also seems likely that a very significant majority of those who have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer will have done so after taking legal advice and, at the very least, will have accepted the offer because the advantages of so doing outweigh the disadvantages. I infer that it is more probable than not that a majority of those accepting the sum will have done so because, for them, the offer was full and fair.
6.119. I am prepared to reach a similar conclusion in relation to those who have accepted their assessed offers following negotiations with the Department. I say that for these reasons. First, all those claimants will have had the benefit of legal advice from lawyers who are all very familiar with the scheme and its principles. Second, all those claimants would have had the opportunity to take their offers to an independent panel if so advised and then to the Reviewer, Sir Ross Cranston if the eligibility criteria were met. The evidence, to date, suggests that there has been minimal recourse to the panel and to Sir Ross. Accordingly, there is as yet insufficient evidence upon which to form any kind of judgment about how recourse to the Panel and/or Sir Ross Cranston has worked out. I note, of course, that both the Panel and Sir Ross are wholly independent of the Department.
6.120. I appreciate, of course, that, currently, things can go wrong for claimants who pursue their claims to a panel or to Sir Ross. There is no ‘best offer’ principle in play in GLOS and I have received detailed representations from at least one Core Participant who has alerted me to the financial risks inherent in taking a claim to a panel or beyond. I am prepared to accept that some claimants may have accepted an assessed offer grudgingly to avoid such risks. Nonetheless, I infer that the numbers of claimants with that mindset is no more than a modest proportion of those who have accepted their offers.
6.121. There is no hiding the fact, however, that there are a very significant number of cases which are moving through the assessment process, and which are unresolved. It is difficult to imagine that many, if any at all, of the claimants who have yet to submit a claim (42) will opt to accept the Fixed Sum Offer. That means that all, or nearly all of the unresolved cases are to be assessed. There is a great deal of work to be done to resolve these cases.
6.122. In my view the figures set out above must demonstrate that many claims are unresolved because the valuations placed upon them by the claimants and their advisors on the one hand and the Department and its advisors on the other is markedly different. This seems to me to be a further indicator that greater clarity and certainty is required as to what is meant by the phrase full and fair.
6.123. It also seems to me that fairness now demands that two omissions should be put right. First, the ‘best offer’ principle should be incorporated into GLOS. I can think of no reason why that principle should apply in HSSA but have no application in the analogous procedure operating in what is, in effect, the appellate stages of GLOS. Second, the scheme documents governing GLOS should be amended so as to confer upon the claimant the right (to be exercised either by the claimant or his/her legal representative) to make oral representations to the independent panel if the claim proceeds that far. I can think of no reason why such a right should be conferred upon claimants in HSSA and in OCS/HCRS but be omitted from GLOS. I have pondered whether such a right should be exercisable at both the non-binding and binding stages. I have concluded, not without some hesitation, that it should be sufficient to meet proper standards of fairness if it is available at any hearing which precedes the making of a binding determination. I have suggested that the scheme documents should be amended since it may be that as a matter of practice the panel already permits short oral submissions to be made. I have no evidence to suggest that is the case, but I have received some information which suggests that is a possibility. Accordingly, I recommend that:
11. The ‘best offer’ principle which will apply in HSSA, as explained in response to Recommendation 10, shall be equally applicable in GLOS.
12. The scheme documents governing GLOS should be amended so that a right is conferred upon claimants (exercisable by the claimants themselves or their recognised legal representatives) to make oral submissions in support of their claim at the hearing convened by an independent panel prior to that panel making a binding determination in respect of a claimant’s claim or part thereof. The length of time afforded to claimants to make such oral submissions at the hearing should be no less than the time afforded to claimants for such submissions in HSSA.
6.124. Recommendation 5 is equally justified in GLOS.
HCRS
6.125. By 30 April 2025, 360 claimants had submitted claims to HCRS. Without exception all those claimants chose to accept the Fixed Sum Offer of £600,000 which was available to them. I have no means of knowing whether the sums paid out represent full and fair financial redress, since there has been no opportunity to investigate that issue in the Inquiry.
6.126. I have, of course, considered whether I should seek to undertake some assessment of this issue by convening a hearing or inviting written submissions. In my view that is not justified. It is very unlikely those whose convictions have been quashed by legislation have participated in the Inquiry. I know of no Core Participant who falls into this category. I doubt whether participation would be very likely at this stage. Those accepting £600,000 will have their own reasons, no doubt, but it is extremely doubtful that they would wish to share those reasons with the Inquiry.
6.127. A little more than 10 months has elapsed since the launch of the scheme as I write this part of this volume of my Report. There has been no indication that any eligible claimant will ask the Department to assess a claim. That may be because such claims are still being formulated. Given that many more claimants have accepted a preliminary payment than have accepted the Fixed Sum Offer I cannot rule out the possibility that some claimants will come forward and pursue assessed claims, although it seems unlikely, now that there will be many such claims.
6.128. From time to time, I have become aware that voices have been raised to suggest that more should be done to bring HCRS to the attention of those whose convictions have been quashed by legislation. It has also been suggested that not enough is being done to alert persons to the fact of the quashing of their convictions. It is true that the number of claims made to HCRS may be significantly less than the number of persons whose convictions have been quashed. There have been suggestions that the Inquiry should assist in alerting potential claimants of their rights by making recommendations as to how such claimants should be alerted to their rights or informed that their convictions have been quashed. I do not accept that such activity would fall within the Terms of Reference of the Inquiry. More importantly, I cannot believe that the Post Office, the Department and the Ministry of Justice together are incapable of (a) ascertaining the names of all those persons who fall within the terms of the legislation which quashes their convictions (or at least as many as can be identified reasonably with appropriate efforts) and (b) do what is reasonable to inform those persons that their convictions have been quashed and that they are entitled to financial redress.