Recommendation 3

HM Government Rejected

The Government is providing very timely responses to claims for redress by members of the GLO. As of 24 April, 177 claims had been submitted and 146 of them had been settled. Only 10 claims were awaiting offers. Initial offers are already made in respect of 90% of claims within 40 working days: most are dealt with much more quickly. The Government is, however, concerned about the pace at which claims are being submit-ted. For GLO, the key stages of the redress process are as follows: Ȥ Post Office disclosure. Post Office have 57 staff deployed on this work and expect to complete it by June 2024. It has already completed about 80% of its anticipated work. Post Office is disclosing materials more quickly than claimants’ lawyers can process it and so financial penalties would not speed up the overall process. Ȥ Forensic accountancy or medical advice. These advisors are commissioned by claim-ants’ lawyers on behalf of their clients in cases where they believe that this would be helpful to their case. The threat of financial penalties might well cause advisors to withdraw from this work, which would slow down redress rather than speeding it up. Ȥ Completion of the claim by postmasters’ solicitors. Again, the threat of penalties might unjustly penalise solicitors for issues out of their control. Ȥ Consideration of the claim by DBT with the support of Addleshaw Goddard. The pace of the scheme is constrained by the slower pace of submission of claims, not by the rate at which offers are produced. Addleshaw Goddard have currently assigned 15 staff to the scheme because that is the number required to deliver prompt advice on the claims being received. They have a large number of additional staff on whom they can and will call when necessary. In short, financial penalties would have no positive effect—and possible negative effects —on the pace of the scheme. Claimants already receive compensation for the time taken to deal with claims, in that interest is paid on most aspects of claims in accordance with stand-ard legal principles: the amount payable therefore increases over time. Instead, Government is taking practical steps to accelerate the scheme including: Ȥ The £75,000 fixed offer, which has already secured prompt redress for 138 people; Ȥ Working with claimants’ solicitors to reduce the level of expert evidence required to substantiate a claim; Ȥ Commissioning regular reports on the progress of the scheme from the independent case managers; and Ȥ Publishing monthly transparency data on GOV.UK1 on the progress of claims across all schemes. Government is continuing to support Post Office to speed up delivery of redress for post-masters with overturned convictions. In most cases, interim payments of up to £163,000 have been made to those postmasters within 28 days, except in complex cases where a postmaster has sadly died or was made bankrupt. Good progress has been made in settling non-pecuniary claims quickly in line with the guidance provided by Lord Dyson. Setting aside the claims which have already settled in full, Post Office has so far received 39 non-pecuni-ary claims and has made offers to 34 of these. Progress has been slower in reaching full and final settlements, but the £600,000 fixed offer has been successful in boosting the number of full and final settlements to 40, a significant improvement. Government recognises that preparing complex pecuniary claims can be stressful for claim-ants, and time consuming for legal representatives, and this is reflected by the fact that Post Office has only received pecuniary claims for 10 of the 63 outstanding claims. To encourage early submission of full claims, Government has announced that it will provide top-up pay-ments up to £450,000 to eligible claimants upon receipt of a full pecuniary claim. We will continue to review the process to ensure it is moving as quickly as possible and encourage claimants to bring forward their claims as soon as they are able to, or to accept the £600k fixed sum should they wish to. Sir Gary Hickinbottom is working with claimant representa-tives to ensure that there are no undue delays in the process of pecuniary claims through to an ultimate conclusion.