Post Office Inquiry costs to top £50m

Inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams, seated between his Assessors. Jason Beer KC standing, with Julian Blake to his right

The cost of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry is likely to be well over £50,000,000. Reports for the last financial year alone reveal the Inquiry cost £26,198,625 to run, more than the previous three years combined.

Figures quietly published on the Inquiry website show that in the twelve months to the end of March 2024, £8m was spent on Inquiry lawyers (with a generous £1.7m going to the Chair, Sir Wyn Williams, and his assessors).

Core participant lawyers cost a further £6,149,696 with “external document review lawyers” costing £5,523,680.

The first three years of the Inquiry’s existence to the end of March 2023 cost £21,939,012, making the total amount spent to the end of March this year £48,137,637. Phases 5, 6 and 7 of the Inquiry took place during the current financial year making it a certainty that the cost of the Inquiry will top £50m.

Former Subpostmaster Lee Castleton was taken to the High Court by the Post Office over an alleged £26,000 discrepancy in his accounts. He lost his case and was told to pay court costs of £300,000. He was eventually bankrupted. Today he said “Justice is very expensive in this country. Disclosure too. If nothing else people should be punished for costs alone.”

Another former Subpostmaster, Scott Darlington, whose criminal conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2021 said: “The inquiry has been brilliantly conducted. No question. But a cost of £50 million suggests even more people and organisations have become rich off the back of this scandal. So no surprises there.”


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18 responses to “Post Office Inquiry costs to top £50m”

  1. What a joke, how can you waste this money on a circus like this!

  2. Stephen Phillips avatar

    The fifty million is presumably doubled or more by all the costs paid by witnesses for their lawyers..
    And what are we learning that is new?

  3. What a colossal waste of money. The enrichment of the establishment. Stupidly I thought Beer and cohort were genuinely outraged but really elongating the process for their own enrichment. £1.7m for sitting in a chair and taking half of every Friday off. Criminal and disgraceful.

  4. What is confusing me, having only just listened to Nicks podcast series and reading the blogs..
    -When the Horizon system kept erroneously doubling up losses that were essentially fictional amounts and a postmaster was then forced to pay off that fictional amount- how come, what was essentially an overpayment of monies due, was not picked up at the PO HQ end during reconciliation processes (transactions vs income) as an overpayment? Basic bookkeeping!

    Surely- if an organisation cannot even follow basic bookkeeping principles and provide specific transactional details as evidence to a court of any losses or overpayments in a prosecution of a sub post master then that accusation or prosecution should have failed early on every time?

    What happened to the overpaid money from the sub postmasters- that was erroneously clawed in and how was it accounted for at PO HQ? Post Office HQ was ultimately committing theft from the sub postmasters.

    How was a prosecution or even an accusation allowed to be made without specific, line by line transactional details of exactly what a loss consisted of?

    Lastly why on earth is the PO allowed to operate the compensation scheme itself when it’s time and time again proved to be wholly incompetent and has stalled the whole process at every point and is continuing to do so, it should be an independent body.

    1. The joke is – I used to work for Fujitsu a few years ago and I observed some very similar issues (replication of data) in other software. I lost my job over their abysmal coding standards (and the fact they *really* dislike disabled people in there – I was always called “the autistic developer” and people would use my autism to discredit my work).

      Interestingly, the Employment Judge who sat on my case sided with Fujitsu despite the fact I had written evidence of stereotypes, a written admission to me being passed over for work because im autistic (which they hid), I had written proof they deleted a whole bunch of evidence pertinent to my case and I even raised the whole Bates et al debacle with said Judge.

      I suppose thats why the Judge ordered people to ignore my adjustments and put me in hospital three times that week – good luck getting the JCIO to investigate that.

      I even was interviewed by Wynn Williams and co, but I never heard anything back from them after I was interviewed.

      It’s kinda weird, right? How the public spends so much on this and Fujitsu just keep doing the same things to different people and the justice system turns a blind eye until there’s money to be made.

    2. Yes – I agree; I’ve been looking for an answer to this question ever since I heard about the emerging scandal.
      Did the parties to transactions get their dues?
      Didn’t the Bank of England (the handling bank for benefits) raise any eyebrows?
      What about third-party clients (parties to bill payment services, banking transactions, etc.)?
      Did the PO perform a daily/weekly/monthly cash balance? What were the results?
      Why did it take the PO so long to recognise the system was faulty (I’m not even certain they do now).
      ????

  5. What a waste of money—far more than the PO thought they had lost through fraud. It’s time for someone to be made to pay for their callous behaviour.

  6. An astonishing redistribution of wealth — how much might have been saved if the Post Office simply did the right thing and compensated the victims? But then it’s never been about the SP’s but about maintaining the Post Office brand.

  7. I have been watching almost daily the inquiry hearings and there is no doubt all the counsels…and Sir Wyn are brilliant…but to think this inquiry has cost so much money and most of the postmasters still have not seen any redress is unbelievable….bureaucracy at its best…all those involved in the cover up, the prosecutions, everything….how do they hold their heads up and continue to screw us all over???? Boggles the mind really. By the way..love this website and the excellent reporting…Thank you so much

  8. I think there should be an enquiry into the costs of the Post Office enquiry

  9. This is a bit unfair, I feel.

    Williams, Beer and the other inquiry lawyers have generally been very good. People are entitled to get paid at a market rate for their services if they do a good job, you know?

    The people to blame for the enormous cost of this are the Post Office, its external lawyers, Fujitsu and the NFSP for trying to keep the truth secret in the first place.

  10. One of the biggest legal scandals in living memory. Who are doing very nicely out of it ? – the legal profession. Who from the Post Office or Fujitsu have yet been sent to jail or even struck off their register to practice – no one ?

    On another topic – Nick should you be reading this. Are you going to write another book covering the whole sordid story or issue an update for those already published ? I have the October 2021 hardback. I don’t know how many editions are out there to make a second updating volume a practical proposition. I think if I were in your shoes I would be heartily sick of the whole thing and itching to move onto something new.

  11. Interested Observer avatar
    Interested Observer

    The inquiry has been pretty good on the whole at getting to power of the truth.

    I was disappointed with some of the very obvious questions not being asked.

    I can’t help but feel that the inquiry is dancing around the edge of a very large chasm which is names ‘Why were The Untouchables Untouchable: what did they know that couldn’t come out?

  12. and no doubt when the report does come out – we will all be “shocked” ..and then usual glib phrases “not fit for purpose” “not robust” and “lessons must be learned” to sum everything up. It will then be the govt who “in the fullness of time” considers what action to take. So after a while it will fade away and the thick report like all others will serve as a doorstop for many a whitehall civilservants office door,

    Perhaps like the iraq enquiry which cost millions and years to be done – it all could have been done by buying “Private Eye” for £1,50. I am sure by buying the book the on the subject is all we need to know – what is needed is cash in the post and not more words

  13. Nick Read is guilty of trying to cover up the crimes of his entire staff – THEY should all be getting served court orders and fines entering the millions each. Make them lose everything, which they were happy enough for that to happen to their innocent victims!

  14. So far, the real winners throughout the time period this scandal was perpetrated and the long public enquiry, have been the lawyers. Neither the Post Office nor those costing the enquiry seem to question their eye-watering demands. The taxpayers will cough up. It is a different story entirely when it comes to helping postmasters and paying for their material, personal and reputational losses at the hands of a callous and unscrupulous Post Office. That process has itself unfolded into a separate scandal. Government has deliberately maximised the complexity and number of schemes in order to drag out the process as long as possible, during which time many claimants will die or desperately settle for insulting amounts to pay their bills.
    In my view we did not need a public enquiry at this huge price. Those responsible could still be investigated by the Police and prosecuted. I see no more likelihood of people like PV going to jail because the enquiry has exposed them. PO and ministers will see they have the finest lawyers simply because they know the extent of government culpability. Standing in the dock, their memories of events might well improve. Each claimant could have been given £50000 right away, alleviating real hardship for all. But no, let’s pay the lawyers and Sir Wyn handsome amounts they probably don’t need to stay housed, warm and very well fed.

  15. ‘Twas ever thus. It’s the rich ( the lawyers ) who gets the money and the poor ( us ) who gets the blame.

  16. One of the few industries left in this country is that of the public inquiry. Impoverished lawyers draw near to pick up the odd hundreds of thousands while the victims of tainted blood and dodgy procedures try to hang on to life in the hope they’ll finally see justice. I don’t really blame the lawyers, but I do have reservations about the glacial pace at which these inquiries move. Whenever I hear someone call for a public inquiry I wince. Haven’t they been paying attention?

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