The UK government has agreed to fully fund the police investigation into criminality associated with the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.
Yesterday (24 September), Computer Weekly highlighted the national police investigation’s desperate need for extra funds and compared it with the hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money received by law firms representing the Post Office for work related to the scandal.
Lee Castleton, a former subpostmaster and a campaigner for justice, told Computer Weekly that the government has agreed to pay the money required, with £8.5m to be provided this year and £11.5m next year.
Met Police-led Operation Olympos, as the operation is known, has so far received £6m from the Home Office to cover the period between 2023 and 2027.
In May, commander Stephen Clayman, who is leading the operation, said: “We recently received a Home Office Special Grant of £2.8m, which goes some way to supporting our costs, but the reality is that we urgently need additional and sustained funding to meet our projected budget of up to £19.3m for 2026/27 and beyond.”
The cost of Operation Olympos is expected to be around £10m per year until its completion in 2030, taking the full cost above £50m, according to a freedom of information request response last year.
Computer Weekly contacted the Home Office regarding the funding, but it had not responded by the time this article was published.
Read more: There are concerns that a lack of funds for the police investigation could prevent the full truth of the Post Office scandal getting out
In comparison, the government has signed off more than £330m in payments to law firms working for the Post Office in relation to the scandal, with Herbert Smith Freehills the biggest winner, receiving just over £200m.
Speaking to Computer Weekly yesterday, scandal victims aired their frustrations.
Castleton called on prime minister Andy Burnham to put in place the monetary regulations to properly fund the investigation.
Alan Bates, who led the subpostmasters’ fight against the Post Office, said: “It has always been a priority for us to expose the truth and who was responsible.”
He added: “But the best way to keep a lid on things is to hold back the police investigation.”
Former Hull-based subpostmaster Janet Skinner, who was wrongly convicted of false accounting, lost her home and livelihood and spent time in prison separated from her two children, said: “To get to the truth, they’ve got to pay – and if they can afford to pay that amount of money to law firms, why can’t they pay to actually get to the truth, [to] get it all out in the open?”
The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly 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).
