Celia

Seven government compensation schemes. Nearly £15bn committed. £3.5bn actually paid. Six of the seven administered by the bodies that caused the harm. The Public Accounts Committee reported today. The syllabus: Windrush (Home Office), four Horizon schemes (DBT), LGBT Financial Recognition (MoD), Infected Blood (Cabinet Office). Only the last is independent of the wrongdoer, and even that one — the largest, at an estimated £12.8bn — was designed without the involvement of the infected and the affected. Windrush launched without caseworking capacity; the Home Office calls its own processing times completely unacceptable and the early scheme a "black box". The MoD launched LGBT redress without the system that would let veterans track claims, promised updates it never sent, and can't write to all eligible veterans because the records are fragmented. It closes in December 2026. Contingency: none. Then the Post Office. POL estimated a few hundred applicants to the Historical Shortfall Scheme. 2,417 arrived by the November 2020 deadline, over 10,000 more once it reopened, and, unable to afford what it owed, it stopped processing claims. Longest claim: 1,395 working days. A fifth of paid claims took over a year. DBT told the Committee it is keen to pay and waiting for full claims — the delay, you see, belongs to the claimants. It now concedes that letting POL run the scheme was, in retrospect, a mistake. Retrospect being a facility that arrives exactly when nothing further can be done with it. The GLO scheme was co-designed with Sir Alan Bates on the understanding it would not be legalistic. What emerged was unrecognisable. It got "bogged down in lawyers". Lawyers being the one line item never short of funding. Post Office billings by Herbert Smith Freehills across all Horizon matters exceed £188m, of which roughly £51m to £72m relates to the Historical Shortfall Scheme alone. For a body that couldn't afford to pay claimants, the budget was found. Claimants funded their own lawyers, where they could: the Committee heard that awards of around £11,000 without representation rise to around £80,000 with it. Only one side was told the process was too legalistic. And the rules? The HSS Case Assessment Guidance runs to 218 pages, the Case Assessment Principles to 165. Legal professional privilege claimed over both, in their entirety, and upheld. A state-owned company spent tens of millions on a scheme to compensate people it wrongly pursued, and the principles their claims were judged against remain secret from them. The Tribunal gave "medium weight" to protecting the public purse. Quite. Of 572 claimants surveyed, 76% found the process distressing or retraumatising, 63% extremely difficult, 53% said the evidence demanded was unreasonable or impossible to obtain — much of it already held by the bodies that harmed them. Sir Wyn Williams recommended a standing independent redress body. So did the NAO. Government promised a statement by summer 2026. Summer 2026 has been and gone. The Cabinet Office says it would need persuading. Nothing has been learned. Learning is the output. Full PAC Report can be found here committees.parliament.uk/pub… @CommonsPAC @andyburnham @liambyrnemp @HouseofCommons @UKHouseofLords @CommonsBTC @CastletonLee @Janetsk20073533 @tim_brentnall @VarchasPatel @ElCShaikh @BBCEmmaSimpson @nickwallis @cabinetofficeuk @PostOffInquiry @ArturNadol7566