Post Office publishes names and addresses of more than 500 wrongfully convicted subpostmasters

Sir Alan Bates is leading the fight against the Post Office

Credit: David Rose

Names and addresses of hundreds of Horizon scandal victims have been published on the Post Office website.

The beleaguered organisation is already the subject of a public inquiry after more than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted due to faulty software incorrectly recording shortfalls on their branch accounts.

Yet on Wednesday,the Daily Mail reported that the Post Office published on its corporate website a list of 555 wronged sub-postmasters,who won a High Court battle against the organisation in 2019,in a fight led by Sir Alan Bates.

The dossier showed full names and home addresses of the victims,many of whom are set to receive significant sums of money in compensation,the newspaper reports.

‘I’m just so angry’ 

It is understood that the Post Office removed the document,entitled “Confidential Settlement Deed”,from its website after the newspaper alerted the organisation to its existence.

Text within the paperwork reportedly made it clear that its contents were private,despite the document being published in full.

It is the latest humiliation for the Post Office,which could now face an investigation by the Information Commissioner and a hefty fine if it is found to have committed a data breach.

Wendy Buffrey was wrongly accused of stealing £24,000 when she ran a post office in Cheltenham

Credit: BBC

Wendy Buffrey,64,who was prosecuted for an alleged £36,000 shortfall incorrectly recorded on her branch in Cheltenham,Gloucestershire,told the newspaper: “I’m incandescent. I’m just so angry. We all thought they couldn’t do any more to us than they’ve already done.

“They need to pay for this. It’s yet another thing they’ve done that could potentially destroy one of our lives. They just don’t stop,do they?”

Meanwhile,Raoul Lumb,a partner at data protection law firm SMB,told the Mail it appeared to be “a remarkable breach” of the UK’s data protection laws and showed “a cavalier disregard for the rights of sub-postmasters”.

‘Difficult to see any justification’

He added: “It is particularly embarrassing for the Post Office because clause 12 of the document is a clause which explicitly obliges all the parties to ‘keep [it] confidential’.

“Given that,it’s difficult to see any justification for the Post Office to have made it public in a completely unredacted form.”

A Post Office spokesperson said: “The document in question has been removed from our website.

“We are investigating as an urgent priority how it came to be published. We are in the process of notifying the Information Commissioner’s Office of the incident,in line with our regulatory requirements.”

At the time the Mail approached it,the ICO said: “We have not received a data breach report on this matter. Organisations must notify the ICO within 72 hours.”