Post Office: Sub-postmistress 'lost everything' in Horizon scandal

Tracy McFadden was part of a group that took the Post Office to the High Court

A former sub-postmistress has described how her life has been wrecked by the Horizon Post Office software scandal.

Tracy McFadden ran a shop and post office in Sandiacre, Derbyshire, for more than 14 years until she was wrongly accused of stealing £16,000.

She said the accusation had ruined her successful business, cost her her good name, and left her "begging for benefits".

The Post Office said it was aware of the "human cost of the scandal".

Toby Jones stars in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Mrs McFadden has spoken to BBC Radio Derby after the story of the scandal was dramatised by ITV in Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

She was one of a number of people who were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting in what has been described as "the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history".

Mrs McFadden, from Ockbrook, said she had invested some £250,000 in setting up her business in 2002 and was seeking to expand it when the Horizon system flagged an accounting discrepancy.

"I was accused of theft because of anomalies," she said.

"We couldn't get to the bottom of it because we didn't have access to the [Horizon] system."

Mrs McFadden said she called the accounting system's helpline, and followed the instructions she was given, only to see the disputed sum double to £2,000 the next day then keep rising until it reached £16,000.

"I had to accept the debt of £16,000 because I had no alternative. If I didn't accept it I couldn't open my doors to trade," she said.

The Horizon system was designed to record the transactions carried out in a Post Office branch

Mrs McFadden said she had only avoided criminal prosecution after witnesses, including the wife of regional Post Office manager, vouched for her.

However, she added: "Financially, they took everything off me."

Mrs McFadden was one of a group of 555 sub-postmasters and mistresses who successfully challenged the Post Office over the accusations in the High Court in 2019.

That case set a legal precedent and paved the way for a series of cases in which 72 people had criminal convictions overturned.

The Post Office opened a historic shortfall scheme to compensate hundreds of wrongfully convicted former branch managers who had personally covered shortfalls in branch accounts caused by the Horizon software.

But the 555 people who won the High Court case could not participate in the scheme, and despite being awarded nearly £43m in compensation in 2019, the group's funds were swallowed up due to a "no win, no fee" agreement with Therium, the company which funded the litigation.

The group only got a "small fraction" of the settlement equating to about £20,000 each, the Treasury said.

The first in a series of settlements with former sub-postmasters was reached in 2019

"I got £10,000," said Mrs McFadden, who gave evidence to an ongoing public inquiry investigating the Horizon scandal in 2022.

She said: "I have lost my livelihood. I'm going on 59 and I can't believe I have been forced to beg for benefits."

The Post Office said it did not comment on individual cases but a spokesperson said: "We fully share the aims of the current Public Inquiry, set up to establish what went wrong in the past and the accountability for it.

"We are acutely aware of the human cost of the scandal and are doing all we can to right the wrongs of the past, as far as that is possible.

"Both Post Office and government are committed to providing full, fair and final compensation for the people affected."

To date offers of compensation totalling more than £138m have been made to about 2,700 postmasters. Interim payments continue to be made in cases which have not yet been resolved.