King told me Post Office scandal was 'dreadful', says oldest victim

The oldest surviving unfortunate of the Post Office ungraded has said the King told her it was a "dreadful thing" and "should ne'er person happened".

Betty Brown said King Charles III made the remark arsenic she received her OBE astatine Windsor Castle connected Tuesday.

The 93-year-old said she asked His Majesty to speech to the premier curate astir ensuring those liable for hundreds of sub-postmasters being wrongfully prosecuted would beryllium investigated by the constabulary and brought to justice.

She described gathering the monarch and receiving the honour arsenic "lovely", adding she "never ever dreamt that this would happen".

"The crushed that I'm present is precise bittersweet and I don't hide that. All the bosom ache of the families that this has destroyed, the bosom ache of children near with nothing, that inactive hurts, it'll ever hurt," she added.

She has dedicated the honour to "all the sub postmasters that we person lost".

Mrs Brown was 1 of hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly accused of stealing oregon mendacious accounting betwixt 1999 and 2015 aft a faulty IT strategy called Horizon made it look similar wealth was missing from subdivision accounts.

The ungraded has been described arsenic 1 of the widest miscarriages of justness successful the British ineligible history.

The pensioner was forced retired of her County Durham Post Office successful 2003 - contempt her precocious hubby Oswall paid much than £50,000 of their savings to screen non-existent shortfalls. They had ran the subdivision unneurotic since 1985.

Mrs Brown was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to justness aft campaigning for sub-postmasters affected by the scandal.

She told the BBC the King was "very knowledgeable each astir Horizon".

"I said to him...would you archer your premier curate and your ministers that justness has nary cost...There is nary outgo to justice. Doesn't substance what it costs, justness indispensable beryllium done," she added.

The commandant starring the nationalist constabulary inquiry, Stephen Clayman, said the size of the probe squad would request to treble to conscionable its existent timeline of submitting files for imaginable prosecutions by precocious adjacent twelvemonth oregon aboriginal 2028.

A authorities spokesperson said the ungraded was "an appalling injustice" and that it was "considering requests for further funding".

Mrs Brown said she was "honoured and humbled" to beryllium made an OBE, adding she had yet "been heard by the system" and was "pleased that the nationalist are inactive learning astir this".

"A batch of them deliberation we've had compensation, we haven't had a penny compensation. We've had what they telephone redress, which means they've fixed backmost the wealth to america that they stole from us," she said.

Mrs Brown was 1 of the archetypal 555 victims who took portion successful the landmark radical ineligible enactment led by Sir Alan against the Post Office.

Her subdivision had been 1 of the astir palmy successful the portion but yet she had to merchantability it astatine a loss.

Talking astir what happened, she antecedently said it "absolutely destroyed my full life".

Both Mrs Brown and Sir Alan Bates were portion of the Group Litigation Order compensation scheme, and those claimants were offered the enactment of taking a fixed sum of £75,000 oregon pursuing their ain settlement.

The latest information from the authorities indicates that much than £1.5bn has been paid retired to implicit 12,300 claimants, crossed the assorted Post Office redress schemes.

When the archetypal study of the authoritative enquiry into the ungraded was published successful July, the Post Office said it apologised "unreservedly" for the suffering "caused to postmasters and their loved ones".