Betty Brown, the oldest surviving victim of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, will receive an OBE at Windsor Castle today.
Brown was one of hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly accused of stealing, and was forced out of her County Durham branch in 2003 – despite her and her late husband spending more than £50,000 of their savings to make good on losses which didn’t exist.
The award “won’t be a Betty Brown medal,” the former sub-postmaster said, but will be for “all the sub postmasters that we have lost”.
The Horizon IT system was responsible for more than 900 sub-postmasters being wrongfully prosecuted because of it providing incorrect information. Thousands were forced to make up for the alleged losses at their branches across the UK.
More than a billion pounds has been paid out in compensation to victims of the scandal, according to the government.