WHEN sub-postmaster Jo Hamilton, one of the victims of the Horizon scandal, told the National Television Awards on Wednesday evening that “nothing had changed” in terms of the Government’s reaction, the celebrity audience booed and groaned.

The TV stars, gathered for a night of gongs and red carpets, were expressing the frustrations of the nation.

No one says that it will be easy to work out the compensation for the sub-postmasters who were caught up in this country’s biggest miscarriage of justice.

But more than 300 of the 555 involved in the first legal case against the Post Office have not yet been compensated, including the champion Sir Alan Bates and Ferryhill’s Dave Farry.

And that cannot be good enough.

The four-part ITV mini-series showed how these ordinary people wrongfully prosecuted and then crushed by a big, powerful company and its hugely-rewarded, powerful executives who deliberately denied the truth in order to protect the reputations of the Post Office and themselves.

The Post Office salary department was able to work out that Paula Vennells, chief executive for much of the scandal, was worth bonuses totalling £2.2m very promptly, but it seems our civil servants aren’t able to show the same speed when working out what each sub-postmaster is owed.

The Tories, in the form of the Thirsk MP Kevin Hollinrake, announced back in March that they were speeding up the claims system, and Labour re-announced those intentions last week. No one doubts they are good intentions, but it is action that is needed so these victims of abuse by an arm of the state get their compensation before it is too late.