At least 13 postmasters may have taken their own lives after being accused of wrongdoing based on evidence from the Horizon IT system that the Post Office and developers Fujitsu knew could be false, the public inquiry has found.

A further 59 people told the inquiry they considered ending their lives, 10 of whom tried on at least one occasion, while other postmasters and family members recount suffering from alcoholism and mental health disorders including anorexia and depression, family breakup, divorce, bankruptcy and personal abuse.

Follow latest on public inquiry into Post Office scandal

Writing in the first volume of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry report, chairman Sir Wyn Williams concludes that this enormous personal toll came despite senior employees at the Post Office knowing the Horizon IT system could produce accounts “which were illusory rather than real” even before it was rolled out to branches.

Sir Wyn said: “I am satisfied from the evidence that I have heard that a number of senior, and not so senior, employees of the Post Office knew or, at the very least, should have known that Legacy Horizon was capable of error… Yet, for all practical purposes, throughout the lifetime of Legacy Horizon, the Post Office maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate.”

Referring to the updated version of Horizon, known as Horizon Online, which also had “bugs errors and defects” that could create illusory accounts, he said: “I am satisfied that a number of employees of Fujitsu and the Post Office knew that this was so.”

The first volume of the report focuses on what Sir Wyn calls the “disastrous” impact of false accusations made against at least 1,000 postmasters, and the various redress schemes the Post Office and government has established since miscarriages of justice were identified and proven.

Recommendations regarding the conduct of senior management of the Post Office, Fujitsu and ministers will come in a subsequent report, but Sir Wyn is clear that unjust and flawed prosecutions were knowingly pursued.

“All of these people are properly to be regarded as victims of wholly unacceptable behaviour perpetrated by a number of individuals employed by and/or associated with the Post Office and Fujitsu from time to time and by the Post Office and Fujitsu as institutions,” he says.

What are the inquiry’s recommendations?

Calling for urgent action from government and the Post Office to ensure “full and fair compensation”, he makes 19 recommendations including:

• Government and the Post Office to agree a definition of “full and fair” compensation to be used when agreeing payouts
• Ending “unnecessarily adversarial attitude” to initial offers that have depressed the value of payouts, ⁠and ensuring consistency across all four compensation schemes
• The creation of a standing body to administer financial redress to people wronged by public bodies
• Compensation to be extended to close family members of those affected who have suffered “serious negative consequences”
• The Post Office, Fujitsu and government agreeing a programme for “restorative justice”, a process that brings together those that have suffered harm with those that have caused it

Regarding the human impact of the Post Office’s pursuit of postmasters, including its use of unique powers of prosecution, Sir Wyn writes: “I do not think it is easy to exaggerate the trauma which persons are likely to suffer when they are the subject of criminal investigation, prosecution, conviction and sentence.”

He says that even the process of being interviewed under caution by Post Office investigators “will have been troubling at best and harrowing at worst”.

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‘Hostile and abusive behaviour’

The report finds that those wrongfully convicted were “subject to hostile and abusive behaviour” in their local communities, felt shame and embarrassment, with some feeling forced to move.

Detailing the impact on close family members of those prosecuted, Sir Wyn writes: “Wives, husbands, children and parents endured very significant suffering in the form of distress, worry and disruption to home life, in employment and education.

“In a number of cases, relationships with spouses broke down and ended in divorce or separation.

“In the most egregious cases, family members themselves suffered psychiatric illnesses or psychological problems and very significant financial losses… their suffering has been acute.”

The report includes 17 case studies of those affected by the scandal including some who have never spoken publicly before. They include Millie Castleton, daughter of Lee Castleton, one of the first postmasters prosecuted.

She told the inquiry how her family being “branded thieves and liars” affected her mental health, and contributed to a diagnosis of anorexia that forced her to drop out of university.

Her account concludes: “Even now as I go into my career, I still find it so incredibly hard to trust anyone, even subconsciously. I sabotage myself by not asking for help with anything.

“I’m trying hard to break this cycle but I’m 26 and am very conscious that I may never be able to fully commit to natural trust. But my family is still fighting. I’m still fighting, as are many hundreds involved in the Post Office trial.”

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the inquiry’s report “marks an important milestone for sub-postmasters and their families”.

He added that he was “committed to ensuring wronged sub-postmasters are given full, fair, and prompt redress”.

“The recommendations contained in Sir Wyn’s report require careful reflection, including on further action to complete the redress schemes,” Mr Reynolds said.

“Government will promptly respond to the recommendations in full in parliament.”

Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said, “Sir Wyn’s report highlights a series of failings by the Post Office and various governments. His recommendations are immensely helpful as a guide for what is needed to finish the job”.

Lord Tebbit of Chingford was one of Margaret Thatcher’s staunchest “true blue” political allies and the survivor of an IRA bombing in 1984.

Tributes have been paid to the former Tory minister – following his death at the age of 94 – as a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s, entering the cabinet as employment secretary and leaving six years later as Conservative Party chairman.

He would forever be associated with the “on yer bike” catchphrase, as well as controversially having claimed a large proportion of Britain’s Asian population failed to pass the “cricket test”.

Norman Beresford Tebbit was born in Ponders End, a working-class suburb of north London, on 29 March 1931 to Leonard and Edith Tebbit.

In 1942, he joined Edmonton County Grammar School before leaving at the age of 16 to work for the Financial Times, a job that would foment the anti-trade union politics he became known for when he joined parliament decades later, aged 39.

Before entering Westminster, Lord Tebbit trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a jet. He had a hunch, however, that it was a career in frontline politics that would define his life.

As a working-class boy from north London – and not a “knight from the shires” he thought composed so much of the Conservative Party – he rose up the ranks to serve in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet.

In one of the many interviews he gave about his life over the years, Lord Tebbit spoke with pride about his ability to retain a “line of communication” with “those people” who came from humble backgrounds such as his.

“I’m still proud of the fact that when I walk down the road there’s often a shout from the bus or the lorry or the building site: ”ere, Norm, ‘ow ya doin’, mate?’ he told the Independent in 1993, a year after he stood down as the MP for Chingford. “And I’m proud of that because it means that I’ve got a line of communication to those people.”

‘Chingford skinhead’

It was perhaps Lord Tebbit’s ability to communicate in the same language as “those people” that earned him the reputation of a plain-speaking populist on the Conservative right, or the “Chingford skinhead”.

His most prized position in the cabinet was, however, that of Mrs Thatcher’s right-hand man and loyal attack dog, which the satirists at Spitting Image conveyed by kitting out Lord Tebbit in black leather and bovver boots used to discipline any cabinet minister who did not toe the party line.

His hard-line stance became useful to Mrs Thatcher when she was determined to take on the unions in the 1980s. It was a mission that saw Jim Prior ousted as employment secretary – along with the other cabinet “wets” (Conservative MPs seen as opposed to Mrs Thatcher’s policies for being too hardline/right-wing) – and Lord Tebbit promoted in his place.

Years earlier, he had brandished his anti-union credentials in a debate with then employment secretary Michael Foot that culminated in him being labelled a “semi-house-trained polecat”.

Lord Tebbit said the insult “demeaned” his opponent but “gave my political career a tremendous lift”. When he was made a peer in 1992, he proudly chose a polecat as one of the symbols on his coat of arms.

‘On yer bike’

In the 1980s, Lord Tebbit was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.

His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the Black community and the police.

In response to Iain Picton, the Young Conservatives’ national chairman, suggesting that rioting was a natural reaction to unemployment, Lord Tebbit famously told the Conservative Party conference: “I grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it.”

Lord Tebbit would forever be associated with the “on yer bike” catchphrase by enthusiasts and critics alike.

Tragedy strikes

The evident ideological harmony between Mrs Thatcher and Lord Tebbit made him her natural successor in the eyes of many, but in 1984, tragedy struck in his personal life that all but capped any leadership ambitions he harboured of his own.

Lord Tebbit was accompanying the prime minister and the rest of the Conservative cabinet to the Grand Hotel in Brighton for the party’s annual conference when it was hit by an IRA bomb, killing five people and injuring 34.

He had been asleep in his hotel room with his wife, Margaret, when the ceiling collapsed. They both fell four floors and spent hours buried in the rubble.

Lord Tebbit would spend three months in hospital and after would walk with a slight limp. His wife was never able to walk again and needed constant care.

He later spoke of how he felt unable to forgive the man responsible, Patrick Magee, or indeed the rest of the IRA and the late Martin McGuinness for their actions.

Following Mr McGuinness’s death in 2017, Lord Tebbit said, in characteristically blunt language: “He claimed to be a Roman Catholic. I hope that his beliefs turn out to be true and he’ll be parked in a particularly hot and unpleasant corner of hell for the rest of eternity.”

Shortly after the Brighton bomb, Lord Tebbit was appointed Conservative Party chair, successfully shepherding in another landslide victory in 1987.

It proved to be his last hurrah in the Commons. Later that year, he stepped down from the cabinet to care for his wife – and his relationship with Mrs Thatcher having become uneasy due to his ever-rising profile.

In 1992, two years after Mrs Thatcher was ousted by the pro-Europeans in her party, Lord Tebbit stood down as the MP for Chingford and went to the House of Lords.

Squabbles over Europe

Lord Tebbit may have left frontline politics, but he would prove to be a perennial thorn in the side of Sir John Major on the question of Europe – showing him up at the Conservative Party conference in 1992 with a barnstorming speech opposing the Maastricht Treaty, which established the EU.

His anti-EU views would continue long into the reign of David Cameron, whom he considered a “newcomer” to the traditional torch-bearing Tory party.

Lord Tebbit continued to campaign for the UK to leave the EU as patron of the cross-party Better Off Out campaign, and urged people to vote UKIP in the European elections of 2009.

It was not just issues involving Europe where Lord Tebbit’s views diverged from the modern Conservative Party. In 2000, Steve Norris, then Conservative Party vice chairman, branded him a “racist and a homophobe”.

Lord Tebbit caused controversy when he claimed a large proportion of Britain’s Asian population failed to pass the “cricket test” by continuing to support overseas teams, and for suggesting the Gay Marriage Bill of 2013 could lead to a lesbian Queen giving birth to a future monarch by artificial insemination.

In 2022, he retired from the House of Lords, two years after his wife died from a “particularly foul” form of dementia.

He continued to remain as engaged in politics as ever, writing prolifically in the columns of newspapers where he would reflect on his extraordinary 50-year stretch in politics.

In one memorable interview with The Independent, he said a regret that both he and Mrs Thatcher had was that they both “neglected to clone ourselves”.

A more serious – and less tongue-in-cheek – regret was expressed when Mrs Thatcher died in 2013 and tributes were made in her honour in parliament.

Lord Tebbit rose to his feet and said: “My regrets? I think I do regret that because of the commitments I had made to my own wife that I did not feel able either to continue in government after 1987 or to return to government when she later asked me to do and I left her, I fear, at the mercy of her friends. That I do regret.”

Lord Tebbit is survived by his three children, John, Alison and William.

The chairman of Marks & Spencer has told MPs the company is “still in the rebuild mode” and will be for “some time to come” following a cyber attack which led to empty shelves and limited online operations for months.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the attack, Archie Norman declined to answer whether the business had paid a ransom.

“It’s a business decision, it’s a principal decision,” he told members of the Business and Trade Committee (BTC).

“The question you have to ask is – and I think all businesses should ask – is, when they look at the demand, what are they getting for it?

“Because once your systems are compromised and you’re going to have to rebuild anyway, maybe they’ve got exfiltrated data that you don’t want to publish. Maybe there’s something there, but in our case, substantially the damage had been done.”

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When asked again later in the BTC evidence session, Mr Norman said, “We’re not discussing any of the details of our interaction with the threat actor, including this subject, but that subject is fully shared with the NCA [National Crime Agency].”

“We don’t think it’s in the public interest to go into that subject on it, because it is a matter of law enforcement”, he added.

What happened?

The initial entry into M&S’s systems took place on 17 April through “sophisticated impersonation” that involved a third party, Mr Norman said.

It was two days later, on Easter Saturday, before the company became aware of the attack, and approximately a week after the intrusion, before the retailer heard directly from the attacker.

A day later, after learning of the attack, the authorities were notified, while customers were told on Tuesday, MPs heard.

As well as British authorities, the US FBI was contacted, who are “more muscled up in this zone” and were “very supportive”, Mr Norman said.

By the time the breach is clear, systems have already been compromised, the chairman said.

The group behind the attack may have been Scattered Spider, some of whom are believed to be English-speaking teenagers, but Mr Norman said M&S made an early decision that no one from the company would deal directly with the so-called “threat actor”.

“Anybody who’s suffered an event like ours, it would be foolish to say there’s not a thousand things you’d like to have done differently,” he added.

Advice for businesses

In a warning to other businesses, M&S’s general counsel and company secretary Nick Folland said firms should be prepared to operate without IT systems.

“One of the things that we would say to others is make sure you can run your business on pen and paper,” he said.

Awareness and planning for the threats of cybersecurity meant M&S had trebled the number of people working on cybersecurity to 80and doubled its expenditure.

“We curiously doubled our insurance cover last year”, Mr Norman added.

In a good position

The business was better positioned to deal with the strike than at the start of Mr Norman’s tenure, he said.

“The context of M&S is when I joined the business, it was a very broken business… our systems were in a pretty decrepit state.”

“So I have to say if this has happened then I think we would have been kippered.”

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Recent profits meant the company was “muscled up”.

“Extensive” insurance cover means M&S expects to make an “unsurprisingly significant claim” and receive “substantial recovery”, though the process of finding out how much will take about 18 months.

The £300m sum M&S said it expected to lose as a result of the cyber attack does not include money it expects to claim via insurance. The financial hit was calculated at £300m as the chain department store was losing £10m a week by not operating online.

The incident has “not really” affected its future, Mr Norman said.