THE Post Office Horizon scandal may have led to more than 13 suicides and had a “disastrous” impact on victims, the public inquiry found today.

Publishing the first tranche of its examination of what has been dubbed the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history, inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams said “a number of senior” people at the Post Office had known of bugs in the Legacy Horizon computer system but “maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate."

The result was hundreds of sub-postmasters around the country facing accusations of defrauding the Post Office, and not only losing their livelihoods, but their freedom, and even their lives.

Between 1999 and 2015, approximately 1,000 subpostmasters were prosecuted after faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their accounts.

Singling-out behaviour of Post Office investigators, Sir Wyn said sub-postmasters “will have been in wholly unfamiliar territory and they will have found the experience to be troubling at best and harrowing at worst.”

He found that as many as 59 victims had been driven to contemplate suicide, 10 went on to attempt it, and there was a “real possibility” 13 people did take their own lives as a result of the distress caused by the injustice.

Campaigner and former subpostmistress Jo Hamilton said the report “shows the full scale of the horror that they unleashed on us.”

The report was damning of the “unnecessarily adversarial attitude” of the Post Office towards compensation, while government “simply failed to grasp how difficult it would be to provide appropriate financial redress” to the 10,000 people affected.

A total of 19 recommendations in the report include a demand for clarity from the Post Office and government on the meaning of “full and fair redress” for victims, as well as advising that the Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme should offer claimants a £600,000 fixed offer even if they submit their own detailed individual claim.

In a statement, the Post Office said: “The inquiry has brought to life the devastating stories of those impacted by the Horizon Scandal.

“Their experiences represent a shameful period in our history. Today, we apologise unreservedly for the suffering which Post Office caused to postmasters and their loved ones.

“We will carefully consider the report and its recommendations.”

Welcoming the report, Scottish sub-postmaster Rab Thomson questioned why the maker of the faulty software, Fujitsu, appears to have gone unchallenged so far.

The 65-year-old from Alva in Clackmannanshire said: “Why is Sir Wynn not taking on Fujitsu? Because at the end of the day it’s them that’s brought this crisis to us — at the moment they’ve got away scot-free.”

Business minister Gareth Thomas said told the Commons: “Blameless people were impoverished, bankrupted, stressed beyond belief, lost their jobs, their marriages, their reputations, their mental health, in some cases lost their lives.

“To be clear, I am very sympathetic to Sir Wyn’s 19 recommendations today.

“Clearly, a number of them require careful consideration.

“We will respond to them properly, as some concern the ongoing delivery of Horizon redress schemes.

“Sir Wyn has set us a deadline of October 10, and we will beat it.”