A public inquiry led by retired judge Sir Wyn Williams has found that at least 13 people may have taken their own lives after being falsely accused of theft and fraud during the Post Office Horizon scandal, while 59 others said they had contemplated suicide and 10 had attempted it. The report, the first volume of the inquiry’s final findings, details “disastrous” personal, financial and health impacts on hundreds of sub-postmasters and their families. Between 1999 and 2015 the state-owned Post Office prosecuted almost 1,000 branch managers on evidence generated by Fujitsu’s Horizon accounting software, which the inquiry says senior staff at both the Post Office and Fujitsu “knew, or at least should have known”, was unreliable. Despite repeated internal warnings, the companies “maintained the fiction that Horizon data was always accurate”, the report says. Williams issued 19 urgent recommendations aimed at speeding up redress. He said about 10,000 people could be eligible for compensation and criticised the “formidable difficulties” claimants still face, including legal costs and delays. The government, the Post Office and Fujitsu were told to produce a joint response to the recommendations by 10 October 2025, while Fujitsu was asked to publish a detailed compensation plan for victims by the end of October this year. Market reaction was swift: Fujitsu shares slid in Tokyo trading, their sharpest single-day drop since April, after the inquiry chair’s demand for the company to fund a compensation scheme. The findings add pressure on ministers and the Post Office, which has so far paid out only a fraction of the eventual bill for what has been described as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.