prosecutions into thousand 15. if we are to make sure that escande like this can never happen again, we need to look at the way in which private prosecutions like these have been undertaken. any company can bring private prosecutions in this way. this is not a special power of the post office, i know my right honourable friend the lord chancellor wants to give this issue proper and thoughtful consideration and i am sure he will report to the house about this issue in due course. getting justice for the victims of this candle and ensuring that such a tragedy can never happen again is my highest priority as a minister and has been throughout my 15 months in office. when we talk about compensation, we have to remember that the lives of postmasters and their families caught up in this scandal have been changed forever. they face financial ruin, untold personal distress and a loss of reputation that no amount of financial compensation can fully restore. the government recognises h
course we want to ensure the process for agreeing compensation is fair, transparent and is open for independent assessment. that is one of the reasons why today, i am announcing retired high courtjudge sir gary higginbotham has agreed to chair an independent panel that will assess the losses of those postmasters with overturned convictions where disputes arise. this will bring oversight in a similar way to the oversight in a similar way to the oversight of the group mitigation order scheme and the independent panel in the horizon shortfall scheme. the original 555 courageous postmasters took the post office to court and first brought the horizon scandal into the public eye, £27 million has been paid out to a77 claimants. in addition to the net £11 million received through the settlement. a7 numbers of the original group have