Betty Brown, 93, believed to be the oldest victim of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, has revealed the King is as "upset" about the ordeal as those affected.
She was among 68 people honoured by the monarch at Windsor Castle on Tuesday, alongside Sir Idris Elba and ice skating champions Dame Jayne Torvill and Sir Christopher Dean.
Ms Brown, from County Durham, operated the Annfield Plain Post Office with her late husband Oswall from 1985 to 2003, estimating they lost around £100,000 to cover fictitious shortfalls.
The Fujitsu-developed Horizon accounting system falsely showed money missing from subpostmasters’ accounts. It is central to the Post Office scandal, which saw around 1,000 people wrongly prosecuted and convicted across the UK between 1999 and 2015.
As an original victim in the group legal action led by Sir Alan Bates, Ms Brown was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to justice and campaigning for subpostmasters.
Speaking to the Press Association after meeting Charles, Ms Brown said he was “fully informed” of the scandal, adding: “It’s a great honour that the King has recognised an ordinary person trying to do something good in the community.”
She said: “What I’ve said to him was: ‘Impress on the Prime Minister that there is no price on justice.’ The quibbling about the money – stop it, and finish Horizon immediately.”
Ms Brown added: “He (the King) is as upset about it as we are… I said to him, try telling the Prime Minister and his ministers that money doesn’t justify not investigating the case.
“Justice is more than money – tell them that.”
Asked how the King responded, Ms Brown said: “He took it onboard.”
In a direct appeal to Sir Keir Starmer, she asked the Prime Minister to resolve the scandal “as quickly as you can”.
She said: “Don’t take another 26 years, because all you’re doing is waiting for the poor souls to die off, one-by-one, until there will be no-one left and the case is forgotten about in the history books, if it ever makes it.”
Ms Brown reached a settlement at the end of last year through the Government’s redress scheme, but said she is yet to receive a “penny” in compensation.
She said: “I said to the King: ‘The children need our compensation.’ Fujitsu are trying to back out now – they’re giving the children therapy. We don’t want therapy, we want money to put a roof over their heads and give them what Horizon took away from us.
“They took away our lives, they took away our future for our children. We’ve got no money to pass on to the children – we would have had if we’d continued working.
“My children now have that, other people’s children, they don’t have that to look forward to. They’ve got no inheritance. We don’t want therapy from Fujitsu. We want pennies from them.”
Asked how she found the strength to continue fighting for justice for so long, Ms Brown said strength is found in the “truth”.
“I’ve never lied about anything,” she said. “I’ve given them the truth, and the longer you tell the truth, the stronger the truth gets.”
Ms Brown said she will celebrate the honour by enjoying “the love of my family”.
