- By Sean Seddon and George Wright
- BBC News
January 10, 2024, 1:47 p.m. GMT
Updated 34 minutes ago
Image source: Getty Images
Hundreds of people wrongly convicted in the postal scandal could be acquitted this year after emergency laws were announced to “quickly exonerate and compensate victims.”
Postmaster General Kevin Hollinrake said hundreds had fallen victim to a “brutal and arbitrary exercise of power”.
Over 16 years, there were more than 900 convictions related to the scandal.
But only 93 of those convictions have since been overturned.
Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted hundreds of subpostmasters and postmasters over the faulty Horizon IT system.
However, he said: “The devil is in the details and we have yet to see.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons that those previously convicted in England and Wales would be cleared of wrongdoing and compensated under a new law.
The Scottish government also announced similar plans for those convicted in Scotland, which has its own legal system.
Downing Street said its aim was to complete the process of overturning those affected's convictions by the end of 2024.
The prime minister's spokesman said the government intended to “introduce the legislation within a few weeks” and was “confident it will have strong support”.
Speaking in the House of Commons after the Prime Minister, Mr Hollinrake said evidence from the ongoing public inquiry into the scandal suggested the Post Office had acted “incompetently and maliciously”.
He described the decision to overturn the convictions through an Act of Parliament as “unprecedented” and said it was not taken lightly given the potential impact on the legal system.
Mr Hollinrake said the move, which applies to England and Wales, raises “important constitutional questions” relating to the independence of the courts, which are normally the authority that would overturn a conviction.
video caption,
Watch: Former sub-postmasters speak to BBC Breakfast
The minister also accepted that the new law creates the risk of pardoning people who are actually guilty of a crime – although the government estimates this is a very small proportion of the total number affected.
Asked by the BBC's PM program why a television series was needed to inspire action on a problem that has been known for over a decade, Mr Hollinrake said the program broadcast this year had moved both the public and those in government.
“Of course we are human beings ourselves. We ourselves watch television and see these things, and we and other people in the government realize that this is a situation that we have to resolve,” he said.
Although the full details of the law have not been made public, Downing Street said it would amount to a blanket expungement of convictions linked to the faulty Horizon IT system.
But the Business Department told the BBC that the convictions would not be overturned until former sub-postmasters and postmasters signed a declaration saying they had not committed a crime.
Mr Hollinrake said that by signing the document they would be entitled to the £600,000 compensation payment already available to people who were able to clear their names in court.
The declaration is intended to prevent “culprits from getting away with hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money,” he said, adding: “Anyone who falsely signs this will be prosecuted for fraud.”
The government has also confirmed that it will:
- Introducing a one-off payment of £75,000 for the 555 former postmasters whose group court case led by Alan Bates helped expose the injustice
- examine whether people whose convictions were confirmed after an appeal can also be overturned under the new law
- Work with administrations in Scotland and Northern Ireland to ensure that sub-postmasters in these countries can also be released
More about the postal scandal
Mr Hollinrake said it could take “a few weeks” for the exact details of the law to be published, and a lawyer who has represented some former sub-postmasters and postmasters said he was waiting for the full text before making a judgement.
The lawyer who represented the 555 in their first lawsuit against the Post Office, James Hartley, described the compensation announcement as “a sensible step forward.”
He said it would give those affected the opportunity to decide “whether or not they accept this payment as fair compensation.”
The government is well aware that by choosing to ignore the decisions of independent judges, it runs the risk of adopting a constitutional convention that could jeopardize the independence of the courts.
Lord Ken MacDonald, who was director of the Crown Prosecution Service from 2003 to 2008, said the move amounted to “Parliament stripping courts and judges of the right to say who is guilty and who is not”.
He continued: “I think the government is aiming for a pretty grand gesture here and I hope it doesn't outshine us again.”
Wednesday's announcement comes after two weeks in which the ITV drama series turned the spotlight on a scandal that had largely played out in the background.
The drama portrayed Lee Castleton, a former subpostmaster who went bankrupt after a two-year legal battle with the post office.
Mr Castleton said it had cost him £321,000 to go through the postal legal process and his family had been “marginalized” in their Yorkshire village.
“People insulted us in the street for being thieves, and my children were bullied,” he said.
He told the BBC that the government's announced compensation payment was “very much appreciated” but that he would “just like to see an end to it.”
He said he would have to “wait until he sees the fine print”, adding that he had been promised “a hell of a lot” so far but nothing had come of it.
image description,
Former postmaster Alan Bates – played here by Toby Jones – inspired the recent ITV drama Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office.”
Between 1999 and 2015, the Postal Service prosecuted people who ran branches of the company because they were alerted to losses by Horizon, an IT accounting program developed by Japanese technology company Fujitsu.
Errors in the software caused some subpostmasters to incorrectly record losses, leading to them being accused of crimes such as theft or false accounting – and losing their livelihoods and good names as a result.
To date, only 93 people charged by the Post during the reporting period have had their convictions overturned in court. Some subpostmasters implicated in the scandal have died or taken their own lives in recent years.
Around 700 of the prosecutions were led by the Post Office, while others were carried out by other agencies, including the Crown Prosecution Service.
A public inquiry into the affair, which began in 2021, is due to resume on Thursday. The post office said it wanted to “find out the truth about what went wrong.”
The government is committed to holding Fujitsu to account if the public inquiry finds the company guilty. The company has won government contracts worth more than £6.5bn since 2013, according to procurement analyst Tussell.
A Fujitsu spokesman said the company was aware of the “devastating impact on the lives of postmasters and their families” and had “apologized for its part in their suffering.”