Amid the emotions caused by “one of the biggest miscarriages of justice” in UK history, the government vowed on Wednesday to exonerate and “quickly” compensate nearly a thousand former postal agency directors who were wrongly prosecuted for theft.
• Also read: United Kingdom: Fraud investigation into scandal involving wrongful prosecution of postal workers
It took the broadcast of a fictional series on television for the public and authorities to understand this long-running scandal in which thousands of postal workers were indicted.
Some were ruined, others were imprisoned for theft and four employees committed suicide.
Between 1999 and 2015, nearly a thousand agency managers at the listed company were prosecuted, up to and including their lives, based on information from the accounting software “Horizon,” installed by Fujitsu in the late 1990s, which turned out to be defective.
Postal service executives refused to acknowledge problems with the software and forced postal workers to make up mistaken accounting deficits, leading to the ruin of many of them.
This is “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak admitted to MPs on Wednesday.
“People who have worked hard to serve the community have seen their lives and reputations destroyed through no fault of their own,” said Rishi Sunak. “Victims must receive justice and compensation.”
The conservative head of government promised that a new law would be introduced into parliament so that victims would be “quickly relieved and compensated”.
Instead of individual trials for redress, which promise to be lengthy and painful, the text will overturn all such convictions, an extremely rare measure that massively reverses the decisions of independent courts.
“Extraordinary circumstances”
“We recognize that this is an exceptional measure, but these are exceptional circumstances,” postal services secretary Kevin Hollinrake told parliament.
Postal workers had become victims of an “arbitrary exercise of power,” he complained.
The scandal was once again at the center of debate after a series on the ITV channel 'Mr Bates vs The Post Office' was broadcast last week, sparking an outpouring of sympathy for the victims.
The series tells the story of Alan Bates, played by actor Toby Jones, who sued the Postal Service on behalf of 555 employees in 2017 to acknowledge their innocence.
Among other things, she mentions the case of Jo Hamilton, who was wrongly accused of stealing £36,000 (42,000 euros), but who, like other employees, pleaded guilty rather than be sent to prison.
So far, almost 150 million pounds (174 million euros) have been paid out to around 2,500 victims in recent years, said Rishi Sunak.
In September, the government announced that wrongfully convicted agency heads could receive £600,000 each. You can also reject the offer and take legal action.
So far only 93 convictions have been overturned and £21 million (€24 million) in compensation has been paid to affected employees.
The new text provides for £75,000 in compensation for victims who were wrongly accused but not convicted by the courts, affecting hundreds of other postal workers.
In 2019, the UK High Court recognized a “significant risk” that the Horizon system was the cause of these deficits in post office accounts. A judge also condemned the post office for “institutional obstinacy” in its refusal to properly investigate the cause of the problem.
Given the scale of the scandal, Paula Vennells, who ran the post office between 2012 and 2019, announced on Tuesday that she would return the Commander of the Order of the British Empire award given to her by Queen Elizabeth II in 2018.
A petition calling for the award's removal had garnered more than a million signatures.
The government also noted that if the company was found guilty of wrongdoing, Fujitsu, the maker of the faulty software, would be held liable and then potentially required to share in compensation.