Ministers will today press ahead with landmark legislation to overturn the wrongful convictions of hundreds of subpostmasters caught up in the Post Office scandal.
The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill will exonerate hundreds of people who were wrongly convicted on the basis of unreliable evidence from the company’s notorious IT system.
The unprecedented legislation will cover convictions over a 22-year period from 1996 to 2018, during which the Post Office pursued hundreds of subpostmasters through the courts.
It follows a public outcry in the wake of the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, which detailed the plight of those wrongly convicted, many of whom had their lives, reputations and livelihoods trashed.
The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill will exonerate hundreds of people who were wrongly convicted on the basis of unreliable evidence from the company’s notorious IT system. Pictured: A Post Office branch in London
The unprecedented legislation will cover convictions over a 22-year period from 1996 to 2018, during which the Post Office pursued hundreds of subpostmasters through the courts. Pictured: A pedestrian walking past a branch in Westminster, London
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last night paid tribute to campaigners who highlighted the scandal and piled pressure on successive governments to act.
‘While I know that nothing can make up for what they’ve been through, today’s legislation marks an important step forward in finally clearing their names,’ he said.
‘We owe it to the victims of this scandal who have had their lives and livelihoods callously torn apart, to deliver the justice they’ve fought so long and hard for, and to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.’
More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s Horizon IT system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
The new law will overturn the convictions of all those convicted of offences such as theft, fraud and false accounting as a result of evidence produced by the Horizon system.
The Law Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, warned against treating the scheme as a precedent for Government intervention in the independent judicial process and said the ‘devil will be in the detail’.
Those with overturned convictions will receive an interim payment with the option of immediately taking a fixed and final offer of £600,000, according to No 10.
The Government will also bring forward ‘enhanced’ financial redress for postmasters who, while not convicted or part of legal action against the Post Office, made good the apparent losses caused by the Horizon system from their own pockets.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last night paid tribute to campaigners who highlighted the scandal and piled pressure on successive governments to act. Pictured: Rishi Sunak
They will be entitled to a fixed sum award of £75,000 through the Horizon Shortfall Scheme.
Those who have already settled for less money will have their compensation topped up to this level, while people can instead choose to have their claims assessed as part of the usual scheme process, in which there is no limit to compensation.
Government sources said ministers hope the legislation will be passed by the summer.
But the Government remains under pressure to speed up compensation payments to victims, many of whom lost everything as a result of the scandal.
