Ministers have set aside up to £1billion for compensation. (Image: Getty)
Justice has finally been delivered for the hundreds of victims of the Post Office scandal as Rishi Sunak ordered their convictions should be overturned.
In a dramatic intervention, the Prime Minister vowed to “right the wrongs of the past” so victims get the justice they deserve.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters were convicted of stealing money on the basis of evidence from the flawed Horizon accounting system.
Ministers said the Post Office showed “not only incompetence but malevolence” in the way it acted against them.
Public fury following the airing of ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office thrust the issue to the top of the political agenda after victims struggled for years to clear their names and secure proper payouts.
Ministers have now drawn up plans for new laws that will allow convictions to be overturned instead of victims having to make individual court appeals.
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The plans are expected to be in place by the end of the year.
Mr Sunak also announced a £75,000 payment each for the 555 ex-postmasters involved in a group legal action led by campaigner Alan Bates against the Post Office.
Ministers have set aside up to £1billion for compensation.
The Government will also review whether people whose convictions were upheld after appeal can be exonerated by the new laws.
Only 93 out of 700 convictions have been overturned, with more victims coming forward since the drama aired last week.
Overturning a conviction would usually be via the Criminal Cases Review Commission sending it to the Court of Appeal for a hearing.
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk held talks with senior judges to calm fears that Parliament was interfering with the independent legal system.
Faulty Fujitsu software called Horizon began to be rolled out in Post Office branches in 1999.
Twenty years later the High Court ruled it contained “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in branch accounts were caused by the system.
By then hundreds of innocent men and women had been jailed or lost their homes and livelihoods as they were pursued relentlessly for supposed shortfalls.
Mr Bates welcomed yesterday’s “good news” but said the fight is not over for many of those still awaiting compensation.
Played by Toby Jones in the ITV drama, he said: “It is a leap forward, but it ain’t over yet.
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“The devil is in the detail and we’re yet to see that.
“We’re still going to have to keep pushing the whole issue forward until everyone is sorted.”
Professor Christopher Hodges, chairman of the independent Horizon compensation advisory board, said it was a “momentous day for Britain”. He added: “What strikes me is not just that it is important in relation to finally getting justice and fairness and steps towards closure for all the victims.
“The British public have responded to this.
“And it says something deeply fundamental about British values that everyone knows this is not right.”
Conservative MP Duncan Baker, who used to work as a postmaster, said the Post Office should be forced to reveal how much money it “stole” from “innocent men and women”.
He said it will run into hundreds of millions of pounds and the organisation should be forced to publish “the grand scale of how much money they stole”.
The furore has put the spotlight on ministers responsible for the Post Office since warnings about software flaws emerged in around 2010.
Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson took aim at Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey who was Postal Affairs Minister between 2010 and early 2012.
There have been 19 ministers from all the three main parties in the post since 1999. Mr Anderson told the Commons Sir Ed has called for the resignation of more than 30 prominent people in the UK who have made mistakes in their job so he “should take his own advice and start by clearing his desk, clearing his diary and clear off”.
Serving Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake admitted the Government’s approach is not “foolproof”.
He said: “The risk is that instead of unjust convictions, we shall end up with unjust acquittals and we just do not know how many.
“As far as possible, we want to avoid guilty people walking away with hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money. But we cannot make the provision of compensation subject to a detailed examination of guilt.”
As a safeguard, those involved will be required to sign a statement saying they did not commit the crime of which they were accused.
By signing the document they become eligible for the £600,000 compensation payment already available to people cleared via the courts. Anyone found to have falsely signed it will be subject to prosecution for fraud.
Comment – Christopher Head
The announcement about the overturning of convictions was very welcome.
We cannot allow many hundreds of people to carry a conviction when they are innocent. The judicial process cannot cope.
If we were to continue down that route, it may take a decade or longer to get them overturned and many may not be alive to see that happen.
If it means a couple of bad apples fall through the net, then we have to accept that
as a necessary cost of a greater good.
This will unlock the door to compensation for all these people and allow them to begin the journey of trying to rebuild their lives in as much as a monetary award can allow them to do.
It should not have taken an ITV drama to galvanise mass public outrage, to back the Government into a corner and to force it to act.
This scandal has caused a loss of trust in our justice system. Even when you were innocent the system was not able to exonerate you.
A culture in which corporate reputation is far more important than the damage to the individual cannot be allowed to continue. People were willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent the truth coming out. The Post Office was a prime example of that.
It is time for compensation to be delivered on the most generous terms after the suffering and trauma these postmasters have suffered.
This was an injustice on an industrial scale by the Post Office, once one of the nation’s most trusted brands.
As the sole shareholder the Government was responsible for operational oversight of Post Office Ltd. It failed.
Compensation must restore these traumatised postmasters to the financial position they would have been in had the scandal not happened. Anything less would be an insult.
Christopher Head became a postmaster at 18
