UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Wednesday that the government plans to introduce a new law to exonerate and compensate people wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal. The move comes in response to growing public outrage following an ITV drama, “Mr. Bates vs The Post Office,” which brought attention to the scandal. Since then, the government has been under increasing pressure to act.
The statement today by Sunak means that the government will introduce an act of Parliament to ensure that people convicted in the scandal are “swiftly exonerated and compensated.” He also announced that the 555 postmasters who went to the High Court in 2019 will be awarded £75,000 in upfront compensation. Once the wrongly-convicted are exonerated, Sunak also said that they would be eligible for around £600,000. The full legislation will be introduced within the next few weeks.
The Post Office scandal has been recognized as one of the most heinous miscarriages of justice in the UK. Between 1999 and 2015 hundreds of subpostmasters at the Post Office were prosecuted for allegedly engaging in fraud, false accounting and theft due to shortfalls at their branches. However, the shortfalls were due to errors made by the Post Office’s accounting software system, Horizon.
Subpostmasters are self-employed operators of local post offices and authorised by the Post office Ltd to serve as their agents. They are often well-known and respected within their communities, given the trust placed in them to handle pensions, savings and other personal matters. In smaller villages, they assume a central role and become the heart of their neighborhoods. Over 700 subpostmasters were wrongly convicted, with some serving prison sentences, filing for bankruptcy and seeing their lives and reputations destroyed. Some tragically passed away before having their names cleared and four died by suicide.
The Horizon system was developed by Fujitsu and introduced in 1999. From the early 2000s, issues were reported to the Post Office but they insisted that the system was “robust” and continued to prosecute the subpostmasters or compel them to pay the shortfall amount. Computer Weekly published an article in 2009, exposing the problems with the system. In September of that year, subpostmaster Alan Bates started the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA). Three years later, following pressure from the JFSA and MPs, the Post Office appointed a team of forensic accountants to investigate the problems. Despite the team concluding that there had been possible misconduct by a prosecutor on behalf of Post Office and possible miscarriages of justice, the Post Office continued to defend the system.
In 2015, the head of the Post Office Paula Vennells told a parliamentary committee that there was no evidence that there had been any miscarriages of justice. However, in 2019, following a High Court case, the Post Office gave some compensation to 555 subpostmasters. But they felt that the amounts awarded were not acceptable compensation. Many have still not received compensation or had their convictions quashed and no senior Post Office employees have so far been held accountable. This week, Vennells agreed to return a UK honor, which she was awarded in 2019 for services to the Post Office, amid growing outrage over the scandal. UK police authorities confirmed to The Times on January 5 that they would be investigating the Post Office in relation to potential fraud offenses.
