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The Department for Work and Pensions will launch an independent review into its handling of prosecutions against Post Office staff, Sky News has learned.
About 100 prosecutions were carried out by the DWP between 2001 and 2006 during the Horizon IT scandal.
The “independent assurance review”, however, is yet to be commissioned and will not look at individual cases.
It comes more than a year after Sky News discovered joint investigations between the Post Office and the DWP during the scandal – leading to suggestions some may be “tainted”.
Hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted of stealing by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015, due to the faulty Horizon IT system.
The DWP told Sky News they have “committed” to commissioning the review into prosecutions led by the department, where Post Office staff were investigated for “welfare-related fraud”.
They described cases as “complex investigations” which they said were “backed by evidence including filmed surveillance, stolen benefit books and witness statements”.
They also added that “to date no documentation has been identified showing that Horizon data was essential to these prosecutions”.
The review will look at a period of time spanning 20 years covered by the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024, from September 1996 to December 2018.
The Horizon Act was effectively blanket exoneration legislation which automatically quashed Post Office convictions but did not include DWP or Capture-related prosecutions.
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