A law aimed at quashing the wrongful convictions of sub-postmasters caught up in the Horizon IT scandal is being introduced by the government later.
The proposed Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill “marks an important step forward in finally clearing” the names of hundreds of wronged branch managers who have had their lives “callously torn apart”, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.
The legislation will exonerate those convicted in England and Wales on the basis of the faulty Horizon accounting software in what has been branded the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.
Downing Street said that under the law, convictions will be automatically quashed if they meet the following criteria:
• The convictions were prosecuted by the Post Office or Crown Prosecution Service
• They were for offences carried out in connection with Post Office business between 1996 and 2018
• They were for relevant offences such as theft, fraud and false accounting
• They were against sub-postmasters, their employees, officers, family members or direct employees of the Post Office working in a Post Office that used the Horizon system software.
Those with overturned convictions will receive an interim payment with the option of immediately taking a fixed and final offer of £600,000.
Mr Sunak said: “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.
“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 sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
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