UK moves to compensate wrongly convicted Post Office staff

LONDON -- UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday his government would legislate to compensate hundreds of self-employed Post Office branch managers wrongly convicted of theft due to faulty software.

The move to overturn the convictions and award the subpostmasters compensation was intended to help right "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's history", he said.

It follows renewed focus on a scandal stretching back two decades, which saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly convicted of theft because of the glitch in new "Horizon" accounting software.

"Today I can announce that we will introduce new primary legislation to make sure that those convicted as a result of the Horizon scandal are swiftly exonerated and compensated," Sunak told parliament.

"People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own.

"The victims must get justice and compensation."

Alongside the exonerations, the government will introduce a new upfront payment of 75,000 ($95,000) for those who are part of a group litigation over the issue, Sunak said.

The government has in recent years paid almost 150 million in compensation to over 2,500 total victims embroiled in the scandal, he noted.

Numerous lives were ruined by the false accusations, which started in the early 2000s. Some Post Office branch managers were jailed, went bankrupt, losing their homes and their health.

Four people took their own lives and dozens of those eventually exonerated died without ever seeing their names cleared.

The High Court in 2019 ruled that it had been computer errors, not criminality, that had been behind the missing money.

A new television drama telling the story of their ordeal at the hands of their own employer has generated a fresh wave of sympathy for the victims -- and put pressure on the government to rectify the situation.

On Tuesday, the former boss of the Post Office Paula Vennells said she would return a royal honour received from Queen Elizabeth II, as public anger mounts.

AFP