Post Office scandal victims to see convictions overturned

Special legislation is to be passed by the United Kingdom government to quash the convictions of hundreds of former employees of the national postal delivery service, the Royal Mail, who were innocent victims of the country's biggest miscarriage of justice in terms of scale.

The introduction in 1999 of a new accounting system, called Horizon and made by technology company Fujitsu, led to more than 900 people being convicted during the following 16 years on charges including theft, fraud, and false accounting.

People were jailed, lives were ruined, and in some cases there were even reports of suicides related to the scandal, which, after years of campaigning, became headline news at the start of the year following a television drama series about the affair. It is estimated that around 200 people who were affected by it have since died without restitution.

So far, only around 100 convictions have been overturned, but now it has been announced that related prosecutions brought by the Post Office and the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales between 1996 and 2018 will be automatically overturned.

The government is understood to have put aside 1 billion pounds ($1.278 billion) for compensation payments, a process that will be overseen by its own business department, after the Post Office was deemed to be "not fit for purpose" to deal with the matter.

People who were falsely convicted will receive an interim payment of 163,000 pounds within 28 days of applying, and they can then choose either a fixed compensation payment of 600,000 pounds, or to have their case assessed individually.

As recently as Jan 2024, the Post Office's chief executive, Nick Read, wrote to Justice Secretary Alex Chalk saying his organization would oppose attempts to overturn hundreds of convictions.

But the following day, responding to widespread public outrage over the incident, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans for a blanket quashing, telling 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. We will make sure that the truth comes to light, we right the wrongs of the past, and the victims get the justice they deserve."

Two decades after the scandal was first discovered, Fujitsu continues to receive government contracts, and no one from the company has been held accountable for what happened, despite its head of European operations, Paul Patterson, having told a parliamentary inquiry that the company has a "moral obligation" to contribute toward compensation payments, and that it was his "gut feeling" that people had known about the system's problems years before admitting it.

One of those falsely accused, Sally Stringer, told the BBC it will "make a huge difference to be able to move on" but she said she wanted to see more urgency.

"They're still pontificating," she said. "We're all needing action now, sooner rather than later. I don't want to wait for a general election, we need to get on with it."

julian@mail.chinadailyuk.com