- Written by Sean Seddon and George Wright
- BBC News
The names of hundreds wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal could be cleared this year, after emergency laws were declared to “quickly exonerate and compensate victims”.
Postal Affairs Minister Kevin Hollinracke said hundreds had fallen victim to a “brutal and arbitrary exercise of power”.
There were more than 900 convictions linked to the scandal over 16 years.
But only 93 of those convictions have since been overturned.
Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office sued hundreds of subpostmasters and mistresses based on a flawed Horizon IT system.
But he said, “The devil is in the details, and we haven't seen that yet.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons that those previously convicted in England and Wales will be cleared of wrongdoing and compensated under a new law.
The Scottish Government has also announced similar plans for convicts in Scotland, which has a separate legal system.
Downing Street said its aim is to complete the process of overturning the convictions of those affected by the end of 2024.
The Prime Minister's spokesman said the government intends to “bring forward the legislation within weeks” and is “confident it will be well supported”.
Speaking in the House of Commons after the Prime Minister, Mr Hollinrake said evidence emerging from the ongoing public inquiry into the scandal suggested the Post Office had acted with “incompetence and malice”.
He described the decision to overturn the convictions through an Act of Parliament as “unprecedented” and said it had not been taken lightly, given its potential ramifications for the legal system.
Hollinryck said the move, which applies to England and Wales, “raises important constitutional issues” about the independence of the courts, which would normally be the power to overturn a conviction.
The Minister also agreed that the new law would risk pardoning people truly guilty of a crime – although the government estimates this is a very small proportion of the total number of those affected.
Asked by the BBC's Prime Minister's Program why he turned to a TV drama to inspire action on a problem that has been known for more than a decade, Mr Hollinrake said the show released this year had moved the public as well as people in government.
He said: “We are human beings, of course. We watch TV ourselves and see these things, and we and other people within the government realize that this is a situation that we must solve.”
While full details of the law have not been published, Downing Street said it would amount to a sweeping expungement of convictions linked to the faulty Horizon IT system.
But the Department for Business told the BBC that convictions will only be lifted after former postmasters and postmasters sign a statement that they have committed no crime.
Mr Hollinrake said that by signing the document, they would be eligible for the £600,000 compensation already available to people who have cleared their names through the courts.
He added that the declaration aims to prevent “the guilty from evading hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money,” adding that “anyone who signs this incorrectly will be subject to prosecution for fraud.”
The government also confirmed that it will do the following:
- Providing a one-off payment of £75,000 to 555 former postmasters whose class action, led by Alan Bates, helped expose injustice.
- Review whether people whose convictions are upheld after appeal can also be overturned under the new law
- Working with departments in Scotland and Northern Ireland to ensure that sub-postmasters in those countries can be cleared
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