Post Office scandal: Ministers consider options to speed up justice

Justice Secretary Alex Chalk met with senior judges to discuss possible solutions to the IT scandal at the Post Office.

The meeting focused on speeding up the process for subpostmasters who want their convictions overturned.

More than 700 people received criminal convictions after the Post Office provided faulty software.

Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake said the government was investigating ways to overturn the convictions.

Mr Hollinrake suggested this could include potential legislation.

He also said that Fujitsu – the technology company behind the flawed software – and anyone else found responsible for it should be “held accountable including making any payments” to compensate victims.

“We have put some options in place to resolve outstanding criminal convictions at a much greater pace,” the minister said.

The scandal has been described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice the UK has ever seen. Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 736 male and female subpostmasters — one per week — based on information from a computer system called Horizon.

Many of them maintained their innocence and said they repeatedly reported problems with the program.

But some went to prison on charges of forgery and theft. Many of them were financially ruined.

The scandal was the subject of an ITV drama last week, bringing it back into the public consciousness.

The two former justice ministers called for legislation to be passed as soon as possible to speed up the correction of wrongful convictions.

Lord Falconer of Thurton, Tony Blair's justice secretary, said the government could introduce new laws “tomorrow and there will be no resistance in Parliament”.

“Everyone agrees that it will take years to clear these other convictions unless there is a change in procedures,” he said.

In a letter to The Times, Sir Robert Buckland, Chalk's predecessor, said: “Too many sub-postmasters have died without seeing justice done, so there is no more time to waste.”

Speaking in the House of Commons, Sir Robert said he would support new law to “create a presumption of innocence” for those convicted over faulty software.

However, former Attorney-General Dominic Grieve said the new legislation would be a form of “parliamentary interference in the judicial process”.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: “It is a shortcut that may leave some people unhappy because they are not fully exonerated.”

Some have called on the Criminal Cases Review Commission – which investigates allegations of miscarriages of justice – to look into these cases, a process that could take longer than simply introducing new legislation.

Professor Graham Ziellick, former chair of the CCRC, said he believed the body would be able to deal with the cases quickly, because of their “common feature” – that the prosecution's case relied on evidence obtained from the computer system.

“Once you determine that a conviction is clearly unsafe and should be overturned…that's why the Court of Appeals can deal with these cases so quickly,” he told the Today programme.

Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, said he supported an approach that dealt with cases together rather than individually.

“These convictions, and the remaining convictions, need to be considered collectively,” he said.

He also called for the Post Office to be stripped of its authority to pursue private prosecutions as it did in the Horizon cases.

Alan Bates, the former postmaster general who led efforts for justice, told the BBC he believed a solution was now “closer”.

Bates, who is played by Toby Jones in the ITV drama, said the years of waiting had been “frustrating”, but the ITV program had enabled a “wider audience” to understand what had happened.

“The most important thing for the government is to make sure that this financial compensation goes through quickly to get to it as soon as possible, and not wait, and not spend money with lawyers over and over again,” he said.

“We still have to keep up the pressure, we have to push people, we have to get the whole thing moving and keep the momentum going.

“The group has lost 60 or 70 people since we started all this. People need to get on with their lives, and they need to be able to draw a line under it – they'll never forget it, but they need to be able to move on from it. And unfortunately they need money to keep them going.” .

“This money is just what they deserve. This money to put them back in the position they would have been in if the post office hadn't done what they did to them.”

There has been a campaign to strip former Postmaster Paula Fennells of her central position over the scandal.

Ms Fennells, who was chief executive of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, has been urged to give up her honour.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's official spokesman said the Prime Minister would “strongly support” the confiscation commission if it chose to review the case.

The Confiscation Committee can recommend the stripping of decorations if someone brings the order into disrepute.

Ms Fennells previously said she remained “truly sorry for the suffering endured by sub-postmasters and their families who were wrongly prosecuted”.

She also said she continued to fully support and focus on cooperating with the ongoing public investigation into the scandal.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, has also faced new scrutiny over his role as postal minister during the coalition government.

His predecessor, Sir Vince Cable, who was business secretary during that period, told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme, that Sir Ed had been made a “scapegoat”.