Parliament to quash convictions in UK post office scandal

(CN) — The British government has announced an unprecedented plan to quash hundreds of criminal convictions for fraud and theft after a long-running scandal involving the country’s Post Office exploded into the public consciousness this week.

Described as “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in U.K. history” by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Parliament on Wednesday, the unique government intervention means that victims wrongfully accused of crimes as part of the scandal could now see justice after more than two decades.

The scandal dates back to 1999, when a new accounting system known as Horizon, produced by the Japanese firm Fujitsu, was first introduced across U.K. post offices.

The software, which was faulty, resulted in the Post Office wrongly accusing thousands of branch managers across the country of stealing money. Many were then forced to pay the alleged losses out of their own pocket, often under threat of legal action.

In many cases, branch managers were prosecuted and successfully convicted — with some even serving prison time. The prosecutions took place even though senior Post Office officials knew that technical problems with the software were leading to inaccurate reports of financial shortfalls.

In total, more than 3,500 branch managers paid the Post Office money they had been accused of stealing, leaving many bankrupt. More than 900 were successfully prosecuted, with 738 receiving criminal convictions.

A landmark High Court ruling in 2019 determined that any convictions based on the Horizon software were legally dubious. A year later, courts began quashing convictions.

The U.K. government also launched a public inquiry, which remains ongoing. But more than any actions by the U.K. government, it was a television dramatization of the scandal last week that catapulted the affair to the top of the political agenda.

Speaking on behalf of the government, post minister Kevin Hollinrake lamented the “appalling failures of the Post Office’s investigation and prosecution functions. He accused the organization of “not only incompetence, but malevolence in many of their actions.”

The government have suggested that software company Fujitsu should be liable for the enormous costs of compensating victims, pending the outcome of the ongoing public inquiry.

Prime Minister Sunak has promised that his government will ensure that “those convicted as a result of the Horizon scandal are swiftly exonerated.” The convictions of 93 people have been overturned in the courts, but the process has been painstakingly slow, burdening victims with long waits, complex court proceedings and exceptionally high legal costs.

The British court system is currently already overwhelmed by demand, leaving victims trapped indefinitely in a legal backlog. The new legislation seeks to resolve the matter quickly without placing further burden on either the wrongly convicted or the overwhelmed court system.

Still, the unusual means of exonerating victims has concerned some parts of the British judiciary. Such a sweeping parliamentary approach to resolving a miscarriage of justice has no precedent in U.K. law.

Legal experts are worried that the move could undermine the U.K.’s separation of powers. They're urging the government to make clear that this unusual move should not be considered precedential.

The public inquiry has aired harrowing testimony from victims of the scandal.

The accusations of theft led many branch managers to become social outcasts and suffer breakdowns in their family relations. At least four affected victims ultimately committed suicide. It is these human stories of hard-working branch managers suffering injustice that has resonated with the public so strongly over the last week.

Even more astonishing are the apparent lengths the Post Office went to pursue branch managers — despite the agency's apparent knowledge that the Horizon software was faulty.

Post Office management repeatedly and falsely told accused victims that their cases were an isolated, even as the agency hounded other victims with aggressive legal action.

The Post Office shelved an external investigation into the supposed thefts when it concluded that the accounting software was producing incorrect figures. Victims were even offered reduced charges by prosecutors if they agreed to keep quiet about the problems with the software.

This week, it was also revealed that internal investigators at the Post Office were paid bonuses for securing convictions. During testimony at the public inquiry on Thursday, former post office investigator Stephen Bradshaw was accused of behaving like a “mafia gangster” who was “looking to collect their bounty with threats and lies.”

While political attention has finally turned to resolving the scandal, questions linger over why it has taken so long. Many of the key details in the scandal have been public for years. As a government agency, the Post Office ostensibly has oversight.

Since 1999, all three major U.K. political parties have governed the country and therefore share responsibility for failing to scrutinize the Post Office’s actions. Liberal Democrat party leader Ed Davey was a junior minister for post in the early 2010s. During that time, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer ran the Crown Prosecution Service, which was involved in convicting some of the victims.

With government oversight shared between the parties, there appears to have been a collective political inertia which left victims to fend for themselves. But for branch office managers who have long struggled to clear their names, momentum is finally behind them.

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