22 February 2024 , 14:52
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Hundreds of postmasters who were wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal will finally have their names cleared - but a campaigner said she'll "believe it when I see it".
Legislation to overturn convictions in England and Wales is expected to come into force by July. Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said shocking behaviour by prosecutors has been exposed in recent months, meaning their work is "discredited".
He said the "unprecedented intervention" to exonerate postmasters will "deliver long overdue justice”. But campaigner and former subpostmistress Jo Hamilton said: "I'll believe it when I see it."
She added: "Any promises they've made they've not kept." In a statement Mr Hollinrake admitted that some people who were guilty of crimes could end up being cleared - saying it's a "price worth paying".
Ministers have been under pressure after the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office highlighted the fight for justice by postmasters including Alan Bates. Mr Hollinrake said victims will have their convictions quashed under a set of "clear and objective criteria".
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Post Office prosecutions will be overturned, as will Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) cases which relied on evidence from the faulty Horizon IT system. Two CPS convictions have already been quashed, Mr Hollinrake said.
But Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) prosecutions will not be included in the new legislation as the majority "relied on physical evidence", he stated. More than 700 Post Office branch managers around the UK were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015, after the faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their branches.
Mr Hollinrake said: "The Horizon inquiry has heard evidence of the egregious behaviour of the Post Office’s investigatory practices. It is therefore proportionate that the Government legislates to quash these prosecutions where the prosecutor is, in effect, discredited."
Accepting the need for urgency, Mr Hollinrake said: "With a number of the cases over 20 years old, some of the victims have sadly passed away, and many others are in declining health or have lost faith in the system and do not wish to engage further with it."
Under strict criteria a convicted person will need to have been working in a Post Office that used the Horizon software and be either a subpostmaster, one of their employees, officers, or family members, or a direct employee of the Post Office.
The law will apply to convictions in England and Wales, but ministers will work with the Scottish and Northern Ireland governments to ensure compensation can be paid to victims there too. Mr Hollinrake said the Government's legislation was likely to also clear the names of people "who were, in fact, guilty of a crime".
He said people will be required to sign a statement saying they did not commit the crime for which they were convicted in order to receive compensation.
If people are found to have signed the statement falsely in order to gain compensation, they "may be guilty of fraud", he said.