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Parliament has approved a law that will see hundreds of subpostmasters with wrongful convictions exonerated as one of the government’s final acts before the general election
The legislation required to quash the convictions of wrongly prosecuted subpostmasters has been passed by Parliament as part of the “wash up” of pending laws following the announcement of the UK general election on 4 July.
Once the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill receives Royal Assent, it will allow branch managers convicted of theft, false accounting and other charges as a result of problems caused by the Post Office’s controversial Horizon IT system to have their convictions overturned en masse.
More than 900 people were convicted after being prosecuted by the Post Office when Horizon showed money missing from their branch accounts. Despite Post Office investigators never finding what happened to the money they claimed was missing, nor producing any other proof to support the losses, data from Horizon was used to “prove” their guilt.
In many cases, subpostmasters charged with theft were offered last-minute plea deals to the lesser charge of false accounting, which they accepted on the basis they would most likely avoid a prison sentence. In fact, many were still sentenced to a term in jail.
Since the High Court ruling in 2019 that proved Horizon was to blame for the phantom losses, about a hundred people have had their convictions overturned. The new legislation was introduced to speed up the process of exonerating the remaining victims of the scandal so they can claim compensation. Many will now be eligible for a payment of £600,000, or can choose to pursue an individual settlement of their claims.
When prime minister Rishi Sunak announced this week that the general election would take place on 4 July, there were fears the legislation would get lost in the dissolution of Parliament, but the government chose it as one of the outstanding bills to be fast-tracked through the “wash-up” process to rush through any remaining laws.
Kevin Hollinrake, minister of state at the Department for Business and Trade, who has championed the bill through Parliament, wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “Delighted that around 700 convictions resulting from prosecutions by the Post Offi
