Hundreds of UK postal workers wrongly accused of fraud will have their convictions overturned

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday he will introduce measures to overturn the convictions of more than 900 post office branch managers who were wrongly accused of theft or fraud because of a faulty computer system.

Sunak said the scandal, which saw hundreds of postmasters falsely convicted of stealing money because Post Office computers wrongly showed that funds were missing from their shops, was “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history.”

Of the more than 900 postal branch managers who were convicted of theft or fraud between 1999 and 2015, just 95 have managed to overturn their convictions, Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said.

Some were sent to prison, and many were financially ruined after being forced to pay large sums to the state-owned Post Office. Several killed themselves.

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The real culprit was a defective accounting software package called Horizon, which was supplied by the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu.

Sunak told lawmakers that a new law will be introduced to ensure that those wrongly convicted are “swiftly exonerated and compensated.”

The government will also make a new payment of 75,000 pounds ($95,500) each to some postal workers who took group legal action against the Post Office, he added.

“People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own,” he said. “We will make sure that the truth comes to light, we right the wrongs of the past and the victims get the justice they deserve.”

For years, the state-owned Post Office maintained that data from Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty.

Police have opened a fraud investigation into the Post Office, but so far, no one from the company or from Fujitsu has been arrested or faced criminal charges. A public inquiry has been ongoing since 2022.

While the scandal has rumbled on for years, it hit the headlines again this week after a hit TV docudrama renewed outrage. The ITV show, “Mr. Bates vs the Post Office,” charted a two-decade battle by branch manager Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones, to expose the truth and clear the wronged postal workers.

On Tuesday, ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells said she would relinquish the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire that she received in 2018. An online petition calling for her to be stripped of the honor had garnered more than 1.2 million supporters.