Ministers to meet to discuss Post Office Horizon scandal

Ministers are to meet to consider possible ways of clearing the names of hundreds of sub-postmasters convicted in the Post Office Horizon scandal.

Justice Secretary Alex Chalk will meet Kevin Hollinrake, the Minister for the Post Office, on Monday.

It comes after the prime minister told the BBC the government was reviewing options to help victims of the scandal.

More than 700 branch managers were convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud based on faulty software.

Convicted sub-postmasters should be able to submit a “mass appeal” against their convictions, former minister Sir David Davis has said.

He told the BBC’s Today programme: “All of the cases depend on one single lie, and that is nobody but the postmasters and mistresses could access their computers. We now know that to be untrue. I see no real reason, no logical reason you can’t have a mass case, mass appeal on that basis.”

The Post Office – which is wholly owned by the government – acted as the prosecutor when it brought the cases against its sub-postmasters between 1999 and 2015.

Some sub-postmasters wrongfully went to prison, many were financially ruined. Some have since died.

Tracey Felsted was just 19 when she was wrongly convicted of stealing £11, 500 and jailed – even though her family paid the Post Office the money she was accused of taking.

She told BBC Breakfast that while the process of helping former sub-postmasters needs to be sped up, she cautioned against a mass exoneration.

“I think we need to be really careful that we’re not just going to go and turn everybody’s convictions over just in case you have that one person that has committed a crime and you’ve just turned over their conviction,” she said.

Many victims of the scandal are still fighting to have their convictions overturned or to secure full compensation after being forced to pay out thousands of pounds of their own money for shortfalls that were caused by Horizon accounting software.

A petition calling for the former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells to lose her CBE over the scandal has received more than one million signatures. Ms Vennells has been contacted for comment on the petition.

Both Ms Felsted and Janet Skinner, another sub-postmistress who was jailed in connection with the Post Office Horizon scandal, said that Ms Vennells should hand back her CBE.

“To be fair, and if she had any decency she would just hand it back,” Ms Skinner told BBC Breakfast.

Ms Felsted said she would like to see “someone held accountable”.

“We were classed as criminals by the Post Office,” she said. “Now it is their turn to be investigated and find out who knew what, why and when this all happened. Someone needs to be held accountable for everybody.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the BBC on Sunday it was “right that we find every which way we can do to try to make this right for the people who were so wrongfully treated at the time”.

As a result of renewed anger and headlines following the ITV mini-series Mr Bates vs the Post Office: The Real Story, Mr Chalk and Mr Hollinrake’s meeting has been brought forward by a week.

There have been concerns within government that the quashing of convictions and getting compensation to those who were victims of a miscarriage of justice has been far too slow.

To date, 93 convictions have been overturned and, of those, only 30 people have agreed “full and final settlements”.

Meanwhile, 54 cases have resulted in either a conviction being upheld, people being refused permission to appeal, or the person appealing having withdrawn from the process, according to the Post Office.

Last month, a board overseeing compensation called for all Post Office staff wrongly accused of theft and false accounting to have their convictions overturned.

Prof Chris Hodges, the chair of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, told the BBC’s Today programme that “a civilised state should overturn these convictions and deliver compensation with people having to do as little as possible”.

Some have argued that overturning all the convictions could encroach upon the independence of the judiciary, but Prof Hodges said while that was a consideration he did not think it was important in these circumstances.

“This is not a situation in which anyone would complain that the government is breaching anyone’s human rights,” he said.

Prof Hodges added that while he had not spoken to the judiciary, he would be “very surprised if they weren’t as angry and indeed embarrassed about the situation as we all are, so I don’t think that there is a constitutional issue behind here that actually stands up”.

On Monday, Mr Chalk and Mr Hollinrake will talk to government lawyers to explore mechanisms to lawfully attempt to speed up addressing what is widely seen as a huge miscarriage of justice.

The prime minister said on Sunday the government was reviewing options including stripping the Post Office of its role in the appeal process.

The Post Office had the power to decide on bringing the original prosecutions, and its appointed lawyers presented the evidence in court. But one option now would be for the Crown Prosecution Service and its own lawyers to step in as appeals continue to be heard.

Separately, two longstanding parliamentary campaigners on the issue, Labour MP Kevan Jones and Conservative MP Sir David Davis, are among those hoping to secure the chance to scrutinise a minister in the House of Commons, which is reassembling on Monday for the first time since Christmas recess.

This could come as soon as Monday afternoon or Tuesday.

Currently, a public inquiry into the scandal is ongoing and the Metropolitan Police is investigating the Post Office over potential fraud offences arising from the prosecutions.

A Post Office spokesperson has previously said it shares the “aims of the public inquiry to get to the truth of what went wrong in the past and establish accountability”.