The victims of the Horizon scandal are set to be exonerated in new legislation set out by the government.
In a written ministerial statement on Thursday, Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said victims of the scandal will have their convictions quashed under a set of ‘clear and objective criteria’.
Earlier this week, former Post Office chair Henry Staunton revealed a bombshell memo from the government which he claimed told him to delay compensation for postmasters until after the election.
Minister Hollinrake said: ‘The Government recognises the constitutional sensitivity and unprecedented nature of this legislation.
‘The Government is clear that this legislation does not set a precedent for the future relationship between the executive, Parliament and the judiciary.
The Horizon scandal saw more than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015
Northern Irish subpostmistresses Katherine McAlerney, Heather Earley, Deirdre Connolly and Maureen McKelvey arrive at Aldwych House to give evidence for the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry
‘The judiciary and the courts have dealt swiftly with the cases before them, but the scale and circumstances of this prosecutorial misconduct demands an exceptional response.
‘We are keen to ensure that the legislation achieves its goal of bringing prompt justice to all of those who were wrongfully convicted as a result of the scandal, followed by rapid financial redress.’
He added that there would be certain elements required in order for convictions to be within the scope of legislation designed to exonerate wrongfully prosecuted subpostmasters.
These would be the type of prosecutor – for example, the Post Office or the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) if such prosecutions were based on evidence provided by the Post Office.
But the Government will not include any convictions from the Department for Work and Pensions.
Convictions will need to relate to alleged offences during the period that the Horizon IT system was in use and to offences which relate to the scandal, for example theft and false accounting.
The convicted person will need to have been working in a Post Office that used the software and be either a subpostmaster, one of their employees, officers, or family members, or a direct employee of the Post Office in order to be eligible.
Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake (pictured) said victims of the scandal will have their convictions quashed under a set of ‘clear and objective criteria’
Mr Hollinrake added: ‘The legislation, which will be brought forward shortly, will quash all convictions which are identified as being in scope. That scope will be defined by a set of clear and objective criteria which will be set out in the legislation and will not require any element of discretion or subjective analysis in order to be applied.’
The Government’s legislation to exonerate subpostmasters is also likely to clear the names of people ‘who were, in fact, guilty of a crime’.
He said this was a ‘price worth paying’ in order quash convictions for many innocent people.
In terms of measures to mitigate the risk of clearing those guilty of offences, Mr Hollinrake said people will be required to sign a statement to the effect that they did not commit the crime for which they were convicted in order to receive financial redress.
If people are found to have signed the statement falsely in order to gain compensation, they ‘may be guilty of fraud,’ he said.