Postmasters were hounded by the Crown Prosecution Service during Sir Keir Starmer’s time in charge, it emerged yesterday.
While the bulk of the prosecutions were brought privately by the Post Office, the CPS said yesterday it had identified at least 11 occasions on which it brought cases linked to the Horizon computer system.
Additionally the Criminal Cases Review Commission has identified a further 27 where the CPS may have been involved.
The CPS said three of the 11 cases took place during Sir Keir’s tenure as director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013. The Labour leader last night insisted he had no knowledge of the cases – and the party said any Horizon-linked cases ‘didn’t go to his desk’.
Sir Keir told reporters: ‘I wasn’t aware of any of them. I think there was a small number within a 20-year window, that’s all I know. I don’t even know… how many of those may or may not have involved Horizon.’
Postmasters were hounded by the Crown Prosecution Service during Sir Keir Starmer’s time in charge, it emerged yesterday
The CPS said three of the 11 cases took place during Sir Keir’s tenure as director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013 (Pictured: Victims of the Post Office scandal appearing on the BBC)
Senior Tories have called for Sir Keir to set out his role in the scandal. Party deputy chairman Brendan Clarke-Smith said: ‘After the latest set of revelations, there are clearly some serious questions to be answered surrounding prosecutions. Sir Keir Starmer and the CPS need to urgently clarify whether any of these happened under his watch and if so, why.’
The CPS said the cases spanned a 20-year period from 2001 to 2020. In one case during Sir Keir’s tenure, in May 2009, a sub-postmaster was sentenced to 21 months in prison for theft after pleading guilty.
In a second prosecution, also in May 2009, a sub-postmaster was given an eight-month suspended jail term and 180 hours’ community service after pleading guilty to theft and fraud. In the third case, the defendant was subjected to a curfew and ordered to do unpaid work in February 2012 for theft.
A CPS spokesman said: ‘We’ve worked extensively and identified a small number of CPS cases which involved evidence connected to Horizon. In these, we have written to those defendants to disclose information so they could pursue an appeal.’
Other Labour figures have also faced questions about why they failed to act to end the scandal.
Former business secretary Lord Mandelson told Times Radio that he was too focused on a mass post office closure programme at the time to notice the unfolding scandal.
He said: ‘It just absorbed vast amounts of time and energy, and I’m afraid to say it was a massive distraction from this really big and appalling set of circumstances.’