Hundreds more subpostmasters could have convictions overturned as Post Office contacts victims
The Post Office has contacted hundreds of former postmasters it previously prosecuted for fraud and theft to help them appeal against the convictions.
The move raises the prospect that many more subpostmasters and mistresses will now be judged to have been wrongly convicted in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Britain.
It comes after 45 historical convictions based on the Post Office’s faulty accounting system Horizon were overturned by the Courts following their referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
The Post Office used evidence based on the flawed Horizon system to prosecute a total of 736 people, many of whom are expected to go to the courts to have their own convictions quashed.
The Post Office announced on Friday it was now contacting the hundreds of postmasters it prosecuted since 1999 following what it described as “an extensive review of relevant historical prosecutions” by criminal law specialists, Peters & Peters Solicitors LLP.
A Post Office spokesperson said: “The Post Office sincerely apologises for serious historical failures. We continue to take determined action for people affected.
“In addition to full co-operation with the CCRC’s review, Post Office has made strenuous efforts to identify individuals who were historically convicted and an extensive post-conviction disclosure exercise is taking place to identify and disclose all material which might affect the safety of those convictions.”
In total, the Post Office is currently contacting around 540 people with potentially relevant convictions. Around a 100 others have been identified where additional information is being sought. Post Office bosses have urged anybody who believes that they may have a relevant case to come forward.
The Post Office said it had undertaken an in-depth investigation to examine its failure to fairly investigate and disclose problems with Horizon to those subpostmasters it prosecuted for offences such as theft, fraud and false accounting.
The post-conviction disclosure exercise began in January 2020 and has involved more than 60 barristers reviewing millions of documents to identify any material that should have been disclosed to those prosecuted by the Post Office.
The review has examined around 4.5 million documents to date, along with thousands of physical and electronic sources. In addition, Peters & Peters liaised with a number of third parties including Fujitsu Services Limited, Royal Mail Group, the Courts, the CCRC and approximately 50 law firms and agents historically instructed by the Post Office to obtain material relevant to the convictions.
Announcing it was contacting former postmasters and people who worked in a Post Office branch whose convictions may be affected, the Post Office said: “Disclosure relevant to their cases will be provided, together with information about how they might take forward an appeal if they wish to do so.”
The Post Office no longer undertakes any private prosecutions, with cases related to Horizon effectively coming to an end in 2013, although two cases prosecuted in 2015 relied on Horizon data.
The Court of Appeal last month ruled that the convictions of 39 postmasters were unsafe because they had been based on flawed evidence from the now discredited Horizon accounting computer system installed in Post Office branches in 1999.
Following the convictions, some of the 39 went to prison, lost their homes, were shunned by their communities and even failed to get insurance. A number of those convicted died before their names were cleared.
In a damning ruling, three senior judges said the company had “steamrolled” subpostmasters in its pursuit of prosecutions, despite knowing there were serious questions over the reliability of Horizon.
