Jan. 10 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday that his government would introduce a law to provide blanket acquittals for hundreds of post office employees who were wrongly convicted of financial crimes.
Sunak, speaking to Parliament, said a law aiming to have the more than 900 employees convicted in the sweeping scandal in England and Wales acquitted by the end of the year would be introduced “within weeks.”
“This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history,” Sunak said. “People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own. The victims must get justice and compensation.”
Postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake described the law, which has not been fully detailed as “unprecedented,” acknowledging that it may lead to acquittals for people who had indeed committed crimes.
However, the Department of Business told the BBC that postal workers would be required to sign a declaration stating they had not committed a crime that would then make them eligible for $763,980 in compensation that has already been offered for employees who already have had their convictions overturned.
The decision to introduce the law came after the release of a four-part ITV miniseries Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, which first aired on Jan. 1.
It detailed the scandal in which Horizon IT accounting falsely showed financial losses at post offices, leading to employees being accused of stealing and resulting in hundreds of postal employees being prosecuted between 1999 and 2015, with many facing jail time and fines.
In 2019, Britain’s High Court made a judgement that the system was defective, and a public inquiry was set up to investigate the issue in 2020 and is still ongoing, with multiple lawsuits filed in connection with the scandal and some convictions being upheld.
Hollinrake said the inquiry had produced evidence that the Post Office acted with “incompetence and malevolence” and the employees ultimately fell prey to a “brutal and arbitrary exercise of power.”
