ON New Year’s Day 2024, the British public was shocked after ITV aired the pilot episode of its latest drama “Mr. Bates vs The Post Office” which tackled the massive scandal of the Post Office, a United Kingdom government-owned body.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described it as ‘one of the greatest miscarriages of justice’ in UK history.
In the 1990s, more than 700 Post Office branch managers were wrongly prosecuted for fraud and 230 were imprisoned, based on information generated by the organization’s computing software ‘Horizon’.
Until now, Horizon is still being used by the post office.
The miscarriage of justice came to light in 2019 when the high court ruled that the Japanese manufactured accounting system was to blame and the government ordered an inquiry into the affair in 2020.
However, only 93 people were acquitted of criminal charges after it was revealed that Horizon was riddled with faults.
The rest of the cases are still being evaluated and there are calls for the process to be expedited following the recent TV drama which highlighted the case.
On January 10th, 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that those previously convicted would be cleared of wrongdoing and compensated under a new law.
A one-off £75,000 payment would be awarded to 555 former post office branch managers whose group court case, led by Alan Bates, though not all were criminally convicted, helped to expose the injustice.
A £600,000 compensation would also be awarded to those whose convictions will be quashed.
It is expected that the legislation would be introduced within weeks and downing street said it aims to complete the process of exonerating the victims by the end of this year.
