Victims of second Post Office IT scandal to receive compensation

Get the free Morning Headlines e-mail for information from our reporters the world over

Sign up to our free Morning Headlines e-mail

Victims of a second Post Office IT scandal are set to receive compensation, a authorities minister has mentioned.

The claims stem from alleged wrongful prosecutions of sub-postmasters within the Nineteen Nineties, prior to the Horizon scandal that captured the eye of the nation in current weeks.

Former put up workplace employees have spoken out after the accounting software program used, referred to as Capture, was inclined to errors and often left them with shortfalls once they balanced their books.

Mr Hollinrake, Post Office minister, mentioned victims of the Capture scandal needs to be supplied with compensation “where detriment has occurred”.

It got here as he was questioned by Labour MP Kevan Jones on the problem who mentioned: “If we are going to overturn convictions, it can’t just be about the Horizon system.

“Evidence I’ve put into the public inquiry, which I sent to him yesterday, clearly indicates that the scandal predates Horizon in terms of Capture.

“They need to be included in both the compensation scheme and also in overturning convictions.”

Mr Hollinrake replied: “In terms of Capture, he’s regularly brought this up and it’s something we’re keen to engage with him on to make sure those are included within any compensation where detriment has occurred.”

The alternate was made within the House of Commons on Tuesday prior to the federal government giving a ministerial assertion concerning plans for laws to overturn Horizon convictions en mass and supply compensation for victims.

In a written ministerial assertion Mr Hollinrake mentioned: “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.”

The assertion added that victims could have their convictions quashed beneath a set of “clear and objective criteria”.

This means these convicted by the Post Office or Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) could be quashed, if such prosecutions had been based mostly on proof supplied by the Post Office.

However the Government won’t embody any convictions from the Department for Work and Pensions, he mentioned.

Convictions will want to relate to alleged offences through the interval that the Horizon IT system was in use and to offences which relate to the scandal – for instance theft and false accounting.

The convicted particular person will even want to have been working in a Post Office that used the software program and be both a subpostmaster, one of their workers, officers, or members of the family, or a direct worker of the Post Office so as to be eligible.

Mr Hollinrake did admit that the laws is probably going to clear the names of individuals who had been responsible of against the law. However, he mentioned this was a “price worth paying” so as to quash convictions for a lot of harmless individuals.

More follows on this breaking story…