Ministers are set to meet to discuss the fallout of the Post Office Horizon scandal that led to hundreds of sub-postmasters being wrongfully convicted.
Justice secretary Alex Chalk will meet Kevin Hollinrake, the minister for the Post Office, on Monday. It comes after Rishi Sunak pledged to review options around the scandal.
Between 1999 and 2015, over 700 sub-postmasters were convicted of fraud, theft or false accounting after a glitch in the Horizon software incorrectly reported financial shortfalls.
The Post Office acted as the prosecutor in the cases. Some of the sub-postmasters convicted were jailed, many faced financial ruin and some have died since.
Victims of the scandal, which has gained massive publicity after the ITV drama Mr Bates vs. The Post Office aired, are still fighting to clear their name. Many had to pay out hundreds of thousands of pounds of their own money to make up the alleged shortfall.
While it has been described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history, only 100 people have had their convictions quashed. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has now said it is “right that we find every which way we can do to try to make this right for the people who were so wrongfully treated at the time”.
The airing of the ITV mini-series has brought forward the meeting between ministers, reports the BBC. There has, reportedly, been concerns from inside government that compensation and the quashing of convictions has been “too slow”.
So far, 93 convictions have been quashed while 30 people have agreed “full and final settlements”. The Post Office reportedly told the BBC a further 54 cases have resulted in either a conviction being upheld, people being refused permission to appeal, or the person appealing having withdrawn from the process.
Last month, a board tasked with looking after compensation called for all staff wrongly accused of theft or false accounting to have their convictions overturned. Chalk and Hollinrake are expected to meet with Downing Street lawyers to explore ways they can speed up addressing the scandal.
One options Sunak reportedly considered was stripping the Post Office of its role in the appeal process. Instead Crown Prosecution lawyers would step in as appeals are heard.
Labour MP Kevan Jones and Conservative MP Sir David Davis, who have both campaigned on the issue, hope they will be able to scrutinise a minister about the scandal in the House of Commons.
A public inquiry into the Horizon scandal is currently ongoing. And the Metropolitan Police is reportedly investigating potential fraud offences from the prosecutions.
A Post Office spokesperson previously said it shares the “aims of the public inquiry to get to the truth of what went wrong in the past and establish accountability”.
