Post Office Scandal: Minister says compensation is number one priority

Compensating victims of the Post Office scandal is the "number one priority", a government minister has said.

Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake, the MP for Thirsk and Malton, also said the individuals responsible for the scandal should be held to account.

More than 900 Post Office workers were wrongly prosecuted for theft and false accounting between 1999 and 2015.

The government has pledged to bring in a new law to "swiftly exonerate and compensate" those falsely convicted.

Speaking to BBC Radio York, Mr Hollinrake said: "The scale is just horrendous."

He said his "number one priority" was to "try and get compensation and get answers for people" and he would continue to do so "until the last person is compensated".

"You've had marriages fail, people commit suicide, an horrendous impact on people's lives.

"It's perfectly reasonable that the public should demand people are held to account and that should mean criminal prosecutions wherever possible," he added.

There were more than 900 convictions linked to the scandal, with only 93 so far being overturned, after a faulty computer system called Horizon made it appear money was missing from accounts.

The issue has been thrust back into the limelight recently after the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office was broadcast.

An inquiry into the scandal re-started earlier, where a boss of Fujitsu, the company which created the faulty Horizon software, apologised to sub-postmasters.

The firm's Europe director Paul Patterson said it was "sorry for our part in this appalling miscarriage of justice".

"We are determined to continue to support this inquiry to get to the truth, wherever it lays," he added.

He promised to "engage with government" regarding compensation for victims.

Mr Hollinrake said: "It shouldn't just be a lesson learned, it should be corporations paying back towards the huge compensation bill the taxpayer is picking up."

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