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Law to quash Post Office convictions being considered, minister says

Nadhim Zahawi has called for a "simple bill" to allow ex-post office staff to have convictions overturned

The idea of using legislation to quash convictions of all Post Office workers caught up in the Horizon scandal is under "active consideration", the justice secretary has said.

Alex Chalk told MPs there would be further announcements shortly.

But he said the government wanted to exhaust "all alternatives before taking radical action".

More than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted based on information from the faulty Horizon IT system.

Some went to prison following convictions for false accounting and theft, while many were financially ruined.

In the Commons, former minister Nadhim Zahawi called for a "simple bill" to quash all the remaining convictions based on "bad data".

"Until those convictions are overturned the victims cannot claim compensation," the Conservative MP said.

In response, Mr Chalk said the issue was "an appalling injustice" and Mr Zahawi's suggestion was "receiving active consideration".

Other senior figures to call for legislation to speed up the process of overturning the convictions include Labour peer Lord Falconer, who was justice secretary under Tony Blair, and former Conservative justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland.

Sir Robert told the Commons that in "a perfect world" victims of the scandal would have their cases individually assessed.

However, he added: "The scale of this miscarriage of justice is enormous and there are understandably hundreds of victims who do not want to come forward because they've lost faith in the process."

Conservative MP Sir Bob Neill, who chairs the Commons Justice Committee, said legislating to overturn convictions would be "unprecedented".

He urged the justice secretary to ensure he was satisfied the existing appeals process "may not be capable of delivering justice within an acceptable timeframe".

Mr Chalk replied: "That is precisely the point…. Of course we would not want to stray into the normal lane of the judiciary."

He added: "This is wholly unprecedented. We will want to have exhausted all alternatives before taking radical action."

PA Media Former post office workers celebrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, after having their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal in April 2021PA Media
Some 39 former Post Office workers had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2021

Some have raised concerns that quashing convictions through legislation would amount to Parliament interfering with the independent judicial process.

Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve told the BBC such a move was "a short cut", which "may leave some people dissatisfied that they haven't really been fully exonerated".

Mr Chalk has been meeting senior judges to discuss potential ways to overturn convictions more quickly.

Another option would be a mass appeal, with cases dealt with together, rather than individually.

In 2021, for example, 39 former Post Office workers had their convictions quashed in one go.

But such a case could still take years to resolve.

To date only 93 convictions have been overturned and of these only 30 people have agreed "full and final" compensation settlements.

An ongoing public inquiry is looking into the scandal, which has been described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice the UK has ever seen.

However, pressure has been increasing on ministers to act after the issue was thrust back into the spotlight by an ITV drama.

On Tuesday, Paula Vennells, who was chief executive of the Post Office when it routinely denied there was a problem with the Horizon system, said she would hand back her CBE following growing calls for her to do so.