Exclusive:UK Post Office: justice system has not come out of scandal ‘very well’, MP says ahead of convictions law

One of the leading Parliamentary campaigners for the convicted sub-postmasters has hit out at the justice system’s role in the Post Office scandal.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced yesterday (10 January) that the government plans to pass legislation to quash the hundreds of wrongful convictions en masse, following the fall out from ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office starring Toby Jones. More than 900 sub-postmasters were given criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software called Horizon made it appear as though money was missing from their shops.

The Post Office relentlessly pursued its staff through the courts, with many spending time in jail and some even committing suicide. It has been described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history.

The scale of the scandal has prompted the government to adopt the unconventional approach of new legislation, rather than requiring individuals to challenge their convictions. There have been concerns that this could set a dangerous legal precedent, with Parliament interfering with the independence of the judiciary.

However Labour MP Kevan Jones, who has been campaigning for the sub-postmasters for more than a decade, told NationalWorld that “it needs addressing as justice hasn’t been done”.

Jones, who sits on the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, said: “People say this is politics interfering with the courts, but to be honest I don’t think the justice system has come very well out of this scandal either.

“I think there is a duty of them to recognise, although this might be unprecedented, we do need to do something about it. It needs addressing because clearly justice hasn’t been done, these people haven’t been served well by the justice system.”

Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said these were “truly exceptional circumstances”, adding “it is truly unprecedented and it will need an appropriate resolution”.

Former sub-postmaster Chris Head, who has launched a Change petition for compensation and accountability, told NationalWorld that he and his colleagues had “lost trust in the system”. “We have all these postmasters who are innocent and thought it would be OK as the system would protect them, but it failed them on an industrial scale,” he said.

The Post Office targeted the sub-postmasters relentlessly through private prosecutions. At the inquiry into the scandal today, sub-postmistress Jacqueline McDonald accused the Post Office’s investigators of “behaving like Mafia gangsters”.

Jones, the MP for North Durham, said: “The problem with the [appeal] system is it puts the onus on the victim to actually come forward and actually make an application to do it. Well a lot of these people are so damaged there’s no way they’re going to go anywhere a court again.”

He said he spoke to a constituent, a wrongfully convicted sub-postmistress, who told him she hadn’t come forward until now because “I’ve spent three months in prison, I’ve had a stroke - there’s no way I’m going anywhere near a courtroom”.

Jones was first made aware of the scandal more than 10 years ago, when his constituent Tom Brown came to him after he was accused of stealing £84,000. Brown, as was portrayed in the drama, kept trying to balance the Horizon system and the shortfall kept rising.

Post Office investigators raided his house, arrested him and “put him through two years of agony”, Jones explained. Then on the day of his trial, the Post Office withdrew the case. By that point however, Brown was bankrupt. 

“It’s aggressive, they weaponised the justice system against people like Tom,” Jones said. Brown sadly died just before Christmas, so never got to see the impact the ITV drama had. 

Jones believes there should be a moratorium on government contracts with IT giant Fujitsu, which supplied the faulty Horizon technology to the Post Office. Since the Post Office stopped prosecuting its staff, the firm has won over 150 UK government contracts and is still one of the government's 'strategic suppliers', which typically means it receives over £100 million in contracts per year.

Today (11 January), NationalWorld’s sister site LondonWorld revealed that Fujitsu was signed off as an authorised contractor for the Met Police by Sadiq Khan's office in 2022. Now Met detectives are investigating bringing criminal charges in the scandal.

Jones said: “I think it would be a very brave minister at the moment, or in the future, to give them [Fujitsu] a contract so I think the onus is going to have to be on Fujitsu, one. to explain their role, and they’re going to have to make some sort of financial settlement. 

“There’s evidence in the public domain already, stuff that’s been put to the Inquiry, that’s come out in court, where they’re not blameless in this. And I think their role this last week, just remaining silent, for a large international corporation like that, I think is not acceptable.”

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told journalists this morning: “There is an inquiry underway that is seeking to establish facts on the point of culpability. All we can say at the moment is that we will use the facts established by the inquiry to hold those individuals and businesses, should they be found culpable, to account.”

A Fujitsu spokesman said: “The current Post Office Horizon IT statutory inquiry is examining complex events stretching back over 20 years to understand who knew what, when, and what they did with that knowledge.

“The inquiry has reinforced the devastating impact on postmasters’ lives and that of their families, and Fujitsu has apologised for its role in their suffering. Fujitsu is fully committed to supporting the inquiry in order to understand what happened and to learn from it. Out of respect for the inquiry process, it would be inappropriate for Fujitsu to comment further at this time.”

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.