Post Office scandal: Former staff contacted over prosecutions

The Post Office is contacting 540 former sub-postmasters and sub-mistresses who may have been wrongfully convicted of theft and fraud.

Dozens of post office workers were convicted - with some imprisoned - after the Post Office installed the flawed Horizon system.

Last month, 39 had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Flora Page, who represented three appellants, called the letters to the 540 a "direct result" of the judgment.

The Post Office is contacting its former employees with potentially relevant convictions.

Additional information is being sought in a further 100 cases.

A spokesman said: "The Post Office sincerely apologises for serious historical failures. We continue to take determined action for people affected.

"The Post Office has made strenuous efforts to identify individuals who were historically convicted and an extensive post-conviction disclosure exercise is taking place to identify and disclose all material which might affect the safety of those convictions."

Between 2000 and 2014, the Post Office prosecuted 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses based on information from the flawed Horizon system, which wrongly showed shortfalls in the sub-postmasters' accounts.

Some staff went to prison following convictions for false accounting, theft and fraud.

Others were financially ruined and have described being shunned by their communities.

Some of those who may have been wrongfully prosecuted have since died.

The clearing of the names of the 39 former staff came after six other convictions were overturned in December, meaning that more people have been affected than in any other miscarriage of justice in the UK.

Barrister Ms Page told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that letters going out to the 540 former sub-postmasters were "a direct result of the resounding judgment in the Court of Appeal".

She said a judge-led inquiry into the scandal is "exactly what is required", as the current government-led inquiry was "not empowered" to "do what it needs to do".

The government has said it will not extend the remit of its inquiry, which is expected to report in the summer. The current inquiry cannot compel witnesses to attend or hand over evidence.

Asked if other parties - such as the Horizon's developers, Fujitsu - should be held accountable, Ms Page added: "I think there will be malicious prosecution claims.

"That's one of the reasons why the Post Office contested the appeals in the way that they did.

"They only accepted the limited argument. They didn't accept the wider argument that their prosecution regime was a wider affront to the public conscience.

"And they resisted that because they had an eye to the fact that malicious prosecution claims would be coming down the line and of course not just the 39, but now as we see it, hundreds and hundreds of them."