hello, i m balvinder gill. i was a sub postmaster until i was wrongly suspended by the post office and made bankrupt. what does the promise to clear and compensate victims of the post office scandal mean for me? balvinder gill is here along with four other subpostmasters. they ll give their reaction live tonight to today s news that they will finally be cleared but will everyone be helped? the minister responsible tells us the budget for compensation is £1 billion. is he sorry it s taken so long? it s terrible, i apologise to all those people, i think over 60 people, and this has been going on for over 20 years, probably 2a, 25 years now. who does he think should pay the bill taxpayers or fujitsu, who delivered the faulty horizon software? plus tonight, the man who was employed by the post office to investigate horizon software and who found it faulty as far back as 2013. good evening. it feels like theft but it was more like systematic abuse the words of this po
roller coaster of talks and more talks and rumors. i think that most of the hostage families are just committed to the work of doing everything we can and speaking to whom ever will listen about the importance and the true urgency of getting all the hostages home. find getting all the hostages home. and ou have getting all the hostages home. and you have been in those meetings with very, very crucial players in all this. do you think this makes a real difference? my this. do you think this makes a real difference? difference? my profession is as an historian. it s difference? my profession is as an historian. it s difficult difference? my profession is as an historian. it s difficult for - difference? my profession is as an historian. it s difficult for me - difference? my profession is as an historian. it s difficult for me to i historian. it s difficult for me to say right now what a difference it might or might not make in 50 years from now. i believe that future his
dominated the headlines for the past week. the prime minister has announced that new legislation will be brought in to make sure that those convicted in one of the biggest miscarriages ofjustice the uk has ever seen. who worked for the post office are swiftly exonerated and compensated. more than 700 sub postmasters received criminal convictions for fraud and false accounting, over a period of around 16 years, after it introduced a faulty it system. some went to prison and many were made bankrupt. we ll get reaction from one sub postmaster in a moment but first our political correspondent iain watson reports. the post office told us over and over, you re the only one. that was a lie, actually. itv made a drama out of a crisis, a scandal that started more than 20 years ago came to public and political prominence. fewer than 100 sub postmasters have had their wrongful convictions overturned and there s pressure to clear more names and pay out more compensation. the prime mini
tonight, we speak live to the real alan bates, the man who dedicated years to bringing the post office scandal to light, and to the woman whose dramatisation for the small screen got a very big reaction. and to gwyneth hughes, the woman whose dramatisation for the small screen has had a very big reaction. wrongful convictions, more than 700 of them prison sentences, reputations trashed, bankruptcy, and now new cases. the post office scandal is only deepening. as we go on air, the petition to strip the former post office boss paula vennells of her cbe is well over a million and the prime minister has said he would support a review of it. it doesn t help the hundreds upon hundreds whose lives were all but destroyed and, in some cases, actually destroyed who will pay their compensation and when? we speak to the subpostmaster at the heart of itv s drama and the writer who s reignited an issue that had slipped from the public consciousness. and we ll be joined by the former
prosecutions into thousand 15. if we are to make sure that escande like this can never happen again, we need to look at the way in which private prosecutions like these have been undertaken. any company can bring private prosecutions in this way. this is not a special power of the post office, i know my right honourable friend the lord chancellor wants to give this issue proper and thoughtful consideration and i am sure he will report to the house about this issue in due course. getting justice for the victims of this candle and ensuring that such a tragedy can never happen again is my highest priority as a minister and has been throughout my 15 months in office. when we talk about compensation, we have to remember that the lives of postmasters and their families caught up in this scandal have been changed forever. they face financial ruin, untold personal distress and a loss of reputation that no amount of financial compensation can fully restore. the government recognises h