UK government resists pressure to hold statutory inquiry into Post Office Horizon scandal
MPs unite behind call to hold those responsible to account, but minister says it would take too long
Lindsay Clark Tue 27 Apr 2021 // 16:06 UTC Share
Copy
The UK government has resisted calls for statutory public inquiries into the Post Office Horizon scandal in which subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted over accounting flaws in Fujitsu-built software.
Following last week s Court of Appeal ruling which quashed 39 convictions of Post Office employees, MPs today pressed the government to hold a full public inquiry into the matter.
Shadow minister for science, research and digital Chi Onwurah told MPs that the government s inquiry into the Horizon scandal, announced in September 2020 and to be led by former High Court judge Sir Wyn Williams, would be toothless and could even lead to a whitewash as postmasters had been clear that they would fail to recognise and par
Jon Platt school holiday fines case: High Court ruling revealed
onthewight.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from onthewight.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Show more
After the introduction of a new computer system in the early 2000s, the Post Office began using its data to accuse sub-postmasters of falsifying accounts and stealing money. Many were fired and financially ruined; others were prosecuted and even put behind bars.
But many of the accused insisted that they had done nothing wrong and that they were being held accountable for computer errors they could not control.
After being contacted by a man who insisted that his pregnant wife had been jailed for a crime she didn’t commit, journalist Nick Wallis started investigating what some are already describing as the widest miscarriage of justice in UK legal history.
To improve the performance of our website, show the most relevant news products and targeted advertising, we collect technical impersonal information about you, including through the tools of our partners. You can find a detailed description of how we use your data in our Privacy Policy. For a detailed description of the technologies, please see the Cookie and Automatic Logging Policy.
By clicking on the Accept & Close button, you provide your explicit consent to the processing of your data to achieve the above goal.
You can withdraw your consent using the method specified in the Privacy Policy.
Accept & Close
Sputnik International
Japanese firm has a reckoning to face
Gareth Corfield Fri 23 Apr 2021 // 14:15 UTC Share
Copy
Post Office employees were wrongly prosecuted by the company as a direct result of it covering up software bugs in its Horizon IT system, the Court of Appeal has said as it quashed 39 convictions this morning.
Those 39 convictions were obtained by the Post Office s in-house lawyers who ignored their own barristers advice that the institution s behaviour was trampling over established prosecutorial codes intended to promote fairness and honesty.
Lord Justice Holroyde said that the one-time state monopoly had, by representing Horizon as reliable, effectively sought to reverse the burden of proof, leading to criminal defendants having to prove their innocence instead of the Post Office showing they were guilty. Its lawyers compounded this by withholding evidence from courts and defence lawyers alike – evidence which clearly showed the Post Office and Fujitsu
vimarsana © 2020. All Rights Reserved.