Some were ruined, others imprisoned for theft. Even more dramatic, four took their own lives. The United Kingdom is shaken by controversy as “one of the great miscarriages of justice” in its history resurfaces in public debate. The emotion crossed the country, from London to the jagged fjords of the Highlands, in Scotland. But what is this story about postal workers being wrongly accused? 20 minutes explains everything to you.
What are we talking about ?
Between 1999 and 2015, nearly a thousand postal agency managers were prosecuted, sometimes to the point of having their lives shattered. These accusations were based on information from accounting software called Horizon, installed by Fujitsu in the late 1990s, and which turned out to be defective.
Postal service executives, refusing to acknowledge problems with the software, forced postal workers to repay falsely created accounting shortfalls, leading to many of their ruin.
Why is the United Kingdom upset by this story today?
It took the broadcast of a fictional series on television for the public and the authorities to understand this long-term scandal, which saw thousands of Post Office employees accused. The scandal returned to the heart of the debates after the broadcast last week of a series on the ITV channel, “Mr. Bates vs The Post Office”, which generated a wave of sympathy for the victims.
The series tells the story of Alan Bates, played by actor Toby Jones, who sued the Post Office on behalf of 555 employees in 2017 to have their innocence recognized. She mentions, among other things, the case of Jo Hamilton, wrongly accused of having stolen 36,000 pounds (42,000 euros), but who preferred, like other employees, to plead guilty rather than be sent to prison.
How did the government react to the controversy?
This is “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the history of our nation”, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak admitted this Wednesday to MPs. “People who have worked hard in the service of the population have seen their lives and reputations destroyed through no fault of their own,” said Rishi Sunak. “Victims must obtain justice and compensation. »
A new law will be introduced into Parliament so that victims are “quickly exonerated and compensated”, promised the head of the conservative government. Instead of individual judicial procedures for reparations which promise to be long and painful, the text will annul all these convictions, an extremely rare measure massively reversing the decisions of independent courts.
“We recognize that this is an exceptional measure, but these are exceptional circumstances,” Secretary of State for Postal Services Kevin Hollinrake told Parliament. The postal workers were victims of an “arbitrary exercise of power”, he lamented.
Where is the compensation?
So far, nearly £150 million (€174 million) has been paid to around 2,500 victims in recent years, Rishi Sunak said. In September, the government announced that agency heads wrongly convicted could each receive 600,000 pounds (nearly 700,000 euros). They can also choose to refuse the offer and pursue legal proceedings.
To date, only 93 convictions have been quashed and £21 million (€24 million) paid in compensation to affected employees. The new text provides compensation of 75,000 pounds for victims wrongly accused but not convicted by the courts, which concerns hundreds of other postal workers.