Horizon IT System: Convictions
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many full-time civil servants are working on informing postmasters and former postmasters that their conviction has been quashed under the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024.
Answered by Heidi Alexander
The Horizon scandal was an unprecedented miscarriage of justice and the Government is working to notify all postmasters whose convictions have been quashed as quickly as possible. This work is carried out through a specially trained casework team who assess each case and verify that a conviction has been quashed by the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024. The team must assess a wide variety of data sources including records from the Police National Computer, Post Office Limited, His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Criminal Cases Review Commission. As some of these convictions are decades old, it can take time to retrieve crucial pieces of data such as court records which adds to the time taken to verify a conviction in scope of the Act.
As of 8 October 2024, the Ministry of Justice has 22 civil servants working on the process of informing individuals who have had a conviction quashed by the Act. This number includes the dedicated Post Office convictions casework team as well as policy advisers, legal advisers, analysts and managerial oversight. The process to provide financial redress to postmasters is undertaken separately by the Department for Business and Trade with a separate team of civil servants, once a conviction has been overturned.
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