James Cleverly hits again at Post Office after it stated it stands by Horizon circumstances
Home Secretary James Cleverly has hit again on the Post Office after it stated it stood by greater than 350 Horizon scandal prosecutions.
Mr Cleverly stated the Government is not going to be “distracted or deterred” from lastly offering compensation to these wronged by one of many greatest miscarriages of justice in current historical past. It comes after a letter from Post Office chief government Nick Read stated the organisation would oppose appeals in additional than half of the circumstances.
Writing after ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office sparked widespread anger in regards to the enormous miscarriage of justice, Mr Read stated the corporate “would be bound to oppose an appeal” in no less than 369 of the 700 circumstances it had prosecuted. But Mr Cleverly responded: “That letter is not going to divert us from what we know to be the right course of action, which is do the right thing by hard-working people who found themselves, through no fault of their own, being targeted for criminal actions.
“So we’re relentlessly targeted on that, and that alternate will not change that in any respect.” Ministers are underneath stress to lastly safe justice for over 700 wrongly prosecuted sub-postmasters, and yesterday stated laws to exonerate them is anticipated by July.
In a January letter to Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Mr Read stated the circumstances “contain convictions obtained by reliance on proof unrelated to the Horizon pc system” and represented a “rather more important” proportion of the prosecutions than those the company was likely to concede in court.
The Post Office denied the letter, first reported by The Guardian, had been intended to persuade ministers against a mass exoneration of subpostmasters, and said it was sent “with none worth judgment on what the proper plan of action is perhaps”. And solicitor Nick Vamos, in an attached note, said it was “extremely possible that the overwhelming majority of people that haven’t but appealed have been, in actual fact, responsible as charged and have been safely convicted”.
Hundreds of postmasters who were wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal will finally have their names cleared – but a campaigner said she’ll “imagine it after I see it”.
Legislation to overturn convictions in England and Wales is expected to come into force by July. Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said shocking behaviour by prosecutors has been exposed in recent months, meaning their work is “discredited”.
He said the “unprecedented intervention” to exonerate postmasters will “ship lengthy overdue justice”. But campaigner and former subpostmistress Jo Hamilton stated: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
She added: “Any promises they’ve made they’ve not kept.” In a press release Mr Hollinrake admitted that some individuals who have been responsible of crimes might find yourself being cleared – saying it is a “price worth paying”.
