UPDATE: A government spokesperson has today [25 October 2024] issued the following statement in response to the HCAB’s letter:

“The Post Office Offences Act 2024 was a truly exceptional response to unprecedented circumstances where hundreds of convictions based on evidence from the Horizon system were considered to be unsafe.  

“The Criminal Cases Review Commission is looking into a small number of convictions which may be based on evidence from the Capture computer system. If they consider that there is a real possibility that these convictions are unsafe, they will be referred to the Court of Appeal.”

ORIGINAL POST:

The body set up to advise the government on matters relating to compensating Subpostmasters has called for the quashing of all convictions brought using data from a predecessor to the Horizon IT system.

Professor Chris Hodges, chair of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board (HCAB), has written to the Lord Chancellor about ‘Capture’, a piece of accounting software sold by the Post Office to its Subpostmasters between 1992 and 1999. “Evidence” from the Capture system was sometimes used to prosecute Subpostmasters who had accounting discrepancies in their branches.

A recent report by the investigations agency Kroll concluded that “there was a reasonable likelihood that Capture could have created shortfalls for Subpostmasters“.

In his letter to Shabana Mahmood, dated 22 October, Hodges writes that he and his advisory board members “have read the Kroll Report and media stories of the terrible experiences of individuals, and seen statistics about the number of Post Office investigations and prosecutions from the ’Capture years’. Sickeningly, the evidence about the behaviour of Post Office investigations and management is the same as what took place in relation to the Horizon victims.”

The letter states: “the Horizon and Capture situations seem to us to be indistinguishable.”

Hodges and his fellow board members – Lord Arbuthnot, Lord Beamish (formerly Kevan Jones MP) and Professor Richard Moorhead – make it quite clear what they think should happen next:

“Justice requires to be consistently and swiftly delivered. We cannot see that the Court of Appeal’s process or presumptions will assist in delivering justice in these cases…. The Capture victims deserve particular speed in response in view of their greater duration of suffering and their advancing age. We urge you to overturn all the Post Office-driven convictions from the Capture period by legislation as soon as possible.” [their italics]

I have called the Ministry of Justice and asked whether the Lord Chancellor will overturn the ‘Capture Convictions’ in the light of the HCAB’s demand. As soon as I get a response I will update this post.

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