MPs Push for Justice: Overturning Post Office Convictions

0:00On March 13, a group of members of Parliament is pushing the government to overturn convictions linked to the post office's old capture accounting, software, which came before the infamous horizon system. Their report from the Business and Trade Committee calls for urgent new laws to quash these cases and a full probe into how many people were wrongly, affected back in the 1990s. Nature ran in up to 2,500 branches before horizon rolled out in 1999, and it generated fixed shortfalls just like. It's successor. A government review last year confirmed it likely caused errors, leading to a compensation scheme for non-convicted victims that started in October. Now, incomplete records suggest there could be far more cases than known. Lawmaker Slam Fujitsu, the maker of horizon, for not contributing a penny to the roughly 2 billion pounds in redress costs so far, even as it keeps landing big government contracts. Committee Chair Liam Byrne called it unacceptable that taxpayers are picking up the tab while

1:02the company profits from public money. ongoing redress programs for horizon victims still face big hurdles, like huge gaps between initial offers and final payouts, long delays, and extra. One scheme has paid out 1.44 billion pounds to over 11,300 people, but appeals are common and some claims drag, on way past targets. With a key court appeal testing a capture conviction underway and pressure mounting on Fujitsu for an interim payment, officials are reviewing these. Recommendations to speed up justice for everyone hit by these scandals.