BEIS0000893
BEIS0000893
Horizon Compensation Advisory Board
Secretariat: Department for Business and Trade
Caxton House, Tothill Street, London SW1H 9NA
The Rt Hon Alex Chalk KC MP,
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
By email
14 December 2023
Dear Lord Chancellor,
Post Office Convictions
Tam writing as Chair of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, on behalf of myself and
colleagues: The Rt Hon Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, The Rt Hon Kevan Jones MP, and Professor
Richard Moorhead.
- Over 900 postmasters were prosecuted during the Horizon scandal. There could not have
been such a massive outbreak of criminality amongst people who were, and remain, as a
group of citizens, careful, law-abiding and trustworthy individuals.
- These convictions were the most egregious effect of the Horizon scandal: until they are
overturned we cannot put the scandal behind us. Many victims remain traumatised and
ostracised by their communities.
- The convictions are unsafe not only because they relied on the Horizon computer evidence,
but also because of egregious systemic Post Office behaviour in interviews and pursuing
prosecutions, vividly demonstrated in evidence to the Williams Inquiry. This led to guilty
pleas and false confessions, driven by legal advice to victims to minimise sentences, and by
the psychological pressure of dealing with an institution systematically disregarding the
truth and fairness.
- Individuals can apply to the CCRC and Courts to have convictions overturned — but only
93 of the 900 have done so successfully. So the current approach is not working. This is
because:
= Over two decades, much of the evidence has been lost or destroyed by the
Post Office.
* Individuals’ unwillingness to appeal given their understandable deep distrust
of authority.
= The Court of Appeal rules impose limitations on the Post Office’s ability to
concede cases.
«= The unreliability of evidence about other Post Office-related systems (and
DWP payments), which has still not been adequately examined, and may never
be.
= In cases where Post Office concludes that a retrial would not be in the public
interest, the conviction is overturned but the postmaster is denied full
compensation and left with an implication of continued guilt.
For these reasons we believe the only viable approach is to overturn all 900+ Post Office-driven
convictions from the Horizon period. A small minority of these people were doubtless genuinely guilty
of something. However, we believe it would be worth acquitting a few guilty people (who have already
been punished) in order to deliver justice to the majority — which would not otherwise happen.
I attach a detailed paper on some of the systemic inadequacies with the prosecution and appeals
systems. We are developing a separate paper on the psychology and abuse issues.
Yours sincerely,
Chris Hodges
Christopher Hodges OBE PhD FSALS FRSA
Emeritus Professor of Justice Systems, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford
BEIS0000893
BEIS0000893
Chair, Horizon Compensation Advisory Board
ce Kevin Hollinrake MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Enterprise and Markets