Post Office loses records of 19 cases involving prosecution of subpostmasters in Scotland

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https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scot ... d-33436495

The revelations have sparked fury from subpostmasters, politicians and lawyers who said the poor handling of records could prevent wrongfully convicted people receiving justice.

The Post Office has lost the records of almost 20 cases involving the prosecution of subpostmasters in Scotland, the Sunday Mail can reveal.

The organisation, which is at the centre of the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history, said it has no record of 19 cases and only discovered the issue when told by the Crown Office.

The revelations have sparked fury from subpostmasters, politicians and lawyers who said the poor handling of records could prevent wrongfully convicted people receiving justice.

Chris Dawson, 50, was wrongly accused of stealing £17,500 from his post office in Pitlochry in 2010, said: “This angers me. It’s beyond belief they have no record of 19 cases they were involved in.

“That could mean there’s 19 people who haven’t had access to the justice they deserve, are entitled to redress and compensation and know nothing of it.”

It comes after the Scottish Government announced in June it would follow Westminster in bringing in a mass exoneration scheme for those wrongfully convicted.

Stuart Munro, head of criminal litigation at Livingston Brown, said the reliability of the scheme was now under threat.

He said: “It’s concerning that, years after this scandal became known, neither the Crown nor the Post Office is able to say how many sub-postmasters they were responsible for prosecuting.

“Without that knowledge those affected and the public as a whole can have no confidence in the mass exoneration scheme.

“Victims of this scandal have seen their lives ruined by the corrupt actions of the state yet a failure to identify cases will see victims again denied justice.”

In reply to a Freedom of Information request from the Sunday Mail, the Post Office said it wasn’t able to say how many cases had been prosecuted in Scotland where Horizon, the flawed computer system was involved.

In the UK it’s believed 900 subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted from 2000-2015 due to bugs with the system.

Hundreds more are thought to have been forced to close their businesses and pay money back they were wrongfully accused of stealing to avoid court action.

The Post Office denied that Horizon, which is still used by the Post Office, was flawed but an inquiry into the scandal heard bosses were aware and covered it up.

Asked how many probes it did in Scotland. The Post Office said it had identified 291 cases it “appears to have investigated between 2000 and 2015” and of these 137 had been referred for prosecution to the Crown Office.

Of those 104 resulted in a prosecution. It said it couldn’t “distinguish between cases investigated for theft and false accounting and other types of offences therefore some of these cases may have not related in to the Horizon system or accounting discrepancies”.

The Post Office said: “This includes 19 cases in relation to which the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service notified Post Office that Post Office may have had some involvement but about which Post Office previously held no record.”

Officials there said it had been unable to “determine the date on which those cases were commenced, nor whether Post Office, or another investigating agency, investigated those cases.”

Labour justice spokeswoman Pauline McNeill said: “It’s astonishing the Post Office claims to have no idea how many Horizon cases were prosecuted. Those wrongly accused of criminality deserve so much better.”

Tory justice spokesman Russell Findlay MSP said: “SNP ministers must ensure complete records of Scottish Horizon cases are disclosed.”

“Operation of the exoneration scheme is a matter for Scottish ministers and COPFS will provide appropriate assistance.”

The Post Office spokesman said: “We are doing all we can to help get victims answers, supporting the public inquiry and co-operating with police to try to put things right.”