The public inquiry into the Post Office scandal – which was launched in 2021 – will have its first hearing of the year tomorrow, where a Post Office investigator described as having a “heavy footprint” in the affair is expected to give evidence.

Join us back here tomorrow as we bring you all of the latest developments but for now, you can read more of our coverage here:

• Post Office scandal: 'I carried the shame - I refuse to carry it any longer'
• Post Office victims to have convictions overturned
• Jailed postmaster unconvinced by Sunak's new plan

Today's page was brought to you by Malu Cursino, Thomas Mackintosh, Sam Hancock, Oliver Slow, Ali Abbas Ahmadi, Emily McGarvey, Gabriela Pomeroy, Owen Amos and Gem O'Reilly.

Image source, EPA

We’ll be bringing our live coverage of today’s developments in the Post Office IT scandal to a close shortly.

Here are some of the main developments from today:

• Addressing MPs during Prime Minister’s Questions, Rishi Sunak said he will introduce new legislation that will ensure that “those convicted as a result of the Horizon scandal are swiftly exonerated and compensated”
• He also said his government will introduce a new upfront payment of £75,000 for the “GLO group of postmasters," a reference to 555 people who successfully challenged the Post Office in 2019
• Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake later gave more details of the plans, saying those claiming for exoneration and compensation will have to sign a statement confirming they did not commit crimes. He said anyone “falsely signing” the document will be “subject for prosecution for fraud”
• The announcement was largely welcomed by victims of the scandal, including Alan Bates – who inspired the ITV drama 'Mr Bates vs The Post Office' – who described it as “another positive development” but added that more work was needed
• Earlier in the day, BBC Breakfast interviewed nine victims of the Post Office scandal, with one – Mohammed Rasul – saying he had carried “shame” around the scandal, but that he refuses “to carry it any longer”

• Downing Street says it will work with Scotland and Northern Ireland to ensure the victims wrongly accused in those nations can also be cleared

Image source, ITV

The director of the ITV drama 'Mr Bates Vs The Post Office' James Strong says the impact of this show is "beyond all of our wildest dreams".

Speaking to BBC Radio Bristol, he says he had hoped the show would shed some light on the issue and inform a million people. Instead, it has "grasp[ed] the whole nation".

He says the showrunners were successful in making people care about what the postmasters and postmistresses went through.

Strong adds that it is right that the issue is getting the attention it deserves, calling what people went through an "absolute scandal".

The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) has welcomed the prime minister's announcement of a new bill to exonerate and compensate victims of the Post Office scandal.

However, APCC Chair Donna Jones says questions still need to be answered on how this scandal was allowed to happen.

“As Police Commissioners, we are supporting victims across the country who have been so badly let down by this national scandal," Jones says.

"I’m pleased that compensation will now be paid, and the 700 criminal convictions issued between 1999 and 2015 will be quashed, however the victims of this scandal still deserve answers. Only then will they have justice.”

She says there are two parts to the next stage: the convictions and compensations to be paid, and "an expedited investigation into those running the Post Office" and their role as sub-postmasters' employers.

She says the APCC is "committed" to ensure "justice is delivered in a timely manner".

Sean Coughlan
Royal correspondent

Michael Keegan, who had senior roles in Fujitsu, remains as a member of the Prince’s Trust corporate advisory group and technology committee, the royal charity has confirmed.

Keegan, husband of the Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, has previously emphasised his limited involvement in Fujitsu’s links with the Post Office and Horizon.

There have been calls for Fujitsu to bear some of the cost of compensation for the Post Office scandal.

Keegan is also currently a Crown Representative for the Cabinet Office.

John Hanna, who closed his struggling Post Office in Studham, Bedfordshire, in 2001, said issues with the Horizon software were “the final straw”.

Hanna told BBC Three Counties Radio that his family had run the shop since 1837, and he had been involved since 1984, when “life was good”.

However, in later years he began to face issues including armed raids at the shop, late deliveries, and a fall in takings.

He said he used “hundreds of pounds” out of his own pocket to cover accounting deficits brought up by the faulty Horizon software, describing it as “the final straw that made [running the shop] just an ordeal”.

Gem O'Reilly
Live reporter

Image source, EPA

We've been hearing about the unexplained shortfalls sub-postmasters and mistresses were experiencing, but what actually went wrong with the Horizon IT system?

It's the responsibility of those running Post Office branches to balance their accounts, which was previously done on paper, but in 1999, Fujitsu's Horizon was introduced.

Almost immediately there was an increase in the number of staff experiencing accounting shortfalls which they could not explain.

Josephine Hamilton, a former sub-postmistress from South Warnborough who was convicted of fraud, says she saw the amount "double before her eyes" while using the software.

Josephine said at first the Horizon system showed there was £2,000 missing.

She then contacted the Post Office support, who advised her, but after following their instructions, the amount doubled to £4,000.

Many reported that the Horizon system made it look like money was missing when it wasn't.

Jason Coyne, an IT expert, was instructed to examine the computer system in 2003 and reported "concerning discrepancies".

Coyne said there "was clearly defective elements of its hardware, software and interfaces, and the majority of errors noticed in the fault logs could not be attributed to the sub-postmaster".

Coyne said the Post Office data was "unreliable" but he was ignored, sacked, and then discredited.

For more on this story you can watch Panorama’s investigation into the Post Office scandal tonight at 22.40 GMT on BBC1 and right now on iplayer.

How much did we know about the scandal in 2019?published at 16:52 Greenwich Mean Time 10 January

16:52 GMT 10 January

Kevin Hollinrake, the minister responsible for postal services since 2022, was asked on Radio 4 this morning if he thought it was a mistake to give a CBE to Paula Vennells in 2019, which she is now giving back.

"I absolutely think looking back with the benefit of hindsight that was a mistake - we didn't know then what we know now," he said.

Paula Vennells was given her CBE at the start of 2019 for services to the Post Office and to charity, and stood down as chief executive of the Post Office in February that year.

Quite a lot was known about the scandal by the start of 2019, including:

• In 2012, formal investigations into the Horizon software had begun
• In 2015, the Post Office halted its private prosecutions of sub-postmasters
• In 2017, legal action was launched against the Post Office by 555 of them

You can find a timeline of the scandal here.

Sima Kotecha
BBC Newsnight

Image source, Getty Images

Seven Post Office workers of South Asian heritage have told the BBC they believe racism affected the way people were treated in the Horizon scandal.

One of the workers who spoke to BBC Newsnight said: "It felt like they thought that you were a foreigner and you'd robbed them."

The Horizon scandal saw 700 sub-postmasters prosecuted from 1999 to 2015, with some going to prison.

The Post Office says it aims to get to "the truth of what went wrong".

One man from an Indian background said a member of Post Office staff told him: "All the Indians are doing it. They have relatives so they take the money and send it to them abroad".

Another person of South Asian descent said: "It was like we were dumb because English wasn't our first language, that we struggled to make sense of basic accounting".

• Read the full story here.

Earlier we reported on the government's pledge to provide a group of former postmasters who brought a lawsuit against the Post Office - known as the 555 - with an upfront £75,000 payment.

The lawyer who represented the 555 in their first legal action against the Post Office, James Hartley, says today's compensation announcement "is a sensible step forward".

Hartley says it will also give postmasters and postmistresses the option to decide "whether or not to accept that payment as fair compensation".

"Our focus remains on driving forward all the compensation claims as quickly as possible," he adds.

Image source, PA Media

Conservative peer Lord Arbuthnot, who has long campaigned for victims of the Horizon scandal, suggested legislation to exonerate those falsely convicted. could be set up in as little as six weeks.

“We’ll all want it to be as quick as it possibly can while making sure that it doesn’t make things worse, which legislation can sometimes do,” Lord Arbuthnot said.

He said ministers and the advisory board would consider issues with the proposed legislation, including how to extend it to encompass Scotland and Northern Ireland.

“The government has moved very quickly and the [ITV] drama has had a galvanising effect,” said the former MP, who is a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, which met today after the government’s announcement.

Acknowledging concerns that the legislation could lead to people who have committed crimes being exonerated, he said the proposals were “the only solution which is sensible in the circumstances”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the government will bring in a new law to "swiftly exonerate and compensate victims" of the Post Office scandal.

The BBC's political editor Chris Mason explains how a Christmas holiday TV drama is helping to change the law.

Lee Castleton is a former sub-postmaster who was left bankrupt after a two-year legal battle with the Post Office. He was portrayed in the ITV drama about the scandal.

Castleton said it cost him £321,000 to go through the legal process with the Post Office. His family were “ostracised” in their village in Yorkshire, he said. “People abused us in the street for being thieves and my children were bullied.”

He told the BBC the compensation payment announced by the government was "much appreciated, but I would just like to get to the end of this really".

What was the Crown Prosecution Service’s role in the scandal?published at 16:09 Greenwich Mean Time 10 January

16:09 GMT 10 January

Image source, Reuters

While the majority of prosecutions of sub-postmasters and mistresses – as part of the Horizon IT scandal - were brought privately by the Post Office, 283 cases were brought by other bodies, according to the Post Office.

These included the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which prosecutes criminal cases in England and Wales, more than 400,000, external in the last financial year (2022-23).

We asked the CPS how many cases were brought against the sub-postmasters and it told us that it has so far identified 11 cases it prosecuted between 2001 and 2020. We have asked what the outcomes of these cases were.

The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) at the CPS between 2008 and 2013.

We asked the CPS how many of these cases it prosecuted during this period and whether Starmer was aware of them, but it would not say.

We also asked Labour but it referred us back to the CPS.

Alison Hall, from Liversedge in West Yorkshire, was sub-postmistress at Hightown Post Office, near Huddersfield, but was suspended in 2010 after the accounting system showed a shortfall of £14,800.

She was threatened with prosecution for theft and ended up admitting a lesser charge of false accounting, for which she was given a criminal record and 120 hours of community service.

She also had to pay the missing sum, plus £1,000 in legal costs, out of her own money.

But, the hardest thing for Hall was her mother passing away before her conviction was overturned in April 2021.

Hall has been granted an interim compensation payment of £100,000, but said she was still waiting for a full payment.

Image source, EPA

Good afternoon. If you're just joining us, welcome, as we continue to report on the latest developments on the Post Office IT scandal. Here are some of today's main findings:

• Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced during Prime Minister's Questions that the government will bring in a new law to "swiftly exonerate and compensate victims" of the scandal
• A group of former postmasters who brought forward a group lawsuit, known as the 555, will be offered a £75,000 upfront payment, the government says
• During an urgent question on the subject in the House of Commons, Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake announced that victims will be able to sign a form to say they are innocent in order to have their convictions overturned and to claim compensation

• At the heart of this scandal is a faulty Horizon IT system, which led to the Post Office prosecuting 736 sub-postmasters and mistresses between 1999 and 2015
• Reacting to news of the law, former postmaster Alan Bates - who inspired the widely discussed ITV drama about the scandal - told the BBC the announcement was "another positive step forward"

This morning, nine victims of the Post Office scandal were on the BBC Breakfast sofa.

You can hear them, and the thoughts of presenter Jon Kay, in the BBC's 5 Minutes On podcast.

Dominic Casciani
Home and legal correspondent

It’s going to be some weeks before the legislation is presented to Parliament, but we now have an idea of how the government envisages the plan working.

In short, the bill won’t list name-by-name the individuals the government proposes to clear of wrongdoing.

Instead, it will set out that anyone found guilty of a Post Office scandal-related offence during the critical time period will have their conviction quashed as soon as the legislation receives Royal Assent.

So exoneration will be a truly automatic process: no name read out, no declaration in court. It also means that not only will the innocent have convictions quashed, but maybe a small number of genuinely guilty too.

Officials are working behind the scenes to resolve important questions, such as how an individual's formal criminal record will be swiftly expunged and what to do with appeals that have already failed.

There are also issues to solve for people convicted in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Here’s the really interesting bit.

The government’s standing compensation offer for Post Office workers who were victims of miscarriages of justice is a no-questions-asked £600,000.

Nobody exonerated under the plan can get at that cash until they sign a declaration that they definitely weren’t guilty.

That form will effectively be a legal promise: anyone who signs it and was later shown to have been genuinely on the take in the past could then be prosecuted for attempting to defraud the government of the compensation.

Georgia Roberts
Westminster Correspondent, BBC Scotland

In Scotland, the Scottish government is considering separate laws to exonerate the victims of the Post Office scandal there, given the new laws will cover England and Wales only.

Around 100 of the 700 convicted cases across the UK are thought to be in Scotland, and there have only been a couple of successful appeals so far.

Scotland has a separate legal system and courts under which people were pursued, therefore the Scottish government is responsible for an equivalent process of its choosing.

It will need to be done in such a way as to allow compensation payments. The UK government says it’ll be sharing information and working with the Scottish government on what exactly the requirements for that will be.

Those talks began this morning ahead of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's announcement in the House of Commons.