Post Office: Woking MP calls for those responsible to face justice

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said the government will bring in a new law to exonerate and compensate victims

The people "seriously at fault" for the Post Office IT scandal should "face the music", a Surrey MP has said.

Conservative MP for Woking Jonathan Lord said he had "lost count" of how many times he had raised the issue in letters or in the House of Commons.

The Post Office prosecuted 736 people based on information from faulty IT system Horizon between 1999 and 2015.

It said it was "deeply sorry" and was trying to right the wrongs of the past.

The Ministry of Justice has been contacted for a comment.

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Ex-Royal Mail CEO Adam Crozier said: "I would like to express my heartfelt sympathies to the individuals and families who were so wronged by the tragic miscarriages of justice."

"While I did not have any involvement in the Horizon issue during my time at Royal Mail, I feel deeply sorry for those whose lives were ruined by what happened," he added.

During Mr Crozier's time there, the Post Office was owned by the Royal Mail but had its own governance system.

'Heartache, lives and money'

Many sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses maintained their innocence and said they raised issues about the software, but some went to prison for false accounting and theft.

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

Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells said she would hand back her CBE after mounting pressure regarding the impact of Horizon, which was manufactured by technology company Fujitsu.

Mr Lord said: "Clearly that is not going to be enough given the scale of the issues that have been uncovered and the way that the Post Office and Fujitsu behaved over so many years.

"Obviously people want to see justice here and people who are seriously at fault to face the music for this."

The MP said he originally asked for an independent investigation into the Horizons system to take place in February 2011.

He told BBC Radio Surrey: "If only that had been done, a lot of heartache, lives and money could have been saved."

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Offers of compensation totalling more than £130m have been made so far and the vast majority have been agreed and paid, the Post Office said.

A spokesperson added: "We're continuing to make interim payments in other cases.

"We fully share the aims of the current public inquiry, set up to establish what went wrong in the past and the accountability for it."

Fujitsu said it was sorry for its role in the issue and it was fully committed to supporting the inquiry.

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