It comes after the government in July 2021 had promised to compensate those postmasters who had their Horizon-related convictions overturned.
The Government said this week it has committed to making sure these convictions are overturned by the end of 2024, meaning victims do not need to wait years and years for the justice they deserve.
The government also confirmed that it will take action to make sure the postmasters who played a crucial role in first exposing the Horizon scandal receive the compensation they deserve.
The government will also consult the independent Advisory Board on the approach to compensation payments, to see if there are further steps it can take to hold the Post Office to account and speed up payments for everyone impacted by the scandal.
Meanwhile Sir Wyn Williams' Inquiry, set up in 2020 to look at issues of governance in the Post Office, resumed on Thursday and it will provide a full public record of how this miscarriage of justice was able to take place.
In the coming days, the government said it will consider whether this blanket exoneration should apply to the small number of convictions which have been upheld by the appeal courts.
There have been calls for Fujitsu, the supplier of the faulty Horizon IT system, to pay compensation to the sub-postmasters wrongly convicted for theft.
Sally Stringer one of the victims of the Post Office scandal, is angered that Fujitsu is still winning government contracts 20 years after the problems first arose.
The Post Office scandal centred over the use of the Horizon accounting system from Fujitsu, which between 1999 and 2015 recorded transactions across Post Office branches.
The problem became a political issue in 2009, when reports surfaced of sub-postmasters who had received heavy fines or jail terms for alleged false accounting, which they said resulted from problems with Horizon.
Thousands of sub-postmasters independently operate smaller post offices in the UK, and are obliged to make up shortfalls out of their own pockets.
In 2011, 85 sub-postmasters sought legal support in claims against the Post Office after being wrongly accused of taking money.
In later years this figure rose to 550 sub-postmasters suing the Post Office.
The Post Office management team always argued that there was no evidence of systemic problems with Horizon, but set up the mediation scheme in 2013 after independent investigators found defects in the software.
In 2014 more than 140 MPs said they could no longer support the Post Office's mediation scheme after numerous complaints about Horizon.
In December 2019 the Post Office agreed to pay almost £58 million as part of a settlement on the legal action by sub-postmasters, after they were wrongly accused of taking money.
To make matters worse, in June 2020 it was revealed that bosses at the Post Office had been told as far back as 2011 that Horizon could be to blame for the missing money.
Despite that, the Post Office still pursued prosecutions against staff anyway, with hundreds of postmasters sacked, going bankrupt or wrongfully imprisoned.
Former CEO. In April 2021 thirty nine sub-postmasters who were wrongly prosecuted by the Post Office had their criminal convictions overturned.
A week after that, Paula Vennells, who was in charge of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, resigned her roles on the boards of the supermarket Morrisons and home furnishing store Dunelm.
This Cyber News was published on www.silicon.co.uk. Publication date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 16:13:03 +0000