The Post Office must “do the right thing” and provide compensation to former subpostmasters wrongly convicted of offences, their solicitor has said.Hundreds of subpostmasters were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting because of the Post Office’s defective Horizon accounting system, which had “bugs, defects and errors” from the very outset.But on Friday, 39 former subpostmasters who were convicted and even jailed based on Horizon data had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal.Neil Hudgell, who represented 29 of those who were cleared, said the scandal was “probably the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK legal history” in terms of the number of people affected and its duration.He told BBC Breakfast on Saturday: “The next step is to some extent to cushion the blow, is to seek appropriate compensation.“Some of these folk haven’t worked since and have clearly suffered.“You’ve got to remember these are ordinary, hard-working folk who were never going to earn a king’s ransom.“They were going out to earn a living, serve the community and their lives have been ruined.“So now is the time to do the right thing and come to the table and help to cushion that blow, and alongside that, for the Government to indeed put their hand up and conduct a proper inquiry with full teeth, so that there can be some accountability.”
