Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

UK review of private prosecutions after Post Office scandal: curbs on public bodies, expedited appeals, SRA scrutiny and police fraud probe

Published on: 10 January 2024

Published by a Law360 reporter

Legal News

Article summary

Private prosecutions

On 9 January 2024, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride told Sky News that the government is examining the use of private prosecutions. He emphasised that any business can bring such a case and that this is not 'a special dispensation' for the Post Office. At the same time, he noted that ministers are considering whether it is 'appropriate' for public or publicly owned bodies to hold that power. 'We will have to wait a bit longer to see what the conclusions of those deliberations are, but it is something that we are looking at', Stride said. The minister was not immediately available for further comment.

Calls to overhaul the rules are mounting after a television dramatisation rekindled anger over the Post Office’s wrongful prosecutions, which relied on faulty IT data. The ITV mini-series, 'Mr. Bates vs the Post Office', is a fictionalised telling of the experiences of hundreds of branch managers who were wrongly taken to court on the basis of the Post Office’s Horizon accounting system between 1999 and 2015...

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