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The Lady Chief Justice has told MPs the courts could have handled large numbers of appeals against Post Office convictions, pushing back on the idea that emergency legislation was the only route to deal with the scandal.
Dame Sue Carr, who became head of the judiciary in England and Wales in October, said that since the first appeals came to the courts in 2020, the cases had been progressed “efficiently, effectively and robustly”.
Between 1999 and 2015, 700 people were convicted in cases prosecuted by the Post Office using data from Fujitsu’s flawed Horizon accounting system. To date, 93 convictions have been overturned.
“Insofar as there’s a narrative out there which suggests that the courts have been unable to cope with these cases, or would in the future be unable to deal with large volumes of these cases, that is simply very far off the mark,” Carr told the House of Commons justice committee on Tuesday
“It’s simply not factually correct,” she added.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week announced unprecedented emergency legislation to quash the convictions of people prosecuted by the Post Office on the basis of Horizon data en masse.
Kevin Hollinrake, Post Office minister, told MPs last week that if the cases were put back through the courts rather than using legislation it would be “further dragging out the distress for many innocent people”.
The legislation came after public attention on the long-running scandal was renewed by an ITV dramatisation.
Separately on Tuesday, Fujitsu said apologised for its role in the affair. The Japanese company also said it would help fund compensation for sub-postmasters.
In Scotland, which has a separate judicial system, the government is also looking at how the legislation can be implemented there. Around 100 Scottish convictions have been linked to Horizon data.
More than 900 people are known to have been prosecuted using data from the Horizon system, including cases in Northern Ireland and some brought by the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales.
The move to address what is seen as the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history has created some unease among the judiciary, the Financial Times previously reported.
Carr dismissed the idea that there was any degree of in-depth consultation between the judiciary and politicians over the legislation, as ministers weighed up their options last week.
“Any suggestion that the judiciary has given any proposed legislation the green light is simply not true,” Carr told the committee, chaired by Sir Bob Neill.
Carr said she had had two “short conversations” with the justice secretary Alex Chalk last week at his urgent request and “that is the extent of the consultation which took place”.
The separation of powers between the executive, parliament and judiciary, which is at the centre of the UK’s uncodified constitution, means the judiciary does not comment on the government’s motivations for legislation.
Carr’s appearance was her first in front of the committee since taking up the role of Lady Chief Justice. She told the panel that her priorities in the job would include increasing transparency, safeguarding judicial independence and improving diversity.
