Rishi Sunak revealed on Wednesday that the government will introduce emergency legislation to "swiftly exonerate and compensate" hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted in the Horizon IT scandal.
It comes in a fast-moving week for victims of the Post Office bureaucratic nightmare, which happened over a decade-and-a-half up to 2015.
There’s now also fresh scrutiny of IT giant Fujitsu, after its faulty accounting software helped lead to wrongful convictions of more than 700 Post Office branch owner-managers for fraud, theft or false accounting.
The computer system left accounts shortfalls for the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses - but flagged ‘missing’ money wasn’t really missing at all.
It led to 236 of the wrongly accused Post Office branch managers being handed prison sentences, but just 93 of them have managed to get their convictions overturned.
The fallout for the self-employed victims led to loss of earnings, bankruptcy, divorce, and even suicide.
Now, after ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells returned her 2019 CBE, there have been calls for Vennells and other former executives involved in the Horizon scandal to hand back their bonuses.
The spotlight recently returned to the case - which is subject of an ongoing public inquiry - following ITV’s four-part drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
It was first uncovered in an investigation by Computer Weekly.
The Standard podcast hears the latest developments in part one with our political editor Nicholas Cecil at Parliament.
Then in part two, senior features writer Katie Strick recounts the harrowing story of an innocent London former Post Office manager who was among victims jailed and later exonerated.
Listen above, or wherever you find your podcasts.
