UK taxpayers to pay former Post Office workers up to £1bn compensation

Former post office workers celebrating outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, after their convictions were overturned by the court of appeal. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

UK taxpayers could have to pay as much as £1bn in compensation to former Post Office workers wrongly convicted of theft due to the defective Horizon IT system.

The system, which was installed by the Post Office and supplied by Fujitsu, falsely suggested there were cash shortfalls, leading to 736 unsafe convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting in what is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.