Post Office Scandal: Former Oxford postmistress cleared at Court of Appeal

A former Post Office worker convicted as a result of the Horizon scandal has been cleared by the Court of Appeal.

Margaret White, the former manager of the Banbury Road Post Office in Oxford, had admitted two counts of false accounting after an audit of the IT system showed a shortfall of more than £28,000.

In December 2007, she was given a sentence of 51 weeks in prison suspended for two years at Oxford Crown Court, as well as two years' supervision and 150 hours of unpaid work.

Following a landmark High Court case against the Post Office, dozens of ex-workers have seen their convictions quashed as they were based on evidence from the flawed Horizon system used from 2000.

On Tuesday (22 March), Mrs White had her convictions overturned at the Court of Appeal.

Simon Baker QC, for the Post Office, said: "The respondent accepts that Horizon reliability was essential to her prosecution and conviction.

"This was not a case where there was any evidence independent of Horizon to establish the fact of the shortfall. Indeed, the essence of Mrs White's account in her interview was that she could not explain the shortfall."

Quashing the convictions, Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Picken and Mrs Justice Farbey, said: "As a matter of law, the fact that she pleaded guilty is not itself necessarily a bar to an appeal against conviction."

"We are satisfied that Mrs White's convictions are unsafe," he concluded.

The Court of Appeal has previously heard that many subpostmasters' lives were "irreparably ruined" as they lost their jobs, homes and marriages after they were prosecuted by the Post Office - which knew the Fujitsu-developed IT system had "faults and bugs from the earliest days of its operation".

Hundreds of people who ran Post Office branches were convicted of various offences - including theft and false accounting - during the period of time the system was being used.