The Post Office paid out cash bonuses for every subpostmaster convicted during the Horizon scandal, it has been revealed.
Shocking new reports suggest investigators such as the ones documented in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office were operating on an incentive basis, with all members of the team given a bonus.
Gary Thomas, who was part of the security team from 2000 to 2012, told the Post Office Horizon inquiry that the bonuses did affect their attitude to work.
In emails regarding one victim who was posthumously cleared, Thomas had called all subpostmasters “crooks”, reported the Daily Telegraph.
He added: “My inference here, that everybody was guilty, is wrong and I’m embarrassed, is all I can say.”
Thomas was the lead investigator into Julian Wilson, who was sub-postmaster at Astwood Bank Post Office in the Midlands.
Wilson was wrongly convicted of false accounting in 2008 and he was sentenced to 300 hours of community service, as well as being ordered to pay back thousands of pounds.
He died in 2016 before his conviction was overturned.
A new law will now be introduced to exonerate hundreds of Post Office branch managers caught up in the Horizon IT scandal.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said they were victims of “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history”.
The Prime Minister told MPs: “We will introduce new primary legislation to ensure that those convicted as a result of the Horizon scandal are swiftly exonerated and compensated.”
Mr Sunak also announced a new upfront payment of £75,000 for the “vital” group of postmasters who took action against the Post Office.
The new legislation will apply to convictions in England and Wales and Downing Street hopes they will be quashed by the end of the year.
Related: Why the Horizon scandal is much bigger than a faulty computer system