POST Office Ltd has had its status as a specialist reporting agency stripped by the Lord Advocate following its "fundamental and sustained failures" in connection with the Horizon scandal.
Speaking to MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, Dorothy Bain confirmed the company was no longer part of the list of more than 50 organisations which are able to report criminal allegations directly to the Crown Office.
Bain said the Post Office was "not fit" to be a specialist reporting agency given its role in the Horizon IT scandal, which led to hundreds of sub-postmasters being wrongly convicted of fraud and other offences because of faulty accounting software. It is thought to constitute one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
The Lord Advocate (below) said: "I committed to reviewing the Post Office’s status as a specialist reporting agency.
"I can confirm that because of its fundamental and sustained failures in connection with Horizon cases in Scotland, I have decided that Post Office Ltd is not fit to be a specialist reporting agency.
"It is therefore no longer able to investigate and report criminal allegations directly to the Crown and it should now instead report any allegations of criminality to Police Scotland for them to investigate.
"I can also advise that work is ongoing to strengthen the guidance and safeguards that exist to ensure that all Scotland’s specialist reporting agencies abide by the essential duties of disclosure and candour in reporting cases for prosecution."
Bain added the Post Office has been a "highly respected institution" which had had the status for many decades, but the scandal had led to the suffering of "many innocent people" who had had their lives ruined.
The Scottish Government launched a bill earlier this week to automatically exonerate sub-postmasters en masse for convictions connected with the scandal.
Justice Secretary Angela Constance said the bill would be treated as emergency legislation so it can be passed as quickly as possible.
Constance hit out at the UK Government for refusing to extend its legislation to cover Scottish sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted of defrauding the Post Office.
But Bain had previously argued against mass exonerations in Scotland, telling Parliament that “not every case in which Horizon evidence is present will represent a miscarriage of justice”.
Bain told the Parliament on Thursday: "In my previous statement I also made it clear that as Lord Advocate I could only seek to address miscarriages of justice within the legal framework available to me and for this reason, despite what some have wrongly suggested, it is not possible for me to achieve mass exoneration of all those who have been impacted.
"I want to make it clear this was not a comment on whether I supported the concept of mass exoneration. As Lord Advocate I have responsibility to protect the administration of justice in Scotland and uphold the rule of law. I can only use the tools that are available to me as I have done to date."
