Let's talk about one of Britain's biggest miscarriages of justice.

Hello, you're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report live from the BBC World Service.

I'm Leanna Byrne and a very good morning to you.

It's a scandal that stretches back 20 years.

It's ruined the lives of hundreds of workers at the UK's state-owned post office who were

wrongly accused or convicted of theft and fraud when actually the real problem was faulty software

from a system known as Horizon. More than 200 of them went to prison. It turned

lives upside down. Some died without clearing their names.

Kram Hedges and Mohammed Rasuw were among those affected.

Frankly, it wrecked my life, my family's life, and everybody I know's life. It was the most horrendous thing I have ever been through.

I was very lucky in one way. I didn't go bankrupt like a lot of the other people. I worked for

the post office for 27 years and then I was convicted of false accounting. I had to wear a tag for three months and had a suspended

sentence for 12 months. I've carried the shame ever since. I refuse to carry it any longer.

Now three years ago a Landmore court ruling cleared some managers opening the way for more appeals and compensation

but progress has been very slow now amid rising public anger after TV drama about the scandal aired

the government is bringing in a new law to swiftly clear the accused and make payouts.

The BBC's Emma Simpson told me the full story.

It started back in 1999 when you had the post office branch network

at the turn of the century entering the computer age.

So before that they're on pen and paper and they were having a new computer system for all its accounts.

And it was rolled out to something like 19,000 branches. Now this system called

Horizon it was designed and installed and managed by a Japanese company

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