LORD Willie Haughey, one of Scotland’s most high-profile entrepreneurs, has described the wrongful conviction of sub-postmasters as “the greatest miscarriage of justice ever in the history of the UK”.

Speaking on the Go Radio Business Show, the Labour peer used words like “shocking” and “diabolical” to describe the treatment of hundreds of sub-postmasters who were wrongly accused of theft and false accounting by the Post Office due to faulty software.

“This is shocking. I don’t think there has been such an example ever before where someone has to be held accountable,” Lord Haughey said.

“To watch and listen to the stories this week on TV … people were accused, some convicted, and some went to prison. And the story of a 19-year-old girl going to a young offenders’ institute for eight months is absolutely diabolical.”

He added there was no doubt in his mind that “the people in charge at the Post Office tried to cover this up and they should not get away with it”.

Sir Tom Hunter, describing the situation as a “scandal”, said: “They were accused of stealing money which they know they weren’t, and what I cannot is understand … they put in a new system and we have all put in new systems and it is a headache.

“But surely somebody must have thought ‘These people have not all turned into thieves overnight”, surely there is something wrong.”

Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 sub-postmasters were convicted of offences including fraud.

Due to failures linked to a computer accounting system called Horizon, developed by the Japanese firm Fujitsu, the Post Office pursued charges against innocent workers across the country.