King told me Post Office scandal was 'dreadful', says oldest victim

The oldest surviving victim of the Post Office scandal has said the King told her it was a "dreadful thing" and "should never have happened".

Betty Brown said King Charles III made the comment as she received her OBE at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.

The 93-year-old said she asked His Majesty to talk to the prime minister about ensuring those responsible for hundreds of sub-postmasters being wrongfully prosecuted would be investigated by the police and brought to justice.

She described meeting the monarch and receiving the honour as "lovely", adding she "never ever dreamt that this would happen".

"The reason that I'm here is very sad and I don't forget that. All the heart ache of the families that this has destroyed, the heart ache of children left with nothing, that still hurts, it'll always hurt," she added.

She has dedicated the honour to "all the sub postmasters that we have lost".

Mrs Brown was one of hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly accused of stealing or false accounting between 1999 and 2015 after a faulty IT system called Horizon made it look like money was missing from branch accounts.

The scandal has been described as one of the widest miscarriages of justice in the British legal history.