THE Home Office has done a swift U-turn over making wrongfully convicted prisoners pay for their living costs while in jail.

It comes after Andrew Malkinson was released from prison recently after serving 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit.

Home Office policy was that the cost of wrongly convicted prisoners’ food and lodging while in jail be deducted from any compensation prisoners are subsequently paid.

Mr Malkinson’s case caused outrage and today Justice Secretary Alex Chalk KC changed the policy with immediate effect and backdated the decision to 2006.

Mr Malkinson, 57, welcomed the scrapping of the “unjust rule.”

But he said the U-turn should be the “first of many changes we need in our justice system to protect the innocent.”

Last week, Court of Appeal judges quashed Mr Malkinson’s conviction after DNA linking another man to the crime was produced.

Mr Malkinson has demanded wider reform, including over police handling of evidence and the ability of juries to convict on a 10-2 majority.

His case was fought by the lawyers’ group Appeal, a charity which fights miscarriages of justice.

They said that after the conviction police had illegally destroyed evidence.

But an independent forensic company had kept evidence.

When re-examined it provided the DNA which supported Mr Malkinson’s denial of rape.

He said it could take him years to get compensation because “the state now requires me to prove my innocence all over again.”

“No-one should have to suffer what I’ve been through,” he said.

“I hope Alex Chalk won’t stop here in bringing in the changes we need to make our justice system safer for the innocent, and more accountable for its mistakes.”

Mr Malkinson’s solicitor and Appeal director Emily Bolton said: “Andy has succeeded in getting this insulting compensation rule scrapped.

“But too many wrongly convicted people are denied compensation altogether because of a restrictive test which flies in the face of the presumption of innocence.

“The state robbed Andy of the best years of his life. Changing this one rule is not an adequate response.

“We need a complete overhaul of the appeals system, which took two decades to acknowledge this obvious miscarriage of justice.”