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Because it is potentially the quickest way to get them cleared, and deal with compensation.
An appeals process for 800 people could take years and would most likely need a separate, dedicated, appeals court. Also, from what I've heard key evidence from the original trials may be missing so how are appeals judges supposed to proceed?
Having a pardon is also impractical because it doesn't quash the original conviction.
Probably because it's been a known problem and the bureaucracy wasn't getting it done otherwise.
And Sunak needs the good press of an easy decision.
But I'm American and watching from a distance.
Because the British legal system is starved of money and slowly dying.
It would take years to appeal each conviction, there's a huge back log of cases, and not enough courts and legal professionals to process them quickly.
Moreover, in order to save money the standard compensation plan is completely fucked. While you can be exonerated if there's not enough evidence for the state to prove that you're guilty, in order to get compensation you'd have to prove that you're innocent.
This is basically impossible for most cases. While we know that all these people were imprisoned because of errors in a computer system, this doesn't mean that they weren't also embezzling, and just unlucky to be caught due to computer error.
So the Tories have two options. Leave people that the country suddenly cares about to suffer for years and never receive compensation, or create a special treatment, and hide that they've destroyed the legal system.
Unsurprisingly, they've gone for the second option.