Rishi Sunak has described the Post Office scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history. How did it happen?
What is the Post Office scandal involving Horizon IT?
Between 1999 and 2015 an estimated 4,000 branch owner-managers at the Post Office — known as sub-postmasters or sub-postmistresses — were accused of wrongdoing after faulty IT software showed errors in their accounts.
Many were sacked, chased for money, or accused of crimes such as false accounting, fraud or theft. As many as 900 were prosecuted and 236 sent to prison. Others were ordered to pay back substantial sums, leaving them financially ruined.
Some of the accused have died without clearing their names, at least four are known to have committed suicide and others have been shunned after being convicted.
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When did the Post Office scandal start?
In May 1999 Tony Blair, who was then the prime minister, signed off a move from paper-based accounting to the Horizon computer system for the government-owned company. This system was developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu.
Horizon was the largest non-military IT system in operation at the time and had been designed to deal with transactions, accounting and stock taking. It covered each of the 20,000 Post Office branches in the UK.
Many workers continually reported bugs in the system, with unexplained shortfalls in their accounts but these were ignored. Private prosecutions continued until 2015.
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How did it happen?
Under the contract between the Post Office and sub-postmasters, those running branches were responsible for making up any shortfall in their accounts. Many postmasters were told they were the only ones in that position, and therefore had no idea this was a problem being replicated at branches across the country.
Over many years the Post Office used private prosecution powers — eventually prosecuting up to 70 people a year — against sub-postmasters whose accounts showed discrepancies.
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The Post Office maintained throughout the period that the system was robust and any claims toi the opposite were met with either legal threats or action.
How was the scandal exposed?
In 2009, after being contacted by seven postmasters, the website Computer Weekly ran an article detailing their struggles with the system.
It led to the formation of a campaign group, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), which began talking to MPs and fighting in the courts.
Following a botched mediation scheme, a group of 555 postmasters took the Post Office to the High Court. In 2019, Lord Justice Peter Fraser ruled that there were IT problems in the system and in a letter he expressed “grave concerns” to the director of public prosecutions about what had taken place.
In the year after the ruling Paula Vennells, the chief executive of the Post Office until 2019, said she was “truly sorry for the suffering caused”. After public pressure, she promised to return her CBE.
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To date 93 of the 900 convictions have been quashed. A full statutory public inquiry, opened in 2021, is under way.
What has the government done?
Rishi Sunak has called the scandal called one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the nation’s history, and has drawn up plans for a new law to ensure most of the 800 postmasters who still hold convictions are “swiftly exonerated and compensated”.
The new law, introduced “within weeks”, will automatically overturn convictions in England and Wales. Postmasters will be asked to sign a statement saying they did not commit a crime. They will be able to apply for compensation, which starts at £600,000 each, and could run into millions of pounds in the worst cases.
The Ministry of Justice is understood to be talking to its counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland about new laws that could apply there.
Does the Post Office still use Horizon IT?
Yes, a new version of the software was introduced from 2017, with an extension signed last year that will allow the technology to be used until at least the end of March 2025. The Post Office has said it is moving to a new IT cloud-based system with the involvement of branch managers.
Who has been prosecuted?
Nobody from either the Post Office or Fujitsu has been convicted of wrongdoing. Two IT experts with Fujitsu have been interviewed under caution as part of a perjury investigation, and the Metropolitan Police last week confirmed to The Times that it was considering “possible fraud offences” at the Post Office related to prosecutions and the steps taken to claw back money from postmasters.
