The public inquiry on the Horizon scandal has shown the terrible toll it has taken on hundreds of former Post Office sub-postmasters and mistresses and their families.
The faulty accounting software developed by Fujitsu lead to 736 prosecutions, with some managers being sent to prison following their conviction for false accounting and theft. Many were financially ruined, but 20 years later campaigners have finally won their legal battle to have their cases overturned.
Within weeks of the Horizon system being introduced in 1999 bugs and errors were causing problems, but these complaints were ignored.
It was not until 2019 that a High Court judgement said the accounting system was not “remotely robust” for the first 10 years of operation. The judge agreed the system contained ‘bugs, errors and defects’, and there was a ‘material risk’ of shortfalls in accounts because of the system.
In 2012 the Post Office actually hired forensic accountancy firm Second Sight to look at the problems with the Horizon system. They identified 19 thematic issues that were common to the cases it investigated. Second Sight felt the Post Office had not properly investigated the reasons for the shortfalls and was concerned to discover Post Office executives were convinced the IT (Horizon) could not make mistakes! The accountants also told the Post Office it had found inadequate evidence to prosecute for theft. The Post Office terminated Second Sight soon after it raised these concerns!
To date no-one at Fujitsu or the Post Office has been held accountable. PQ magazine also wonders what the accountants were doing? Who were the accountants who signed off the system and then stood by while innocent post-masters and mistresses’ lives were ruined?
- Read the Private Eye report into the Post Office Horizon scandal ‘Justice lost in the Post’ at: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf.
- Also see ‘British Post Office Scandal’ on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~:text=The%20problems%20began%20with%20the,at%20multiple%20post%20office%20branches.&text=The%20scheme%20excluded%20the%20555,successfully%20sued%20the%20post%20office.
