Post Office Horizon - Biggest Miscariage of Justice in British History
Horizon, quite a joyful and positive word. It brings about a feeling of relief, that something good is on the way, but this story is anything but joyful. It is a story of corruption, destruction, and the biggest miscarriage of justice in the history of the United Kingdom. This story involves a british institution, the Post Office, a place you go to send letters, or buy stamps, or buy bread and milk even, however this story tells a side of the Post Office that you would never expect to hear.
Background
In 1999 the Post Office, a state owned limited company in the UK, rolled out a new computer system called Horizon. Horizon, developed by a company owned by Fujitsu, was a new state of the art system, designed to run the whole of the Post Office network, from the POS and tills on the Post Office counters to the financial databases in head office. Over £1.5 billion was spent on the new Horizon system. However, almost immediately sub-postmasters, people who ran their own Post Office branches, started to notice issues with various finaincial discrepancies and shortfalls in balances.
Sub-Posmasters Raise their concerns
Imediately the sub-postmasters began to raise their concerns about the system. They would call the Horizon tech support helpline and be told that there was no issue, no other office raised concerns, and that the issues would just ‘sort themselves out’. Anyone who works in IT will know that things do not ‘sort itself out’. Despite repeated claims by postmasters that the issues were not due to their actions but rather faults in the Horizon IT system, the Post Office vehemently defended the reliability of the technology. The Post Office sided with the system, rather than the people.
Consequences of the Errors
Now I didn’t know this until recently, but under UK law, the Post Office, even as a limited company, has the power to prosecute individuals without the need of going through the police. They could take cases directly to the UK courts. And this is what they did, they would prosecute sub-postmasters, offer them plea deals to get them to plead guilty, often by intimidating them, in order to make the individuals legally liable to pay back the missing money. Often times, people would have to pay 10’s of thousands of pounds to settle the cases.
However, there weren’t just monetary consequences, there were personal consequences, physical and mental, some people even lost their lives due to the pressure they were under. Around 700 sub-postmasters have been affected by this scandal.
Turning the tide
For years, the Post Office dismissed complaints and denied any inherent faults in the Horizon system. However, a turning point came when a group of affected postmasters initiated legal action against the Post Office. In 2019, after a long-fought legal battle, the High Court ruled in favor of the postmasters, affirming the existence of bugs, defects, and errors within the Horizon system that led to the accounting discrepancies.
The court ruling highlighted the systemic failings of the Post Office in handling the situation, emphasizing the catastrophic impact on the lives of postmasters who had been unjustly accused and penalized. Subsequently, the Post Office agreed to a settlement worth hundreds of millions of pounds to compensate the wrongfully accused postmasters.
Despite the legal victory and the compensation, the ramifications of the Horizon IT scandal persist. The damaged trust between the Post Office and its employees and the tarnished reputation of the institution cannot be easily restored. Many affected individuals are still dealing with the emotional and financial aftermath of the ordeal.
Efforts are ongoing to rectify the injustices faced by the victims of this scandal. The government has launched inquiries to understand how such a gross miscarriage of justice could occur and to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. There have been calls for greater accountability, transparency, and reforms in both the Post Office’s management and the oversight of IT systems used in critical public services.
The Post Office Horizon IT scandal serves as a stark reminder of the need for stringent checks and balances, robust oversight, and ethical responsibility when implementing and utilizing technology, especially in systems that have far-reaching consequences for individuals’ lives and livelihoods. It underscores the importance of fair treatment, accountability, and proper redressal mechanisms to address grievances and rectify injustices caused by technological failures.
Reporting of the story and its future
The story of this scandal was first brought into the spotlight by Computer Weekly, then was picked up by media outlets. The story was thrust into the spotlight at the end of 2023 with an ITV series called ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office (available to watch in the UK on ITV X). As of 9th January 2024, the former CEO of Post Office Paula Vennells has handed back her CBE due to the outcry the series has caused, and the UK Government has confirmed they are looking into legislation to clear the 700 victims of this scandal.
Resources to learn more
There are some excellent resources out there to learn more about this story, here are some below:
- ITV’s Series Mr Bates vs The Post Office - watch on ITV X
- Computer Weeklys all you need to know article - Computer Weekly
- Wikipedia article about the scandal - Wikipedia