Businesses And Lives Ruined, People Wrongly Jailed, Suicides - The Biggest Scandal Of Injustice - The UK Sub-postmasters

14th June 2020

Some of you will have been aware of the scandal over the last 20 years of the biggest legal injustice in the UK surrounding the wrongful accusations of fraud by the Post Office against 900 sub-postmasters.

The accusations by the Post Office were completely false based on a faulty computer system supplied by Fujitsu called "Horizons".

If any topic deserves all of our attention it is this. How the state via its company the Post Office used the full power of the law to wrongly accuse innocent people While this has been accepted the saga goes on and on. A settlement for some was agreed in December 2019 for £57million most of which has been eaten up in legal fees for defence.

While the Post Office stands justly disgraced,there remains one shortfall larger than any thrown up by its IT system: that in accountability for those responsible for the scandal. If the lessons of one of Britain's worst abuses of official and corporate power are to be learned, it must be.

Conceived in 1996 as one of the first private finance initiative (PFI) contracts, between the Post Office and the Benefits Agency on the one hand and computer company ICL on the other, the Horizon IT system had an unpromising start. It had been set up to create a swipe card system for payment of pensions and benefits from Post Office branch counters. But, as with most mega-IT projects of the time, it soon fell victim to over-ambition, management consultancy snake oil and the inability of a PFI contract to deliver a complex public service. When, in May 1999, the plug was finally pulled on what the Commons public accounts committee called "one of the biggest IT failures in the public sector", taxpayers had lost around £700m.

A programme on Panorama last week 10 June 2020 exposed the whole sorry tale again. For some reason it is not available on iPlayer today but the page can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0675m1j in case it late becomes available.

A very full report was recently published in Private Eye and can be found at https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf

The report outlines the full story and some individual cases out of the 900. This report deserves to be read by anyone interested in justice or injustice in this case. The depth of this tragedy for the sub-postmasters whose lives were ruined can hardly be imagined so to know the detail is important.

This past week the matter was again debated in the UK parliament and if you can spare an hour watch it at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000kbft/house-of-commons-postmaster-convictions-urgent-question

Politicians are now calling for a judge led enquiry and not a lower level enquiry the government is offering.

The unfolding story seems interminable as it is the biggest injustice in UK history. Even today Sunday 14th June it reached into the Religious Affairs programme "Sunday" broadcast today Sunday 14th June 2020 and can be listened to at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000k1b4 - the item starts at 2816 minutes in and lasts about 10 minutes. The item concerns the lady who was chief executive of the Post Office when things began to unfold resulting in all the accusations of fraud which turned out to be wrong. Paula Vennells CBE, Post Office chief executive from April 2012 to March 2019. An ordained Anglican priest, Vennells joined the Post Office in 2007.

The internet is covered in items about this injustice that continues to adversely affect the 900 sub postmasters falsely accused but still the fight for just goes on and deserves to be looked at by everyone.

The issue of proper compensation is still a live one.

More

Justice for Sub Postmasters Alliance

Horizon Explained at Wikipedia

You can Help By Donating To Crowd funding For Justice £98,000 is needed by 1 July 2020. Every donation will help.

Computer Weekly - 28 April 2020 - Met Police assessing evidence of potential perjury in Post Office IT trials - A very good timeline of the last few years in this article.

The Register 18 December 2019 - Post Office faces potential criminal probe over Fujitsu IT system's accounting failures