British Post Office scandal

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The British Post Office Scandal is the miscarriage of justice in which, between 1999 and 2015, over 700 sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted of theft, false accounting and fraud when shortfalls at their branches were in fact due to errors made by the Post Office's Horizon accounting software. In 2019, the High Court ruled that the Horizon system was faulty and in 2020 the government established a public inquiry into the scandal. In April 2021 the Court of Appeal quashed 39 convictions. As of January 2024, no prosecutions have been made against those responsible for the convictions. Some victims are still fighting to have their convictions overturned and receive compensation, the public inquiry is ongoing, and the Metropolitan Police are investigating the Post Office for potential fraud offences.

In 1996, International Computers Limited (ICL) began working on a computer accounting system, Horizon, for the publicly owned Post Office corporation and the Department of Social Security, to enable integrated payment of social security benefits through post office branches. The Department of Social Security abandoned the project, but the government continued with its procurement for the Post Office.

By 1999, problems began with Horizon's introduction, which wrongly reported financial discrepancies at several sub-post offices. The Post Office leadership said the Horizon system was robust, and required sub-postmasters to make good the losses whenever the system's numbers did not match their records, or face prosecution. A 2014 forensic report called Horizon "not fit for purpose" due to its errors. Prosecutions continued until 2015. Since 2019, many of the prosecutions have been overturned.

The sub-postmasters won in a group action lawsuit brought against the Post Office, but the Post Office insisted that the payments made as part of this lawsuit were full and final compensation. As the scope of the problem became apparent, the Post Office said it could not afford any additional compensation. There were calls for the British government to step in, as it was the sole shareholder of the Post Office. After appeals by MPs in 2021, the government promised financial compensation to the victims, as the Post Office did not have sufficient resources.

In September 2020, the government established the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, chaired by retired judge Sir Wyn Williams. In June 2021, after two initial hearings, the inquiry was converted into a statutory inquiry. In November 2021, it held a preliminary List of Issues Hearing and, in February 2022, commenced a series of Human Impact Hearings. It is also investigating whether the Post Office and ICL's owner, Fujitsu, knew about the faults. A four-part television drama about the matter, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, was broadcast on ITV in January 2024.

Timeline of events

In 1999, the Post Office commenced the roll-out of a computer accounting system, Horizon. The roll-out reached 10,000 branches by August 2000. Horizon was developed by ICL, which in 2002 rebranded under the name of its Japanese owner, Fujitsu. A precursor of the Horizon system had been rolled out to 300 post offices in 1995. At least two sub-postmasters using the system were accused of fraud, but protests that the accounting issues were a "glitch in the system" were ignored. By 2013, Horizon was used by at least 11,500 branches and was processing some six million transactions every day.

Following the introduction of Horizon, sub-postmasters began reporting unexplained discrepancies and losses. The Post Office maintained that Horizon was "robust" and that none of the discrepancies were due to the system. Some sub-postmasters unwilling or unable to make good the shortfalls were prosecuted by the Post Office for theft, false accounting and fraud. Between 1991 and 2015, there were 918 successful prosecutions, with the annual number increasing after the introduction of Horizon in 1999. These were largely private prosecutions by the Post Office relying on IT evidence alone, without proof of criminal intent. Public prosecutions also occurred in Scotland, Northern Ireland and in the Crown Court. Some sub-postmasters were persuaded by their own solicitors to plead guilty to false accounting, on being told the Post Office would drop theft charges.

Once the Post Office had a criminal conviction, it would attempt to secure a Proceeds of Crime Act order against convicted sub-postmasters, allowing it to seize their assets. According to press reports, these actions by the Post Office caused the loss of dozens of jobs, bankruptcy, divorce, unwarranted prison sentences and one suicide.

Forensic accountant Second Sight's report of 2014 described the Horizon computer system as not fit for purpose, whilst the Post Office stated that "there is absolutely no evidence of any systemic issues with the computer system". The Post Office terminated the Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme in 2015 and published a report clearing itself of any wrongdoing.

A group action was brought by sub-postmasters in London's High Court in 2017. The Post Office was successfully sued by 555 sub-postmasters, which resulted in two important judgments in favour of the sub-postmasters. Since then the convictions have been overturned, other sub-postmasters who did not take part in the case received compensation, and the case prompted a public inquiry into what happened, which is due to end in 2024.

On 15 March 2019, the Horizon Issues trial judgment in the Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd group litigation at the High Court found that software errors and defects did exist and that it was possible for these to cause apparent discrepancies or shortfalls in branch accounts or transactions, to undermine the reliability of Horizon accurately to process and to record transactions. Judge Peter Fraser found that this had happened on numerous occasions, and found in favour of the sub-postmasters. He also wrote that the judge held that the Post Office owed sub-postmasters an implied duty of "good faith" and "fair dealing".

The second important judgment was about whether the Horizon computer system worked and was "robust", which the Post Office claimed it was. Again, the judge found overwhelmingly in favour of the sub-postmasters and that the original version of Horizon was "not robust" and, as to the later version, "its robustness was questionable, and did not justify the confidence placed in it by the Post Office in terms of its accuracy."

Since then, those convictions and many others have been overturned on the grounds that the prosecutions were so weakly grounded as to be an affront to the public conscience.

By 2022, 736 prosecutions had been identified, 83 convictions had been overturned and more were expected to be quashed. The number of those affected by other types of abuse by the Post Office, torts, breach of contract, coercion etc., has not been tabulated or published. The prosecutions, civil actions, and extortions resulted in criminal convictions, false confessions, imprisonments, defamation, loss of livelihood, bankruptcy, divorce, and suicide.

In September 2020, the Post Office declared it would not oppose 44 postmasters' appeals against conviction, but it unsuccessfully opposed their appeals against improper prosecution. In December 2020, six summary jurisdiction convictions were quashed, and in April 2021 the Court of Appeal quashed a further 39 convictions. The court made the rare finding that the Post Office had acted in such a way as to subvert the integrity of the criminal justice system and public confidence in it. The prosecutions were found to be an abuse of process and an affront to the conscience of the court. By this relatively rare finding the appellants were completely exonerated. The BBC called the convictions "the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice".

In April 2021, Post Office chief executive Nick Read announced that the Horizon system would be replaced with a new cloud-based IT system.

Horizon IT system

Horizon is the outcome of the Pathway project, whose procurement process commenced in August 1994, and announced by social security minister Peter Lilley at the 1995 Conservative Party conference. The goal was to computerise the payment of benefits at post offices, replacing Girocheques and paper benefit books with swipe cards. It was thought this would reduce benefit fraud by £150 million per year, at the same time as improving efficiency at post office counters, increasing footfall at small branches and enabling them to offer new services. The £1.5 billion project would be paid for through the private finance initiative, whereby the successful bidder would develop the system and train some 70,000 Post Office staff to use it, then recover their costs from transaction-based charges.

The contract to create the system for Post Office Counters Limited and the Benefits Agency was awarded in May 1996 to ICL Pathway Limited, a subsidiary created for the purpose in 1995 by British computer company ICL, which was itself majority-owned by Fujitsu of Japan.

By 1998, the Pathway project was two years behind schedule, costs had increased, and there were concerns that magnetic swipe cards were becoming obsolete. Labour had come into power in 1997 and Stephen Byers, one of the responsible government ministers, later called the working relationships between the contracted parties "dysfunctional". The government considered cancellation, but Fujitsu pressured the UK government to sign off on the IT system and after lengthy negotiation it was agreed in May 1999 that the Department of Social Security would withdraw and the benefit payment card would be abandoned. The project would continue with a reduced scope under the Horizon name at a cost of up to £900m, in order to replace the paper-based system used in post offices. Deployment to over 13,000 offices took place in 2000 and 2001.

On 8 April 2021, after the problems had caused scandal, Post Office chief executive Nick Read announced that the Horizon system would be replaced by a new IT system that would be "more user-friendly, easier to adapt for new products and services, and cloud-based to ensure easy maintenance and ready interoperability with other systems". He said: "This will not be easy – it will after all be among the biggest, if not the biggest, IT roll-out in the country when the time comes. But the change is both necessary and overdue."

It was a condition of the original settlement agreement in the group action that the Post Office would set up a historical shortfall scheme, to compensate sub-postmasters who did not take part in the group action. The Post Office did so and it went on to attract more than 2,400 claims. The scheme excluded the 555 sub-postmasters who had successfully sued the post office. As of February 2022, no commitment to compensate those 555 sub-postmasters existed. On 22 March 2022, a government scheme was launched to compensate the 555 sub-postmasters at the same level of compensation as other sub-postmasters. However, many of them are still awaiting full compensation.

Problems

Sub-postmasters began to report balancing errors to the Post Office within weeks of the Horizon system being installed, via the helpline the sub-postmasters were instructed to use. The Post Office resisted the sub-postmasters' reports of faults in the system, insisted that the sub-postmasters make up any shortfall of money, and in many cases untruthfully denied that any other sub-postmasters had reported problems. In 2000, there were six shortfall convictions that relied on Horizon data. Forty-one sub-postmasters were prosecuted in 2001, and 64 in 2002. In May 2002, shopkeeper Baljit Sethi raised concerns with the press that there were errors in Horizon, after his wife Anjana was notified that her sub-postmaster contract would be terminated. The Post Office responded that it "totally refuted" that the system was faulty, and that it had "sent experts... to check it twice".

In around 2000, problems with the system were reported by Alan Bates, the sub-postmaster at Craig-y-Don from March 1998 until November 2003. In 2003, Bates had his contract as sub-postmaster terminated when he refused to comply with Post Office policy. He reported his concerns to Computer Weekly in 2004; sufficient evidence had been gathered by 2009 to publish it. A campaign group on the issue, Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) was formed by Bates and others in September 2009. By 2012, concern in the media, and amongst a number of members of parliament, had grown. As a result, an independent investigative firm, Second Sight, was commissioned by the Post Office to conduct a separate, independent inquiry in 2012. In April 2012, Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office.

Second Sight reports

Second Sight issued an Interim Report dated 8 July 2013; a Briefing Report Part One dated 25 July 2014; a Briefing Report Part Two version 1 dated 21 August 2014; and a Briefing Report Part Two version 2 dated 9 April 2015.

Vennells, who stood down from her Post Office role in 2019, said in 2020, of the 2013 report, that "it concluded, while it had not found evidence of system-wide problems with the Horizon software, there were specific areas where Post Office should consider its procedures and operational support for sub-postmasters". Ron Warmington of Second Sight had said in 2019 "if the Post Office Board had believed ... and acted on ... what Second Sight reported ... instead of being led by the nose by its own middle management and in-house and external legal advisors, huge amounts of money, and human suffering, would have been avoided." In July 2013, Second Sight issued an interim report and Post Office Ltd admitted that software defects with Horizon had indeed occurred, but said that the system was effective. The review discovered problems in 2011 and 2012, when Post Office Ltd discovered defects that had caused a shortfall of up to £9,000 at 76 Post Office branches. The BBC reported that the Post Office later made good those losses and the sub-postmasters were not held liable. However, more than 150 sub-postmasters continued to raise issues with the system, which they claimed had, by error, put them in debt by tens of thousands of pounds, and that in some cases they lost their contracts or went to prison. In 2019, Warmington said,

the Post Office has improperly enriched itself, through the decades, with funds that have passed through its own suspense accounts. Had its own staff more diligently investigated in order to establish who were the rightful owners of those funds, they would have been returned to them, whether they were Post Office's customers or its Subpostmasters. When is the Post Office going to return the funds that, in effect, belonged to its Subpostmasters? ... It also seems to be clear now that some of those funds could have been generated by Horizon itself, or by errors made by the Post Office's own staff, or by those of Fujitsu. They weren't "real" losses at all. They were phantom discrepancies.

Second Sight's report of 9 April 2015, titled Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme and marked as confidential, states that it was first appointed by Post Office at the request of members of parliament in July 2012. Undertakings were given by Post Office to satisfy MPs that Second Sight would be able to conduct an independent investigation into the matters of concern. The report described the Horizon system as, in some cases, "not fit for purpose". The lead investigator for Second Sight claimed that there were about 12,000 communication failures every year, with software defects at 76 branches and old and unreliable hardware. The system had, according to the report, not been tracking money from lottery terminals, Vehicle Excise Duty payments or cash machine transactions – and the initial Post Office Ltd investigation had not looked for the cause of the errors, instead accusing the sub-postmasters of theft. The report was dismissed by the Post Office. However, it was leaked to the BBC in September 2014. The BBC's article on the report also said that training on the system was not good enough, that "equipment was outdated", and that "power cuts and communication problems made things worse".

In March 2015, Private Eye magazine and other sources reported that Post Office Ltd had ordered Second Sight to end its investigation just one day before the report was due to be published, and to destroy all the paperwork which it had not handed over. Post Office Ltd then scuppered the independent committee set up to oversee the investigation, as well as the mediation scheme for sub-postmasters, and published a report which cleared itself of any wrongdoing. Of the 136 cases, 56 had been closed, and Post Office Ltd would put the rest forward for "mediation" unless a court ruling prevented them from doing so. After ending the inquiry, Post Office Ltd said that there were no wide-scale problems, and that:

This has been an exhaustive and informative process that has confirmed that there are no system-wide problems with our computer system and associated processes. We will now look to resolve the final outstanding cases as quickly as possible.

Mediation scheme

Post Office Ltd then went into mediation with some of the affected sub-postmasters. By December 2014, however, MPs had criticised Post Office Ltd for how it handled the sub-postmasters' claims, and 140 of those affected had withdrawn their support for the Post Office-run mediation scheme. 144 MPs had been contacted by sub-postmasters about the issue, and James Arbuthnot, the MP leading on the matter, accused the organisation of rejecting 90% of applications for mediation. Post Office Ltd said that the claims by Arbuthnot were "regrettable and surprising". Arbuthnot further claimed that Post Office Ltd had been "duplicitous", and said that:

I do not want to build up hopes that the other methods are going to be more successful than the current ones, so I will not be specific – but it will involve legal and political campaigns.

In February 2015, Computerworld UK, a trade magazine for IT managers, reported that Post Office Ltd was obstructing the investigation by refusing to hand over key files to Second Sight. Angela van den Bogerd of Post Office Ltd claimed in the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee hearing of 3 February 2015 that the Post Office "have been working with Second Sight over the last few weeks on what we agreed at the outset. We have been providing the information", but the lead investigator for Second Sight, when asked by Adrian Bailey MP if that were the case, said "No, it is not", as he had not been given access to prosecution files which he needed to back up his suspicions that Post Office Ltd had brought cases against sub-postmasters with "inadequate investigation and inadequate evidence". He said that these files were still outstanding 18 months after they had been requested.

Paula Vennells, the then-Post Office chief executive, in December 2019, after Post Office Ltd conceded the court cases, apologised to workers affected by the scandal, saying: "I am truly sorry we were unable to find both a solution and a resolution outside of litigation and for the distress this caused." Her letter to the Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee claims "The message that the Board and I were consistently given by Fujitsu, from the highest levels of the company, was that while, like any IT system, Horizon was not perfect and had a limited life-span, it was fundamentally sound" (Answer 11). She claimed "I raised this question repeatedly, both internally and with Fujitsu, and was always given the same answer: that it was not possible for branch records to be altered remotely without the sub-postmaster's knowledge. Indeed, I remember being told by Fujitsu's then CEO when I raised it with him that the system was "like Fort Knox" (Answer 54).

Post Office and Fujitsu conduct

The miscarriage of justice described by the rulings were not solely due to technical software issues. Considerable blame was placed upon human factors outside the Horizon software and its operation. These included willful blindness to evidence, and improper execution of the role of prodsecutor by the Post Office. For example, an expert report by criminal prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC found among other concerns that:

• Evidence provided by former chief IT architect Gareth jenkins of Fujitsu, appeared to substantially fail the standards expected of an expert witness, by failing to disclose adverse material, failing to seek out material, failing to consider in a balanced manner the implication of other facts, and failure to consider in a balanced manner whether other causes might have been relevant. There had been "consistently, failures by the investigators to identify and to pursue a number of reasonable lines of enquiry" both before and after 2010.
• There had been no separation of investigative and disclosure rolews, the same person(s) often performing both.
• Advice provided on charging with crimes was "almost invariably lacking any real analysis of the evidence". Furthermore, even by the end of some cases "there was uncertainty about what the actual loss was".
• Prosecuting the alleged crimes required consideration of evidentiary basis for a claim of dishonesty, including where money had gone, reliability of evidence, realistic prospects for conviction, public interest, most of which were rarely or seldom referred to, much less properly considered.
• Theft charges appeared to often have been used to pressure a guilty plea of false accounting. Furthermore when this happened, "wholly inappropriate conditions" were demanded before allowing the plea. (By contrast the Code for Crown Prosecutors (CPS) section 6.3 states that "Prosecutors ... should never proceed with a more serious charge just to encourage a defendant to plead guilty to a less serious one".):
  • It was "improper" to make acceptance of a charge conditional upon agreeing not to criticise Post Office computer systems.
  • As well as being improper in itself, it also wrongfully denied victims their right to present mitigation, which they were legally entitled to present and have considered as part of the charge and plea being admitted. ("It would likely have been a relevant and strong mitigation that the false accounting was to cover a sahortfall for which the defendant was not responsible and which may have been a computer error. To deny the defendant that mitigation was wrong")
  • It was also irrational and unjust for the Post Office to both argue they had the wrongful benefit of the money, and yet not charge theft, instead selecting a charge that did not imply the victims had caused the loss or enriched themselves, but then requiring repayment as a condition of allowing such a plea, when the pleasd itself did not imply that the Post Office saw them as improperly enriching themselves via the loss to be repaid.

Court cases

Cases quick reference table

Case	Date	Type	Court	Outcome
Post Office Ltd v Castleton	January 2006	Post Office sues sub-postmaster	High Court	Post Office wins.
R v Seema Misra	October 2010	Prosecution	Crown Court	Convicted – 15 months imprisonment
Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd	2018–19	Sub-postmasters sue Post Office	High Court (Civil)	Settled by Consent.
Permission to appeal Judgment No 4	May 2019	Application	Court of Appeal (civil)	Permission refused
Permission to appeal Judgment No 3	November 2019	Application	Court of Appeal (civil)	Permission refused
R v Christoper Trousdale & Others	December 2020	6 Appeals against Magistrates Court convictions.	Crown Court	6 convictions quashed.
Hamilton & Others and Post Office Ltd	April 2021	41 sub-postmasters' Appeal against their criminal conviction.	Court of Appeal (Criminal)	convictions of 39 sub-postmasters were quashed and declared unlawful.
Felstead & Ors v Post Office Ltd	15 January 2021	Directions	Court of Appeal (civil)	Barristers resigned in December. Adjourned to April 2021, dismissed.

The Post Office proceeded against its staff in criminal prosecutions in magistrates' courts and the Crown Court and with civil actions. At the time of the prosecutions, the Post Office had no different standing in law from that of any other private prosecutor in the British legal system. It acted as a private prosecutor in England and Wales. In Scotland, it reported allegations of crime to a procurator fiscal, and in Northern Ireland to the Public Prosecution Service. However, The Post Office's unique position, with a history as a prosecutor going back to 1683, gave the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) the greatest cause for concern upon its referral to the Court of Appeal. Historically Royal Mail had been a public authority.

The Post Office is not a typical private prosecutor. The Private Prosecutors' Association questioned whether the Post Office was conducting private prosecutions at all and was in fact a "publicly-owned entity and a public prosecutor" during the relevant period. The CCRC, in its written submission to the Commons Select Committee, questioned whether any organisation with the Post Office's combined status, as victim, investigator and prosecutor, would be able to take decisions on investigations and disclosure "appropriately free from conflict of interest and conscious or unconscious bias". Counsel for the defence in the case of Misra raised the issues of insufficient disclosure, conflict of interest, etc.

Paul Marshall, counsel to three appellants in the case of Hamilton, until forced to resign from the case by an allegation by the Post Office of contempt, or information to the court indicating contempt, or breach of disclosure terms, in written evidence to the parliamentary Justice Committee, rejected the notion of the private nature of the prosecutions as a single cause of the scandal. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has written to some 73 sub-postmasters who may have been wrongly prosecuted and/or convicted. Marshall postulated four inter-related causes:

1. Legal – legislative failure.
2. Legal – court/judicial failure.
3. Post Office mendacity/opportunism.
4. Failure in Post Office corporate governance.

As the mediation process broke down, the affected sub-postmasters began to consult and combine their efforts into legal action. The action taken against the Post Office took the form first of the group litigation in the name of Bates and others, a civil action in the High Court by some 600 people, and the linked appeal cases, first of R v Christoper Trousdale & Others in the Crown Court, and then of Hamilton and Others in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division). In the Trousdale and Hamilton appeals, the findings in the civil case (Bates) were used to support the appeals against convictions. In Bates, six 'lead claimants' and 23 'Common Issues' were identified and agreed to enable the court to examine the 600 cases. The court of appeal judgment, that all of the successful appeals had suffered a prosecution that was "an affront to the conscience of the court", has important implications for any future civil cases against the Post Office.

Further cases since the Hamilton appeal have been heard and further appeals and civil claims are expected. The Financial Times headlined an article "Sub-postmasters set to file UK lawsuits for malicious prosecution". The CCRC is calling on more sub-postmasters to come forward to have their convictions reviewed and, as of April 2023, 86 people have now had their convictions quashed.

Magistrates' courts

Magistrates' courts are not courts of record. An appeal against a conviction in a magistrates' court is to the Crown Court by way of a rehearing, or by way of case stated (but only where the appeal raises a point of law) to a Divisional Court of the High Court. As of July 2021, the number of convictions obtained by the Post Office, directly or via public prosecution in magistrates' courts is unknown or unpublished.

On 30 June 2021, the Post Office issued a statement that, inter alia, said:

To date such appeals have been heard by Southwark Crown Court. ... If people have previously tried to appeal and failed, or pleaded guilty in a Magistrates' Court, they can apply to the CCRC. ... Post Office is contacting people with potentially relevant convictions, following an extensive search of historical records and urges anybody who believes that they may have a relevant case to come forward. ... Post Office's post-conviction disclosure exercise, by external criminal law specialists Peters & Peters, has examined around 4.5 million documents and thousands of physical and electronic sources have been interrogated. In addition, Peters & Peters liaised with a number of third parties including Fujitsu Services Limited, Royal Mail Group, the Courts, the CCRC and approximately 50 law firms and agents historically instructed by Post Office to obtain material relevant to the convictions.

Crown Court

R v Christopher Trousdale & Others – December 2020

The first sub-postmaster appeals against convictions were at Southwark Crown Court before circuit judge Taylor, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court. The cases were from magistrates' court convictions in London, Luton, Basingstoke, Oxford, Burton-upon-Trent and Scarborough between 2004 and 2012. "The Post Office is currently reviewing around 800 prosecutions made between 1999 and 2014, where Horizon data was used in evidence." The six appealed against their convictions. The appeals were unopposed; the respondent, the Post Office, offered no evidence, the appeals were allowed and not guilty verdicts were entered. Little if any mention was made of the distinction between unsafe convictions and prosecutions that should not have been brought.

This case was heard before submissions about ultra vires or wrongful prosecutions were made in Hamilton & Others. Just three months later, it was known publicly that these submissions were to be made and that the Post Office intended to oppose them in Hamilton. Five of the six appellants were represented by counsel – one was unrepresented and had been advised by the court that she need not attend. Costs were awarded to the appellants. At the end of the hearing the judge said, "I am sure that all of the appellants are grateful for the approach that the Post Office has taken finally to this matter and that it can be put to rest for them."

R v Seema Misra – October 2010

Seema Misra was prosecuted at Guildford Crown Court and sent to prison. In written evidence to parliament's Justice Committee, the barrister who had started her representation at her appeal in the Hamilton case said, that at "Mrs Misra's criminal trial, on ... three separate occasions, the defence applied to three separate judges to have the prosecution stopped on the basis that the disclosure given by the Post Office was woefully inadequate and the prosecution an abuse of process..." The submissions at Guildford Crown Court were dismissed and Ms Misra was charged with one count of theft, to which she pleaded not guilty, and six of false accounting to which she pleaded guilty.

In a further application, during the trial, that the trial be stopped, Mr Hadrill, for Mrs Misra, said of the prosecution's expert witness, "He operates under a restriction because he is an employee of Fujitsu who are under contract to the Post Office and he can only comply with his contractual terms as best he can and there is no suggestion his integrity is anywhere at fault as to what he is permitted to do, bearing in mind this is a Post Office prosecution. I don't go behind that but it is not an independent prosecution at arm's reach from the loser company and Mr Jenkins, so we have to have concerns as to the quality of his evidence and the best he has done in regard to the restrictions he operates under." The application was again unsuccessful. The prosecution told the jury, "In a Post Office case it is a Post Office investigator who conducts the interview because of course they are familiar with Post Office procedures in a way a Police Officer would not necessarily be."

Mrs Misra, recalling the moment when she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."

High Court

Post Office Ltd v Castleton – January 2006

This was a civil case in which the Post Office sued Mr Castleton. The case was heard before Judge Richard Havery QC in December 2006 and January 2007. The defendant represented himself and counterclaimed damages in the sum of £11,250 on the ground that the Post Office wrongfully determined the contract as a sub-postmaster following his suspension. The judge found for the Post Office on the claim for £25,858.95. He found the deficiencies were real, the business was not properly managed and that Mr. Castleton was therefore in breach of his contract with the Post Office. "Moreover, the losses must have been caused by his own error or that of his assistants. The counterclaim was dismissed." Unable to afford the losses and the £321,000 in legal costs, Mr. Castleton declared himself bankrupt.

Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd

On 22 March 2017, Senior Master Fontaine made a group litigation order with the approval of the President of the Queen's Bench of the High Court and, on 31 March, Fraser J was nominated managing judge in Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd, brought by approximately 600 claimants. At the start of the proceedings, the Post Office unsuccessfully opposed the making or the existence of a group litigation order. The Post Office had set up a litigation sub-committee, attended on 24 April 2019 by Tim Parker, Tom Cooper, (director of UK Government Investments), David Cavender QC, Alisdair Cameron, Ben Foat, staff from Womble Bond Dickinson and from Herbert Smith Freehills. There was an unsuccessful application by the Post Office that the judge recuse himself, an appeal, and two separate submissions described by judges as attempts to put the courts in terrorem. At the Judgment No. 6 the judge said:

The recusal application was issued the day after Mr Godeseth's cross-examination had made it clear, not only that this remote access existed, but after he was taken in careful cross-examination through specific examples of Fujitsu personnel manipulating branch accounts, and leading to discrepancies in branch accounts. I am aware that criticism of the Post Office and Fujitsu in this respect may prove to be controversial, as earlier criticism of certain aspects of the Post Office's case in Judgment (No. 3) was not well received by it. However, if criticism is justified, I consider it would be detrimental to proper resolution of the group litigation if that criticism were to be withheld simply because it might lead to a further negative reaction by the Post Office. It is also an inherent part of the judicial function in any litigation to make findings, which may include criticisms where justified, that may be contrary to a litigant's own view of the merits of their case. Some litigants are so convinced of the righteousness of their own position that they consistently refuse to accept any possible view of the litigation other than their own. Such a blinkered view is rarely helpful, and would be particularly unhelpful from a publicly owned institution.

The sub-postmasterss were financed by a litigation fund, Therium. High court battles are expensive. Defendants try to intimidate funders by running up costs and with delaying tactics, in the hope the latter might walk. The matter ended by consent when the Post Office agreed to pay costs of £58 million, without admitting liability, and compensation was therefore not awarded. Of that payment, £46 million went to the financial backers.

The extent to which the government was aware of the Post Office's approach to its defence was questioned during the parliamentary debate on 19 March 2020. David Jones MP said, "Of course the Post Office has a non-executive director appointed by the Government. One must assume that that non-executive director is reporting to Ministers." Kevin Jones MP replied, "If I had been the Minister, I would have had that person in and scrutinised what was going on ... That would certainly have applied in the past few months, given the hundreds of millions of pounds that have been spent defending the indefensible." Bambos Charalambous MP said, "The Post Office seemed to have unlimited funds at its disposal to fight this action, ... The Post Office is an arm's length organisation, but there seems to be no accountability ..." Chi Onwurah MP said, "Its only shareholder is the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, so more should have been done to address the scandal before it was allowed to fester to this extent."

Arbuthnot, sitting in the House of Lords as Baron Arbuthnot of Edrom, in a written question asked, "... whether the Accounting Officer with responsibility for the Post Office has played any role in advising ministers on the Government's policy in relation to ... (3) the sub-postmasters' litigation against the Post Office". In an article headed "Did government officials collude in trying to remove a judge?" journalist Nick Wallis sets out and assesses the government's reply to Arbuthnot's questions, "Mr Chisholm (Principal Accounting Officer at BEIS) has never been held to account for his actions in monitoring or blessing the Post Office's behaviour since he was appointed BEIS Permanent Secretary in 2016. We don't know what he advised ministers about the progress of the litigation or the post-Common Issues "changes" to "strategy".

During the case, six separate judgments were handed down:

Judgment No 1 Applications to alter timetable – November 2017

Referring to costs and delay, the judge said, "Fitting hearings around their availability has all the disadvantages of doing an intricate jigsaw puzzle, with none of the fun associated with that activity."

Judgment No 2 Application to strike out evidence – October 2018

This decision followed a case management hearing and dismissed an application to strike out roughly one-quarter of the lead claimants' evidence – more than 160 paragraphs. The judge commented that adverse publicity for Post Office was not a matter of concern for the court if the evidence was relevant and admissible. He also warned against the aggressive conduct of litigation, particularly in a group action of this nature.

In the judgment in the Court of Appeal refusing permission to appeal the recusal application, Lord Justice Coulson said that the sub-postmasters had submitted "that the strike-out application arose because the PO wished to adduce extensive factual evidence in their favour but objected to any evidence to the contrary from the sub-postmasters. As they put it 'the Post Office wanted the case decided all one way'. There remains a distinct flavour of that approach within the recusal application." "The application by the defendant to strike out this evidence appears to be an attempt to hollow out the Lead Claimants' case to the very barest of bones (to mix metaphors), if not beyond, and to keep evidence with which the defendant does not agree from being aired at all." Counsel for the sub-postmasters, in a written submission that was quoted and accepted by the judge, said the application "appears to be an attempt by Post Office to secure an advantage at the Common Issues Trial by selectively tailoring the evidence which the Court is to consider."

The application was dismissed.

Judgment No 3 Common Issues – March 2019

The sub-postmasters and the Post Office had identified 23 issues relating to the contractual relationship between them and about which they disagreed. The judge made findings on each so that obligations under all iterations of the contracts would be settled, both retrospectively and prospectively. Of the 23 issues, 16 were decided in the sub-postmasters' favour. The parties agreed that broadly the claimants were more successful. Issue 1 was later described by the judge as important. He found sub-postmasters' contracts are relational contracts. "This means that the Post Office is not entitled to act in a way that would be considered commercially unacceptable by reasonable and honest people."

In court, Fraser criticised testimony given by Post Office witnesses. The judge said Angela van den Bogerd (Head of Partnerships, Post Office) "did not give me frank evidence, and sought to obfuscate matters, and mislead me." Fraser commented on the evidence given by Stephen Parker, Head of Post Office Application Support, Fujitsu:

"I do not consider that Mr Parker was interested in accuracy in any of his evidential exercises. ... I do not consider his evidence in his witness statements to have been remotely accurate, even though he stoutly maintained that it was."

Of the evidence of one Post Office witness, the judge said, "The Post Office appears, at least at times, to conduct itself as though it is answerable only to itself. The statement that it is prepared to preserve documents – as though that were a concession – and the obdurate to accept the relevance of plainly important documents, and to refuse to produce them, is extremely worrying." Fraser said in the Horizon Issues trial,

the possibility of future (as opposed to current) criminal prosecutions, or the potentially criminal impact upon individual sub-postmasters, did more than hover in the background to the Horizon Issues trial. Some claimants who gave evidence in this trial were expressly accused by the Post Office of criminal offences in cross-examination in this trial, something which had also occurred in the Common Issues trial.

When the judgment was delivered, the Post Office said it would appeal. On 23 May, the judge refused the Post Office permission to appeal and set out his reasons on 17 June. The Post Office applied for permission to appeal that refusal. However, during the Horizon Issues evidence, just as the judge returned to court for the final afternoon, Joshua Rozenberg reported, "he was told that the Post Office had served an application for his recusal ... Counsel representing Post Office on the Horizon issues had apparently not seen it. He made no mention of it that morning".

Judgment No 4 Application for recusal – April 2019

The Post Office brought in Lord Grabiner QC to make an application to Fraser J that he recuse himself. Grabiner is widely described as a 'legal heavyweight'. Statements supporting the recusal application alleged that paragraphs 22 to 25 of Judgment No 3 were findings, or observations that fell outside the scope of the Common Issues trial. Paragraph 24 of that judgment gave the clear impression that the judge has already formed a firm view on these matters that will prevent him from taking an impartial view when they are revisited at subsequent trials. The statement further alleged that the judgment contained critical invective directed at the Post Office and that parts harshly criticised the Post Office's witnesses on irrelevant matters. The sub-postmasters argued that the Post Office was insufficiently specific and the judge required the Post Office to identify the relevant paragraphs of Judgment No 3. In response, the Post Office cited 110 paragraphs.

The recusal application was dismissed on two grounds, no bias, and waiver due to delay by the Post Office. Lord Grabiner had been asked to explain the delay in making the application. He replied "It was made at board level within the client and it also involved the need for me to be got up to speed from a standing start. And I am not the only judicial figure or barrister that has looked at this with a view to reaching that conclusion. It has also been looked at by another very senior person before the decision was taken to make this application. The delay, such as it is, is very, very tiny". This submission was rejected. The judge decided the issue of waiver as a result of the delay in making the application for recusal.

"Even if I had found that there were grounds of apparent bias on the face of Judgment No. 3, I would not have recused myself. This is because of the fact that the Post Office waited until almost two weeks after it had received Judgment No. 3 before it did anything in respect of making an application to recuse."

The recusal application was opposed by the sub-postmasters and dismissed by the judge.

Judgment No 5 Common Issues costs – June 2019

The issuing by the Post Office of the recusal application on 21 March 2019 caused significant disruption to the Horizon Issues trial which had started on 11 March 2019, and to the Group Litigation as a whole. The sub-postmasters applied for the costs of that application; the Post Office sought that the judge reserve costs, in the following terms

the court can't be sure that things will happen in the future that will affect and alter its view about incidence of costs. It simply cannot do so. If it does so now, in my submission as a matter of principle, that would evidence a predetermination or would go towards suggesting the court has reached a view about matters as to how things are going to pan out in the future.

The judge was troubled by this submission. Inherent was a veiled or implied threat that the Post Office will say that the overall outcome of the litigation, or other future issues, has been decided. The Post Office was attempting to put the court in terrorem again. After asserting no predecision he said, "I do nonetheless consider that it is appropriate that I consider whether to make a costs order now ... " After considering cases cited the application by the Post Office to reserve costs was dismissed. "The claimants would not be on an equal footing with the Post Office, a publicly funded body, if I reserved the costs of the Common Issues trial until the very end of the litigation ... I do not however consider that the presence of litigation funding should sway this decision one way or the other. I agree with Mr Cavender that the presence of such funding should not put a claimant in a better position vis-à-vis the correct stage in litigation at which costs should be addressed, compared to a non-funded party. However, regardless of who is funding litigation, a funder or an individual litigant, cash flow is a relevant consideration for most litigants. It is a consideration that might weigh less heavily upon publicly funded bodies such as the Post Office, but even such entities are likely to be concerned to some extent with cash flow." Of the sub-postmasters' submissions that their award of costs should not be reduced, the court rejected them.

Judgment No 6 Horizon issues – December 2019

This judgment concerns the operation and functionality of the Horizon system itself. The hearings took place in March, April, June and July 2019. The hearings were interrupted by the Post Office's application for the judge to recuse, to appeal his refusal to recuse (judgment 4), and his judgment 3. The judgment was published in December 2019. Twenty-nine bugs, errors and defects were identified and analysed. Witnesses for the sub-postmasters and for the Post Office submitted statements and gave oral evidence. Documents that had been submitted, and further documents, the submission of which had been resisted were, after argument and rulings, submitted. These included the 'Known Error Logs' and the 'PEAKs', a browser-based software incident and problem management system used by Fujitsu for the Post Office account. Permission, for two IT experts to be called, one for the claimants (Mr Coyne) and one for the Post Office (Dr Worden)

During this trial, the Post Office issued an application that the judge recuse himself. That led first to Fraser J's Judgment No. 4, and then to an application for permission to appeal that judgment. The applications and the appeal failed but caused considerable delay.

Court of Appeal (civil)

Permission to appeal Judgment No 3 – November 2019

Lord Justice Coulson refused permission to appeal judgment No 3 and handed down his written reasons on 22 November. Before dealing with the 26 grounds that formed the basis of the application the judge set out a number of reasons that he felt militated against granting the Post Office permission to appeal. In short, the judge said:

• The trial was long and complex – 6 weeks – 60 lever arch files – 20 witnesses of fact. The judgment is 320 pages and 1,122 paragraphs long. No judge will ever know more about this case generally, and the Common Issues specifically, than Fraser J.
• The oral hearing of the permission-to-appeal application had demonstrated the danger that consideration of one issue opened up another, and another until the trial is re-fought. That is manifestly not in the interests of justice.
• Many of the Post Office's challenges are challenges to the findings of fact made by Fraser J. Challenges to such findings of fact are not open to an appellant in the position of the Post Office. Fraser J's conclusions of law were so entangled with his findings of fact that Coulson LJ considered it neither just, nor practicable to endeavour to separate them out.
• The Post Office made sweeping statements of the judgment which were demonstrably wrong. The Post Office takes findings "either wholly out of context, misstated, or otherwise not correctly summarised".
• Fraser J dealt comprehensively with why he refused permission to appeal in his separate judgment of 17 June 2019 which itself runs to 91 paragraphs, and Coulson LJ said that he agreed with Fraser J's detailed reasons for refusing the application to appeal.
• The Post Office's approach in this application was, as Fraser J correctly labelled it "attritional". The most obvious example is the Post Office's anxiety to state what they do not like about a particular proposal from the sub-postmasters or the consequential finding by Fraser J, without providing any practical alternative. None of this engenders any confidence in the underlying merits or prospects of success of the Post Office's application for permission to appeal.
• There is no greater or wider right to permission to appeal just because this is group litigation; indeed, from the point of view of practical justice the opposite may well be the case. In any event, the sub-postmasters' contract was no longer in use.
• This application is founded on the premise that the nation's most trusted brand was not obliged to treat their sub-postmasters with good faith, and instead entitled to treat them in capricious or arbitrary ways which would not be unfamiliar to a mid-Victorian factory-owner (the Post Office's right to terminate contracts arbitrarily and the sub-postmasters alleged strict liability to the Post Office for errors made by the Post Office's own computer system, being just two of many examples). Given the unique relationship that the Post Office has with its sub-postmasters, that position was a startling starting point for any consideration of these grounds of appeal.

The application was refused.

Permission to appeal Judgment No 4 – May 2019

Lord Justice Coulson refused the Post Office permission to appeal the refusal to recuse. Of the submission by Lord Grabiner, that he was not the only judicial figure or barrister that had looked at the decision to seek recusal, Coulson said at paragraph 48: "Such a comment, presumably made in terrorem, should not have been made at least without proper explanation of its relevance." In her legal analysis of the case Kate Beaumont said, "Recusal applications are extremely serious. They are not a tactic to be strategically deployed by a losing party." She quotes Coulson as saying "Without making any finding, he stated that he at least understood the claimants' submission that the recusal application and the permission to appeal application were made in an attempt to de-rail the litigation as a whole."

The application was refused.

Court of Appeal (criminal)

In March 2020 the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred for appeal the convictions of 39 Post Office applicants. The commission said it would be referring all those cases, which involve convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting, on the basis that each prosecution amounted to an abuse of process. In May 2020 the CCRC referred a further eight such convictions, bringing the total to 47. In January 2021 the CCRC decided to refer a further four convictions, bringing the total to 51. In May 2021 Helen Pitcher, chair of the commission, told MPs that the organisation was 'not adequately resourced' if 200 cases were to be brought forward for review. She told the justice committee that a shortage of case review managers would take months to address, and that talks are ongoing with the Ministry of Justice about extending funding.

Hamilton & Others and Post Office Ltd – April 2021

In April 2021, after an appeal before three judges, Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Picken and Mrs Justice Farbey, thirty-nine of the convicted former postmasters had their convictions quashed, with a further twenty-two cases still being investigated by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

At the commencement of the case, three of the applicant sub-postmasters were represented by Paul Marshall and Flora Page, his junior. In December 2020, Marshall and Page resigned from the case under threat from the court of contempt proceedings. That threat was lifted at a hearing in April 2021 before Lord Justice Fulford. It was Marshall and Page who led the charge on the critical second limb of the appeal, that it was an "affront to the public conscience for the appellants to face prosecution."

Forty-two historical convictions of dishonesty were referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to the Court of Appeal. "The CCRC referred the cases because it considered that two cogent lines of argument in relation to abuse of process were available to each appellant: first, that the reliability of Horizon data was essential to the prosecution and conviction, and it was not possible for the trial process to be fair; and secondly, that it was an affront to the public conscience for the appellant to face criminal proceedings." Each of the forty-two cases was considered individually. Of the forty-two, just two had previously appealed, unsuccessfully.

The Post Office accepted Fraser's findings of the unreliability of the Horizon systems and, in some cases, of inadequate investigation, and/or of insufficient disclosure. In these cases, the Post Office did not resist the appeal on Ground 1 but it would oppose Ground 2. The Post Office divided the appellants into three groups; A, 4 cases where it asserted that both categories 1 and 2 abuse of process applied, group B, 35 cases where category 1 applied, but not category 2, and group C, where neither category applied. The Post Office would not seek a retrial of any appellant whose appeal is allowed.

At paragraphs 79 and 80 of the substantive Hamilton judgment, the court referred to a directions hearing on 18 November. That hearing led to further hearings in November, December, and January. The court addressed three issues:

• information from Brian Altman QC, counsel for Post Office, alleging potential contempt of court by Ms Page, junior counsel for three appellants (all in group B), by improper disclosure of the 'Clarke advice';
• "the issue of whether an appellant whose appeal was not resisted by POL on Ground 1 was entitled to argue Ground 2;"
• an application by journalist Nick Wallis for the release of the 'Clarke advice'. Mr Wallis' application failed.

Mr Altman's information to the court on 19 November led to hearings on 3 December 10 December and 15 January before the present court, and to Marshall and Page resigning from the case. On 3 December, Altman said, "I am confident that the court understands why we brought these matters to the court's attention. ... For the avoidance of any doubt, I should like to make clear that the Post Office has not made application for anyone's committal for contempt. ... We have sought to assist the court as we were invited to do," referring to signed undertakings, "... the court suggested that all legal representatives sign an express undertaking not to use disclosed material other than for the proper conduct of these proceedings." Lord Justice Holroyde interjected, "I thought you suggested that," and Altman replied, "Ultimately, my Lord, I think it was at the suggestion of the court but that is what has happened and that is what has been done."

The court issued a brief judgment. "... we direct that the question of whether any contempt proceedings are to be initiated against Mr Marshall and/or Miss Page and, if so, whether by the Post Office or by the Court of its own initiative, must be adjourned for consideration after the appeals have been concluded. ... we direct that all further hearings must be before a different constitution." On 15 January 2021, the court set out its reasons. It led to Marshall and Page facing the possibility of an action against them, either by the court or by the Post office, for contempt of court. By 4 December, barristers Paul Marshall and Fiona Page had resigned from the Hamilton case. Mr Marshall had written two letters to the court. Of the second, Nick Wallis said, "It makes for troubling reading." In April 2021, the matter came before Lord Justice Fulford, Mrs Justice Cutts and Mr Justice Saini when it was declared no further action to be taken. Mr Marshall said "the threat of contempt proceedings from the outset was seriously questionable as a matter of law".

The Attorney General instructed counsel as advocate to the court, Marshall and Page were succeeded by Ms L. Busch QC and Dr S. Fowles, and the court addressed "the issue of whether an appellant whose appeal was not resisted by the Post Office on Ground 1 was entitled to argue Ground 2." All counsel at the December hearing agreed that no appellant is entitled as of right to argue Ground 2. An earlier written submission to the contrary was not pursued. However, Ms Busch and Dr Fowles went on to argue that "... the court must act judicially. It would be wrong in principle for the court to permit the respondent (the Post Office) effectively to preclude argument on Ground 2 by its concession that Ground 1 is not opposed. ... The appellants have suffered very severely as a consequence of their prosecutions, and a finding in their favour on Ground 1 alone would not fully vindicate them. ... She (Ms Busch) pointed out that there has been an important disclosure since the Commission referred the cases, and submitted that the public interest required consideration of the complete picture."

For the other applicants, it was submitted all were concerned about delay; only three of the whole group had actively sought to argue Ground 2 ... appellants would be content to have their appeals allowed on Ground 1 alone ... however, appellants do contend that Ground 2 is made out in their cases ... if the court concluded that argument should be heard on Ground 2, they would wish their submissions on Ground 2 heard.

The court ordered that, "... in the exercise of the court's discretion we would permit argument on Ground 2 by any appellant who wished to advance it. In the event, each appellant did wish to do so." The court set out its reasoning and highlighted four factors of particular importance:

1. abuse of court process is an important matter to the parties and the public, notwithstanding that the appellants had not previously applied for leave to appeal.
2. Ground 1 presupposes that there should be a prosecution. The public may legitimately feel ... that a finding in the appellant's favour on Ground 2 adds materially to a finding in his or her favour on Ground 1. ... If in fact an appellant should never have been prosecuted at all, ... the court should make that determination.
3. We are ... satisfied that case management can avoid any risk of these appeals becoming an open-ended exercise in finding facts.
4. Fourthly, we do not accept the submissions that consideration of Ground 2 will cause undue delay in the determination of these appeals.

At the April hearings, after considering the submissions of the sub-postmasters and the Post Office, the court stated, "In those circumstances, we are satisfied that a fair trial was not possible in any of the “Horizon cases” and that Ground 1 accordingly succeeds in each of those cases." The court then set out its reasoning in respect of Ground 2. In short, the court decided that Ground 2 succeeds in each of the "Horizon cases".

The Clarke advice

The 'Clarke Advice' consists of two pieces of advice to the Post Office in 2013 by a barrister working for Cartwright King (CK), a solicitors’ firm instructed in relation to the Post Office prosecutions. This document led to the "CK Sift Review" and the "Brian Altman General Review". The Sift review "raised the prospect of at least 26 potential miscarriages of justice and caused the immediate cessation of four prosecutions. It was concluded in 2014." It was disclosed in the Hamilton appeals in November 2020 by the Post Office amongst a bundle of post prosecution disclosures at the request of Aria Grace Law, the solicitors for three appellants in November, and was described by Lord Falconer of Thoroton, former head of the judiciary, as a likely "smoking gun".

The Clarke Advice had not been disclosed to the CCRC prior to its referral of the sub-postmasters' cases to the Court of Appeal. Paul Marshall said, "The Court of Appeal elicited acceptance that the provision of the Clarke Advice was an 'error of judgment' and that being done it was determined no further action was to be taken. ... the 'Clarke Advice' was pivotal in the Court of Appeal's finding that ... the Post Office was engaged in conduct that constituted an abuse of the process of the court and calculated to subvert the integrity of the criminal justice system or undermine public confidence in it. Its disclosure resulted in the much later disclosure of the 'shredding' Clarke advice."

Reactions

The Communication Workers' Union called for Vennells's appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), in the 2019 New Year Honours for "services to the Post Office and to charity", to be rescinded. In April 2021, after the overturning of the 39 convictions, Vennells resigned as a director of Dunelm and Morrisons and as an associate Church of England minister.

Inquiries

On 26 February 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed to hold an independent inquiry. Evidence about the case was also heard by parliament's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee on 10 March 2020. On 19 March 2020, in a debate in the House of Commons, Kevan Jones MP criticised former Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells, for her role in the scandal. Arbuthnot said in November 2019:

My own suggestion is that the government should clear out the entirety of the board and senior management of the Post Office and start again, perhaps with the assistance of consultancy services from Second Sight, who know where the bodies are buried.

In a written ministerial statement on 10 June 2020, Paul Scully, Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Labour Markets, announced the scope of the independent review into the Post Office Horizon IT system and trials. Of the review's terms of reference, Lord Arbuthnot said in the House of Lords chamber on 6 October, "Yet the Government are expressly excluding from the scope of their inquiry the Post Office Ltd prosecution function, the Horizon group damages settlement and the conduct of current or future litigation. ... why have the Government excluded these most important things?" The minister replied that the settlement agreed in December was full and final and therefore excluded from the scope of the inquiry ... the Post Office is not conducting any private prosecutions and has no plans to do so ... only the courts can decide on criminal matters, such as whether to overturn the postmasters’ convictions, so it would not be appropriate for the inquiry to look at these questions, especially when the court process is still ongoing.

The non-statutory inquiry, now titled The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry by the government and led by Sir Wyn Williams, began work in autumn 2020 and issued a call for evidence on 1 December 2020. The first public hearing session took place on 15 January 2021. The Justice For Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) refused to take part in the inquiry, described it as a whitewash and called for a full public inquiry.

Dr Neil Hudgell, of solicitors for sub-postmasters said, "Now Post Office officials must face criminal investigation for maliciously ruining lives by prosecuting innocent people in pursuit of profits," and called for the prime minister to convene a judge-led inquiry. After the sub-postmasters' successful appeals on both grounds 1 and 2 abuse of process, in an article headed "Calls grow for SRA and police to investigate Post Office lawyers", Hudgell is quoted as saying the Post Office engaged in "legal gymnastics to seek to persuade the court away from finding a clear systematic abuse of process of the criminal law." In the same article, Richard Moorhead, professor of law and professional ethics at Exeter Law School, said "the SRA and BSB should investigate whether anyone should be held to account amid professional concerns about who was responsible for disclosure issues." Solicitors for sub-postmasters wrote to the government (DBEIS) asking it to re-establish the inquiry on a statutory footing and to consult again on the terms of reference. "The department should be called as witnesses under oath, not have effective control of the inquiry," ... "The Post Office wrongly prosecuted so many upstanding pillars of the community and its owners want to mark (their) own homework – that is unconscionable."

On 19 May 2021, the government announced that an extended, statutory inquiry into the computer scandal would deliver its conclusions in autumn 2022. Witnesses could now be compelled to give evidence. Mr Scully said he and Sir Wyn had agreed that the context of the events had changed after convictions were quashed and hundreds more were expected to follow. Boris Johnson said:

We must stand with postmasters to get to the bottom of what went wrong in the Post Office Horizon IT dispute. I heard first-hand the irreparable impact it has had on their lives. That's why, in light of the recent Court of Appeal judgment, we're stepping up our independent inquiry by putting it on a statutory footing, so we can get the answers they deserve.

Statutory inquiry

On 19 May 2021, Wyn Williams said that in the following weeks, the inquiry would produce a statement of approach and that, in September 2021, a further statement of approach would set out all relevant details.

On 28 July, the government (DBEIS) issued its fourth statement of approach, which included the inquiry terms of reference. After setting out preliminary and organisational matters – the appointment of solicitors and counsel to the inquiry – establishment of a website and of premises, etc., the statement set out terms of reference, in essence:

A: Understand and acknowledge what went wrong and key lessons that must be learned.

B: Obtain all available relevant evidence from the Post Office, Fujitsu, BEIS and UKGI to establish the failings of Horizon and the Post Office's use of information from Horizon.

C: Assess whether the Post Office has learned and has delivered or made good progress on the changes necessary.

D: Assess whether the commitments made by Post Office Ltd have been properly delivered.

E: Assess whether processes and information provided by the Post Office to postmasters are sufficient.

F: Examine the historical and current governance and whistleblowing controls are now sufficient to ensure that these failures do not happen again.

"The Inquiry will consider only those matters set out in the preceding sections A-F. The Inquiry will not consider any issue which is outside the scope of the powers conferred upon the Inquiry by the Inquiries Act 2005. The Horizon group damages settlement (albeit the Inquiry may examine the events leading to the settlement), and/or the engagement or findings of any other supervisory or complaints mechanisms, including in the public sector, are outside the Inquiry's scope."

During the non-statutory inquiry, two public hearings were held in early 2021. A preliminary hearing on the provisional List of Issues was held on 8 November 2021. The Human Impact Hearings opened on 14 February 2022, at Juxon House, in the City of London. The Phase Two hearings, covering the Horizon IT System procurement, design, pilot, roll out and modifications, started in October 2022. They were streamed online, as are the later phases of the inquiry.

Richard Moorhead, professor of law and professional ethics, University of Exeter, made written and oral submissions to the Williams inquiry. Moorhead, in an oral submission to the Williams inquiry, said

If I can end by putting the case metaphorically for a moment. Considering the Horizon saga without considering the lawyering, and without lifting professional privilege, would be a bit like considering Watergate without considering the White House Tapes. Essential, telling, [and] perhaps vital information will be missing. The abuse of power, the injustice, who did it and why, will not be properly understood. Sir, you must, to discharge the Inquiry's remit, you must do the equivalent of listening to the tapes.

Immediately after the November hearing, Williams said he would ask Post Office Limited, IT supplier Fujitsu, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the UK government to waive privilege in respect of material relevant to the inquiry's terms of reference, and he set a deadline for response. On 16 November, Wyn Williams reported that all four parties had responded within the timescale specified and added "The response of POL, on any view, goes a very long way towards meeting the request I made of them. It is clear to me that in respect of many of the most crucial lines of investigation for the Inquiry POL has waived legal professional privilege." The Post Office published its response to the request on 15 November 2021. Government (BEIS) said that it was its "firm position that the inquiry should not be obstructed by the assertion of legal privilege", but the government-owned Post Office was more cautious. It agreed to a limited waiver over relevant material but would maintain privilege over documents relevant to ongoing litigation/remediation activities. The Post Office maintained privilege over documents relevant to the ongoing group litigation claim in the Employment Tribunal. It maintained privilege over legal advice related to the Historical Shortfall Scheme and to current and anticipated claims from individuals whose criminal convictions have been or will be quashed. This could have wide-reaching ramifications for the inquiry; if advice is withheld on the basis that it is relevant to current and anticipated claims from those who have had their convictions quashed, this may lead to gaps in the inquiry.

On 13 February 2022, in a report prior to the start of the Wyn Williams hearings, the BBC quoted a prosecuted, jailed and subsequently cleared sub-postmaster: "I want someone else to be charged and jailed like I was." This request was later repeated by several other sub-postmasters.

The inquiry issued an interim report on 17 July 2023. The recommendations were as follows:

• The Horizon Compensation Advisory Board (HCAB) should not be prevented from monitoring individual cases
• HCAB shall produce written reports in respect of each of their meetings
• Membership of HCAB should be increased to ensure that it has sufficient capacity
• The Government should within 28 days seek directions under section 306 of the Insolvency Act 1986 to ensure that compensation payable to bankrupt claimants is not diverted to insolvency practitioners
• The government should publish proposals for ensuring that applicants to all schemes are treated equally and fairly
• The government should ensure that legislation is enacted to allow compensation under group litigation orders to be made to applicants after midnight on 7 August 2024
• No applications for compensation to the Horizon Shortfall Scheme should be entertained after such date as agreed by the minister

The government accepted the recommendations in full or in part on 26 October 2023.

Criminal investigation into Post Office Limited

In January 2020, at the request of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Metropolitan Police initiated a criminal investigation into potential offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice during the investigations and prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Two former Fujitsu expert witnesses were interviewed under caution. The Metropolitan Police confirmed in January 2024 that they were investigating possible additional offences of fraud in relation to "monies recovered from sub-postmasters as a result of prosecutions or civil actions". As of January 2024, there had been no arrests.

Compensation

Sub-postmasters in Bates & Others v Post Office announced on 11 December 2019 that they had reached an out-of-court settlement with the Post Office. The Post Office did not accept liability so this was a costs settlement, not compensation. The details of the settlement were not made public until August 2020. At the time of the high court verdict, the government decided this group could not apply for compensation through the historical shortfall scheme. The group that brought the legal action was awarded £57.75m, but some £46m was taken in legal costs, leaving only about £20,000 for each person, which MPs said the victims saw as "inadequate".

In April 2021, Nick Read, Post Office chief executive, urged the government to provide funding for compensation, saying "The Post Office simply does not have the financial resources to provide meaningful compensation." Shortly afterward, the government promised "fair and speedy" pay-outs for the 555 victims of the Horizon IT scandal who had been excluded from the Post Office's compensation scheme.

In July 2021 the government announced that sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of offences would get interim compensation of up to £100,000.

On 23 September 2023, the government announced that sub-postmasters who have had their convictions on the basis of Horizon evidence overturned would be offered compensation of £600,000 in full and final settlement of their claim.

Call for reform on digital evidence

In May 2021, the British Computer Society, the official body for IT professionals in the UK, called for reconsideration of courts' default presumption that computer data is correct.

The presumption that computer evidence is correct is based on a naïve and simplistic understanding of software systems. Large systems are complex and lay people cannot discern whether these systems are reliable or be confident that they can spot errors as they happen. It is difficult even for experts to judge the reliability of systems or detect any but the simplest errors.

If the legal system and wider society are to have any confidence in computer evidence the providers of such evidence must be able to demonstrate that they are managing their systems responsibly. This was not the case at the Post Office and Fujitsu. Horizon was not subjected to a full, rigorous system audit. In 2010 senior Post Office management took a decision that Horizon would not be subjected to an independent review because;

If one were commissioned – any investigation would need to be disclosed in court. Although we would be doing the review to comfort others, any perception that POL doubts its own systems would mean that all criminal prosecutions would have to be stayed. It would also beg a question for the Court of Appeal over past prosecutions and imprisonments.

No independent review was conducted until Second Sight was commissioned in 2012, and the contract was terminated abruptly. The Post Office have not offered any evidence that their own internal auditors conducted an appropriate system audit.

Media

Investigative reporting

A Computer Weekly article in July 2013 listed over 300 articles on the scandal published by the magazine since breaking the story in May 2009. Meanwhile, The Lawyer criticised the actions of the solicitors defending the Post Office, Womble Bond Dickinson, in a 2021 piece.

A 2020 BBC Radio 4 series about the scandal, The Great Post Office Trial, produced by Whistledown Productions, won two gold awards in the 2021 New York Festivals Radio Awards.

A book, The Great Post Office Scandal, written by Nick Wallis, was published by Bath Publishing in November 2021.

In May 2023 it was revealed that the Post Office had included within its executive bonus scheme a target related to completing the work needed for the inquiry; one of the conditions was that the bonus metrics were said to have been approved by Sir Wyn Williams, the inquiry chair, which was not the case. The chair of the Post Office’s remuneration committee, Amanda Burton, produced a report which attempted to justify the role of the scheme.

Dramatisation

A four-part television drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, starring Toby Jones as Alan Bates, was broadcast on ITV from 1 January 2024. During the period of broadcast, an additional fifty victims contacted lawyers, five of whom seek to get criminal convictions quashed. Following the broadcast a petition to strip Vennels of her CBE passed 1 million signatures.

See also

• Bates v Post Office Ltd (No 3)
• Dutch childcare benefits scandal
• Robodebt scheme

Bibliography

• Wallis, Nick (18 November 2021). The Great Post Office Scandal (1st ed.). Bath Publishing. ISBN 978-1-9163023-8-9.

External links

Official

• Post Office Horizon Inquiry - official website
• "Post Office Mediation sub-committee". UK Parliament. Archived from the original on 15 December 2019.
• "Hamilton & others -v- Post Office Limited". United Kingdom Judiciary. 23 April 2021. – Official finding of the April 2021 appeals, and summary

Third party

• Paul Marshall. Text of speech to the University of Law on 3 June 2021
• Lloyd, Ian (1 February 2022). "Lessons on Robustness and Reliability of Software Solutions from the Horizon System for UK Post Offices". Computer Law Review International. 23 (1): 6–12. doi:10.9785/cri-2022-230103. S2CID 247237912.
• Nick Wallis, Post Office Trial hearing-by-hearing reporting
• Nick Wallis, Post Office Scandal

Media

• Trouble at the Post Office, BBC Panorama programme, broadcast 17 August 2015
• Second Class Citizens: The Post Office IT Scandal, File on 4: BBC Radio 4 documentary, broadcast 16 February 2020
• Justice Lost In The Post, Private Eye special report, May 2020
• The Great Post Office Trial, BBC Radio 4 documentary series, broadcast 25 May – 5 June 2020
• Scandal at the Post Office, BBC Panorama programme, broadcast 8 June 2020
• A First Class Scandal, File on 4: BBC Radio 4 documentary, broadcast 15 February 2022
• The Post Office Scandal, BBC Panorama programme, broadcast 25 April 2022
• Investigating the Post Office Scandal, Podcasts by Rebecca Thomson and Nick Wallis, 2022–23

Campaigning

• Justice For Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) Campaigning group. Site includes relevant documents.
• FoI requests by Alan Bates on behalf of JFSA, made via WhatDoTheyKnow under the Freedom of Information Act 2000