British Post Office scandal

British Post Office scandal  (miscarriage of justice)

The British Post Office scandal is a miscarriage of justice involving the wrongful civil and criminal prosecutions of an unknown or unpublished number of sub-postmasters (SPMs) for theft, false accounting and/or fraud. The cases constitute the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, spanning a period of over twenty years.

Group action

A group action (which is the English equivalent of a class action) was brought by 555 SPMs who successfully sued the Post Office in London's High Court. The case resulted in two important judgments in favour of the SPMs, and was widely reported (including in a series of podcasts on the BBC).

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

Public inquiry

In 2020, the government had initiated an independent inquiry, led by retired judge Wyn Williams. After two initial hearings, it was converted to a public inquiry in June 2021. In November 2021, it held a preliminary 'List of Issues Hearing' and, in February 2022, commenced a series of 'Human Impact Hearings' and is also investigating whether the Post Office and software supplier Fujitsu knew about the faults in the IT system, which led to the now-quashed criminal convictions and civil proceedings against staff. The inquiry was aimed to be completed by Autumn 2022, but is still ongoing as of 2023.

Horizon

In 1996, International Computers Limited (ICL) began working on a computer accounting system, called Horizon, for the publicly-owned Post Office corporation and the Department of Social Security, so that there could be integrated payment of social security benefits through the system. However, the Department of Social Security rejected the system but the Government continued with its procurement for use by the Post Office anyway.

By 1999, ICL was part of Fujitsu. In 1999, the problems began with Horizon's introduction, which wrongly detected the existence of financial discrepancies at multiple post office branches. Second Sight's (forensic accountants) 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 themselves of any wrongdoing.

The Post Office became a free-standing company with a single shareholder, the British Government. Initially, the government refused to pay any compensation; both the Post Office and government repeatedly stated that the money awarded when the SPMs sued the Post Office was a full and final settlement. After appeals by MPs in 2021, the government promised financial compensation to the victims of the scandal, as the Post Office itself did not have sufficient resources.

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 6 September 2023.
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