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Post Office ‘weaponised’ IT system in most ‘extensive and prolonged’ miscarriage

In closing, public inquiry counsel made clear that it’s not a computer system being investigated, but rather human beings

Karl Flinders
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Published: 16 Dec 2024 16:45

The Horizon system was the vehicle used by humans at the Post Office to carry out sustained abuse of subpostmasters for over two decades, the Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry has been told.

Closing oral statements to the inquiry by representatives of those affected comes after nearly three years of public examination of what is referred to as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history.

Public inquiry KC Jason Beer began proceedings on the penultimate day of public inquiry hearings, stressing that while the statutory inquiry bares the name of the Fujitsu computer system used in Post Office branches, it’s not the subject of the investigation. “Although the underlying subject matter of the inquiry was information technology, the inquiry would not become a dry technical investigation into an IT project gone wrong,” he said.

“It was an inquiry that was actually about people, people whose physical and mental health had been impacted, people whose marriages have deteriorated and failed, about people who thought about taking their own lives and in some cases, who took their own lives,” said Beer.

In its seven phases, over nearly three years, about two-and-a-quarter million pages of evidence have been served to core participants to the public inquiry. It has obtained 780 witness statements reaching almost 24,000 pages and oral evidence has been heard from 290 witnesses.

Edward Henry KC, opening core participant closing statements, agreed it was never an IT scandal. But he said the Post Office “weaponised Horizon”, which he described as the Post Office’s “faithful spy”, “false god” and “weapon of domination”.

“The greatest horrors of the world, man’s cruelty to man, are not caused by monsters, malfunctions or misfortune, but by those who claim to act in the name of good, enforcing a perverted vision of order that leaves no room for dissent,” he told the inquiry, adding that “cruelty has a human heart”, and that while “Horizon did not destroy the innocent, the malignant culture of the Post Office did”.

Outdated policies

Up next, Sam Stein KC also agreed it was never a computer problem, but the Post Office policies imported from the last century. “This was never a computer problem, it was always people and it was people that suffered,” said Stein.

“It was people at the Post Office and Fujitsu who caused the scandal through cruelty, callousness and connivance, and people are still suffering the consequences,” he said.

Stein said subpostmasters were doomed from the start with the introduction of Horizon. “The system was never designed to be relied upon for legal purposes,” he said. “The Post Office imported policies from the last century into an IT system that the subpostmasters had little access to and was controlled by a third party.”

Stein added the contract that subpostmasters had to agree with the Post Office hadn’t changed “since the paper age”, and made subpostmasters responsible for all losses.

The Post Office, according to Stein, is an organisation which has “buried evidence, peddled the dishonest line about the robustness of Horizon and sought to protect its own reputation above the lives and mental health of subpostmasters”.

Read Computer Weekly round-ups of every inquiry phase

Stein highlighted the continued slow progress in providing financial redress to victims of the scandal and stressed that it was essential that the inquiry continued to hold the Post Office, Fujitsu and the government to account. He said the inquiry should continue to monitor progress on financial redress and compensation, which remains far from settled.

Scandal victims don’t trust the Post Office or the Department of Business and Trade, he said, adding that they believe it will “revert to a litigious approach in the redress schemes when the inquiry concludes”.

Quoting a scandal victim he represents, Stein reported that she said: “I think three groups are responsible for this scandal: The Post Office, the government and Fujitsu. I think they should all be held responsible when this inquiry is over. I think they will all carry on as before. Please don’t let this happen.”

People to blame

Tim Maloney KC described how people, through their decisions to defend the Horizon system when its accuracy was challenged, caused the scandal.

He quoted evidence from an earlier phase of the inquiry when former subpostmaster Tim Brentnall, who had his wrongful conviction overturned in 2021, said: “Horizon merely provided the data that showed a shortfall; it was people that believed that data over myself and hundreds of other subpostmasters. It wasn’t Horizon that prosecuted, it was the Post Office, it wasn’t Horizon that encouraged us to pay back the money under threat of theft charges, that was people at the Post Office.”

Maloney described the Post Office’s “unblinking defence of Horizon”. He said this included the “dodging” of independent reviews of the system, the use of its PR machine and a “wholly unsatisfactory response from the government”.

“Fujitsu supported the Post Office until the end,” said Maloney. “While the decision-making of the Post Office was front and centre, Fujitsu’s role remains critical.”

He closed his statement by saying: “What happened to subpostmasters can never be allowed to happen to others again. It is simply not acceptable for decent, hard-working people, of good character, to be collateral in pursuit of commercial imperatives.”

The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to the accounting software (see timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal below).

Timeline: Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009

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