The opening phase of a report into the UK’s ‘Post Office Horizon Scandal’ has linked the catastrophic mismanagement behind the affair to at least 13 suicides among sub-postmasters, it was announced on Tuesday, July 8th.
For years, subpostmasters have been a vital part of Britain’s postal services, encouraged to manage local post offices as autonomous businesses—getting parcels and letters into the national postal system, while taking on a growing number of public responsibilities, such as collecting vehicle tax, often while running their own retail enterprises from the same premises. In short, they were pillars of their communities—until they were treated as thieves.
Technically, the problem stemmed from Fujitsu’s flawed ‘Horizon’ software which, especially when sending the figures for a day’s takings over dial-up internet in the 1990s, could make it look like individual sub-branches owed money to the Post Office nationally. Bewildered sub-postmasters often made up the losses out of their savings or faced prosecution for pocketing non-existent funds.
In contrast, their bosses ‘maintained the fiction’ that Horizon was always accurate and that any reported problems were only ever being experienced by the reportee. They raged against the publication Computer Weekly when it exposed the unreliable state of the Horizon system (unlike ‘public service’ broadcaster the BBC, which sleepwalked through the whole scandal).
Despite earlier evasive (in)action by previous Tory administrations, the 162-page report’s author Sir Wyn Williams has concluded that “it seems likely that approximately 1,000” people were prosecuted and convicted “based on Horizon evidence” over 16 years. Williams’ report is based on the testimony of 298 people, submitted to an inquiry that concluded late last year.
A parallel criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police claims to have more than 45 individuals in its sights, with seven to date formally identified as the main suspects in what is now seen as the UK’s “Widest Miscarriage of Justice.”
