Complex Post Office Horizon case set to continue into 2020

Decade-long campaign

The legal battle follows more than a decade of campaigning by subpostmasters. In 2009, Computer Weekly revealed the stories of subpostmasters who had received heavy fines and jail terms for alleged false accounting, which they blamed on Horizon (see timeline below for all Computer Weekly coverage).

Although the first trial has focused on the contractual relationship between subpostmasters and the Post Office, the Horizon computer system has never been far from argument.

Evidence presented revealed a previously undisclosed problem with the Horizon computer system at the centre of a decade-long dispute between the Post Office and a group of subpostmasters. But in documents referred to in court evidence, a known problem with Horizon is described by the Post Office and its IT partner Fujitsu. A Post Office internal memo from August 2010, referred to in court and entitled Receipts payments mismatch issue memo day 1 OP_0008387, reveals that discrepancies showing at the Horizon counter disappear when the branch follows certain process steps, but will still show within the back-end branch account.

Later, during cross-examination, a Post Office director admitted that the Horizon system had made mistakes, which the Post Office was responsible for correcting, but admitted it did not necessarily have to tell its subpostmaster network about the errors. Angela van den Bogerd, when questioned, said Horizon was not error-free. “Overall, [Horizon] is robust, but it will make mistakes and we have to correct them,” she said in court.

CCRC investigation decision on hold

Separately, the Criminal Courts Review Commission (CCRC) is reviewing about 30 claims from subpostmasters that they were wrongfully prosecuted for offences such as theft and false accounting, as a result of problems with the Post Office’s Horizon IT system through which they file accounts.

Investigators from the CCRC are currently deciding whether to wait for the outcome of a separate High Court trial before making a decision.

A Post Office statement in regard to the trial said: “The Post Office is robustly defending its position in the court and welcomes the opportunity to do so. We take these cases extremely seriously and we have worked hard over a number of years to address the issues raised. We have conducted thorough investigations and sought to resolve some of the claims through mediation.

“Our employees and postmasters are important to us and we take our relationships with them very seriously. We have confidence in our network of 11,500 Post Office branches and the systems underpinning it. The Horizon computer system is operated successfully by thousands of employees, postmasters and their staff to process 47 million transactions every week.”

For live tweeting from court see the Twitter account of broadcast journalist Nick Wallis. Also read his Post Office Trial blog.