Post Office and Fujitsu execs 'should have known' Horizon IT system was flawed

First volume of inquiry report focuses on the UK scandal's human impact

Senior Post Office staff in the UK – and those working for suppliers Fujitsu and ICL – knew or should have known about the defects causing errors in the Horizon system that contributed to the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of branch workers, 13 of whom committed suicide, most probably as a result, according to the first volume of a report submitted by the independent public inquiry into the computer scandal.

The Post Office began rolling out the legacy Horizon IT system for accounting in 1999, which, along with its two subsequent upgrades, contributed to one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history.

The EPOS and back-end finance system was first implemented by ICL, a UK technology company majority owned by Fujitsu, in the 1990s and taken over completely by the Japanese giant in 1998. From 1999 until 2015, around 736 subpostmasters were wrongfully prosecuted and convicted of fraud when errors in the system were to blame, devastating lives in the process. A statutory inquiry into the mass miscarriage of justice was launched in 2021. The first volume of its report – addressing human cost and redress – was published today.

"Although many of the individuals who gave evidence before me were very reluctant to accept it, I am satisfied from the evidence that I have heard that a number of senior, and not so senior, employees of the Post Office knew or, at the very least, should have known that Legacy Horizon was capable of error… Yet, for all practical purposes, throughout the lifetime of Legacy Horizon, the Post Office maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate," the report by inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams says.

The upgrade, Horizon Online, "was also, from time to time, afflicted by bugs, errors and defects which had the effect of showing gains and losses in branch and Crown Office accounts which were illusory. I am satisfied that a number of employees of Fujitsu and the Post Office knew that this was so."

Although the third generation system – HNG-A – was assumed to be far more robust than its predecessors, "these assumptions may no longer be wholly justified given evidence provided to the Inquiry on behalf of Fujitsu and from postmasters who use this version of Horizon."

The human impact of the longstanding miscarriage of justice was "profoundly disturbing," Sir Wyn says. Between 2000 and autumn 2013, the Post Office prosecuted postmasters and other branch staff in England and Wales based on accounting data from the Horizon system.

"In each, or at least most of those cases, they relied upon data from Horizon to prove that losses had actually occurred," the report says. "In each such case brought against an accused within the United Kingdom, the Post Office and/or the prosecuting authorities asserted either expressly, or by implication that the data produced by Horizon was wholly reliable."

The report found that many hundreds of people had been wrongly convicted of criminal offences for losses that were "illusory, as opposed to real."

"All of these people are properly to be regarded as victims of wholly unacceptable behavior perpetrated by a number of individuals employed by and/or associated with the Post Office and Fujitsu from time to time and by the Post Office and Fujitsu as institutions," the report says.

Despite years in operation, the compensation schemes were still dealing with hundreds of unresolved claims.

Speaking at the launch of the report, Sir Wyn said: "It is difficult to imagine that the unresolved cases can be settled anytime soon… I very much doubt whether settlements of every claim can be achieved before the end of next year."

In his remarks, he was critical of the roles the Post Office and the government played in developing these schemes and for the "egregious delays which have occurred."

However, he said he could not contemplate scrapping the schemes and has recommended ways to improve them.

He published these recommendations in the first volume of the report so they could be implemented without delay. You can read it here [PDF]. A second volume – addressing the causes of and establishing accountability for the Horizon scandal – is expected next year. ®