It is one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice: hundreds of postal workers had been wrongly accused of theft by 2015. Now they should be compensated. The shortfalls were caused by faulty software.
Computer breakdowns caused by faulty software are annoying, but they rarely destroy livelihoods. But that’s exactly what happened in Great Britain, at the post office. Between 1999 and 2015, approximately 700 state post office employees were prosecuted for allegedly embezzling postal funds. In reality, the shortfalls were caused by a faulty computer program. The culprit was the Horizon software from the Japanese technology giant Fujitsu, which the British Post Office had been installing since the late 1990s.
“Mr Bates vs The Post Office”
The whole thing developed into one of the country’s biggest miscarriages of justice – with effects that continue to this day. After a television channel broadcast the topic as a multi-part TV drama under the title “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”, the long-known scandal in the United Kingdom was currently making headlines, putting the conservative British government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak under pressure to act.
She has now promised to quickly rehabilitate the more than 700 postal employees who were wrongly accused. They should be compensated as quickly as possible. “This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our country’s history,” Prime Minister Sunak said in Parliament in London. “The lives and reputations of people who worked hard to serve their communities have been destroyed through no fault of their own. The victims must receive justice and compensation.”
A post office in London. Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of employees were falsely prosecuted.
Prison, ruin, death
The affected post office branch managers had been accused of theft or fraud due to a defective computer system. British Post Office computers incorrectly reported that money had been stolen from branches. So far, only 93 cases have had their convictions overturned. Some of the accused had to go to prison, and many experienced not only social ostracism but also financial ruin because they had to pay a lot of money to the state post office. Several committed suicide.
After a two-year trial in December 2019, the former branch manager Alan Bates and his colleagues had achieved that the High Court found in principle that computer errors and not criminal offenses were the cause of the shortfalls. The judge accused the Post of “institutional obstinacy” for failing to properly investigate the true causes of the billing problems.
The scandal has still not been resolved
In fact, the Post’s lawyers continued to take action against innocent employees even when there was credible evidence of Horizon as the source of the error. The scandal is far from being resolved. The investigation launched in February 2022 into who in postal management knew about the unjustified allegations and when has not yet been completed. Only 93 convictions have been overturned so far. So far, £21 million in compensation has been paid to some of those affected. In September the government announced that everyone affected would receive £600,000 for the injustice they suffered. Instead, they could also take legal action to seek higher compensation.
Former post office boss is no longer a “Commander of the Order of the British Empire”.
After the TV series about the scandal, a new wave of outrage swept through the country. More than a million people signed a petition directed against the then postal chief Paula Vennells. She returned a royal award on Tuesday. She will forego the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire, which she was awarded in 2018. “I am sincerely sorry for the devastation caused to the subpostmasters and their families, whose lives have been torn apart because they were wrongly accused and unjustly prosecuted under the Horizon system,” Vennells said.