The Post Office Fujitsu Horizon scandal

December 30, 2023 3:03 PM

Mr Bates vs. The Post Office (video preview) is a dramatised account of the Post Office Fujitsu Horizon scandal [previously]. Full background of the case is available in 'The Great Post Office Trial' a series of BBC Radio podcasts from 2020. At the end of 2023 not a single postmaster has been given full financial compensation, making the compensation scheme a second scandal in itself. So few claims have been processed that the compensation pot has been reduced by half. Meanwhile as the Post Office Horizon inquiry concludes, lawyers say enough evidence has emerged for police to consider prosecuting former Post Office executives, which may include Paula Vennells CBE, the former CEO of Post Office Ltd.
posted by Lanark (41 comments total)

The tl,dr; around the scandal for those who haven't clicked through (apologies if I glossed over some parts):

The UK privatized parts of the postal service and offered a way for local business to install a terminal letting them sell postage and provide other aspects of the postal services. The software was so poorly written and the process so opaque to all parties that people with these machines started running negative balances, some to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars - out of desperation, some people took out loans to balance the books in these faulty systems. The Post Office Company sued (and jailed) many people for fraud before it finally came to light that the this was bad software and inept corporate practices, not rampant systematic (and distributed) fraud being committed. It's a sad and depressing tale around how poor software development for even mundane things like postage stamps can have catastrophic consequences - at least one person ended their life over the debts and lawsuit and many more have criminal convictions based on evidence produced by unquestioned outsourced software.
posted by mrzarquon at 3:24 PM on December 30, 2023 [14 favorites]

I read the old thread about the previous post and can't help going back to the same thinking I've had all the way through. There's something in the culture of IT that makes this more likely.

A certain amount of insiderness and obscurantism plus engineer mindset which means people often blame the users, and seldom the computer or the work practices.
posted by treblekicker at 3:47 PM on December 30, 2023

+ previously@2020
posted by away for regrooving at 3:57 PM on December 30, 2023

There's something in the culture of IT that makes this more likely.

"Move fast and break things." That's the summation of it. The push to move forward no matter who gets hurt in the process.

Which is why society needs to respond with "And if you break people in the process, then we break you."
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:00 PM on December 30, 2023 [11 favorites]

Yeah, I've been re-reading the old thread to refresh my memory before commenting here and I completely agree with this comment in that thread, from Nelson (so if upvoting, credit the person who wrote it):

I'm annoyed at how all the reporting and discussion of this event talks about "the software sent them to jail". No. A court sent them to jail. A judicial system and a bunch of people and employers acting in bad faith sent their employees to jail. A buggy software system written by bad software engineers was a contributor, sure, but it takes a system to send someone to jail.

Pinning it on the software is a way to absolve personal responsibility. The folks who use and oversee the software are responsible. So are the programmers, although per usual I bet they never get held accountable.

This is absolutely right. There were multiple serious systemic failures that contributed to this and the coding errors, while not acceptable, were probably the least surprising part of the failure. It is foreseeable, perhaps even inevitable, that any complex IT project is going to have errors.

But the behavior of Post Office management, the Crown Prosecution Service, the UK court system, and other parties that had or ought to have had a duty to include human judgement as a critical part of their decision-making is far less understandable to me.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:11 PM on December 30, 2023 [14 favorites]

It’s also not unheard of for the actual programmers to ask for test cases, time to write test cases, alerts to throw for failures, and have them removed or ignored by management.

Most famously one of the shuttle disasters, yes? But I suspect that the higher ups often want a bad system to use as cover.
posted by clew at 4:42 PM on December 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's something in the culture of IT
and
"Move fast and break things." That's the summation of it.

The outfit that made Horizon, Fujitsu (nee ICL), was institutional computing of the old guard (think e.g. IBM or Unisys in the USA). The architects of today's most modern computing discouragements very likely saw themselves as embodying the opposite of that kind of (perceived) stodgy, slow-moving, mainframe-dinosaur kind of corporate culture. I think "Move fast and break things" is an expression coined partly to distinguish hoodie-clad Web-era working philosophy from the ways the starched-collar Fujitsus of the world liked to do business.

You could hypothesise that there's "something in the water" of working in computers that makes people make certain kinds of mistakes no matter what they wear, but it would be useful to identify the reasons that this should be so. "A pox on both their houses" is plenty valid, though, regardless.
posted by Chef Flamboyardee at 4:49 PM on December 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

While it's tempting to throw the software engineers under the bus, large IT engagements with consulting firms are almost inherently broken, particularly in the heavyweight models used back in the day (I'm still in IT but prefer to work "in-house" nowadays.)

Characteristics include:
* Big promises made in back rooms, almost always some degree of minor corruption in the forms of trips or something.
* The client has, or develops, their own internal powerbase of stakeholders, project managers, etc.
* Heavy "waterfall" methodology, involving development of detailed "requirements gathering"
* Engineers working ridiculous overtime to deliver code that fulfils the requirements, because the bid underestimated the actual effort needed by at least 50%.
* Due to pressure and fatigue, lots of design compromises are made. Requirements are met in the bare-minimum context.
* Generally with waterfall it's the "corner cases" (e.g. intersection of edge, or special, cases) that get ya. Even the best analysts will only identify some of them. The others don't get discovered (if they get discovered at all) until the implementation phase. Depending on time and scope pressures, they may get backstopped in some basic fashion, or they may get swept under the rug.
* The big consulting firms generally prefer to staff with a lot of young professionals just out of college, as they work cheap and don't have families so they can be flown into a city and worked for crazy hours. They are not likely to be great at identifying the traps inherent in the corner cases above.
* Once the project is done, the client generally lacks the technical capability to maintain the codebase; partly because they haven't cultivated the necessary skillset, and partly because the codebase is crap. This means that either the client is stuck with an immutable mess, or the consultant retains a foothold with the client permanently, for that sweet recurring revenue.

From my observation, these heavyweight projects ranged from "abject failure" to "massively over time/budget." Completion of promised functionality on time, and in a maintainable state, was always wildly unlikely.

It's possible to deliver projects in a timely fashion, generally using iterative/agile methodologies. Hopefully the big consulting firms are using those now and sucking less? I'd be interested to hear from anybody that has more recent knowledge on that front.
posted by microscone at 5:56 PM on December 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

Yeah, “move fast and break things” is a misdirection. This is huge, staid enterprise IT with its most common form of diligence theater leading to a system which on paper satisfies all of the requirements but doesn’t, well, actually work. This was the most common outcome from the large consulting companies many years before Facebook even existed, and those companies’ revenue is largely derived from their ability to repeatedly convince other large organizations that they’re not like that.

What made it so bad here is that it combined with the UK legal authorities gross negligence trusting large companies when they make claims about their IT systems rather than expecting truth. They did the same thing with ATM “phantom withdrawals”, accepting credulously banks’ claims that their customers must have been lying about transactions or sharing PINs. The IT angle is really just that some people have far too simple a model of computer accuracy, and I think it’s only part of the larger issue of having special treatment for large, wealthy organizations: nobody should be able to assert infallibility without having a skeptical examination of the entire system.
posted by adamsc at 6:09 PM on December 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

As bad as the software was, a great deal of the blame lies on the Post Office, which (I think almost uniquely?) could initiate private prosecutions on its own. They were the ostensible victim, investigator, and prosecutor. They prosecuted almost a thousand of their own employees! It's just astounding.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:16 PM on December 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

It seems to me that the software failure is a substantially different component of this scandal. It's a pretty normal bunch of business operations failures. The dishonesty of the executives, the judicial system failures and political failures are the really genuinely scandalous part.
posted by srboisvert at 6:23 PM on December 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

There was an earlier UK scandal involving phantom withdrawals from ATMs. In the fine tradition of British justice it was decided that the computer is by definition always right and innocent people who complained were falsely convicted of fraud, with many losing their jobs.
posted by monotreme at 6:31 PM on December 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

I bet there are a bunch of insiders who raised questions about this and were told to shut up or were fired.

Find those people, gather their accounts, and prosecute the people who tried to shut them up and prosecute the superiors of those people all the way up.

And that should include people inside the prosecution establishment who tried to raise questions.
posted by jamjam at 7:00 PM on December 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

This gets into the realm of how you can't give AI responsibility to make decisions of consequence because you can't hold an AI accountable. It's just the people who listen to the AI you hold accountable.

That's a thing that originates well outside of this horrible series of lives ruined. But it originates from before it, and if it were more widely known way back then maybe none of this would have happened.

I do think anyone who ruined someone's life based on this should at the very least be removed from power for abrogating their responsibility to a non-human.
posted by hippybear at 7:16 PM on December 30, 2023

Yeah, this wasn't so much move fast and break things as move slow and find little people to grind to a smooth paste for lubricating the skids.

IT is in general horrible, but IT consultancy is where horrible festers, and the more expensive the project and the higher the associated executive bonuses, the worse it gets.
posted by flabdablet at 10:02 PM on December 30, 2023

Much as I hate to link to the Daily Fail, this is just too juicy to resist: ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office about the subpostmasters scandal has no mention of ex-Royal Mail chief Adam Crozier, who just so happened to go on to head... ITV
posted by flabdablet at 11:38 PM on December 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

On the institutionalized complacency of British Justice . . . In 1977, the Birmingham Six brought a civil suit against the West Midlands Police for damages; holding that they had been assaulted while in custody. The case was struck out on Appeal on the principal of Issue Estoppel. The fact that British justice chooses to dress up their law with jargon derived from Medieval French as they dress up their judges in the fashion of 1720 indicates how out of touch with modern realities the whole system can be. Lord Diplock estoppled the legitimacy of their claim because it "would otherwise bring the administration of justice into disrepute among right-thinking people". The point is that once the law has decided something, you can't question its correctness. It's probably true that "right-thinking people" in those days were prepared to believe all sorts of demonising nonsense about all the Irish, so Diplock was weasily correct in his application of Estoppel in that case.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:47 AM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

They were the ostensible victim, investigator, and prosecutor. They prosecuted almost a thousand of their own employees! It's just astounding.

That’s what gets me. If it was one case that would be something but if it quickly reaches into the hundreds the week after the new software was rolled out someone in the justice system should have noted something wasn’t right.
posted by jmauro at 3:06 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Move fast and break things." That's the summation of it.

That's definitely not true in general of projects like this, and having worked in this area I'd be rather surprised if it was the case here. During a career as an independent IT consultant I was peripherally involved in several UK Government projects (including another one by Fujitsu, which also failed), and "moving fast" is about the last thing you could level at them. "Breaking things", yes, but running hugely over time and budget is quite normal, and even expected.

There are obviously some large projects that work out, but from what I've seen there are several contributory factors when these projects fail, such as...

• The big consulting firms make persuasive pitches. Where government money is concerned they're like sharks scenting blood in the water, and it's amazing what you can do with a good Powerpoint deck.
• They send in a team, making the team as junior (i.e. cheap) as they can get away with, while charging as much as they can. Heck, late in one project I saw well-thumbed copies of "VB6 for Dummies" on more than one desk, which did not inspire confidence. There was often little or no application of good design or testing practices, especially testing, so all kinds of bugs got through to production.
• The developers often don't have detailed knowledge of the requirements and the business domain, just being told to code isolated pieces of code.
• And perhaps worst of all, the project managers on the government side often know sweet FA about IT. Requirements would change from week to week, sometimes in ways that were completely mad [see below]. They couldn't judge whether the project was going well, just taking the word of the consulting firm, and it wasn't until things were obviously screwed that they got independent advice.

(The best requirements change was 6 months into a project, when the project manager from the government side innocently asked if we could change from a Microsoft stack (Windows, VB.NET, SQL Server, IIS) to Linux+J2EE+Oracle. "Would that be a big change?" he asked, and wondered why we went outside and had a scream)

It's just luck that most failed government IT projects don't impact people's lives in the way this one did.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 8:46 AM on December 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

The Post Office Company sued (and jailed) many people for fraud before it finally came to light that the this was bad software and inept corporate practices, not rampant systematic (and distributed) fraud being committed.

Just a slight addition to this...before it finally came to light to the public that etc.

I have no doubt that numbers of people at various levels in the PO knew full well that the software was at fault at the time they were prosecuting innocent people, sending them to prison, and driving them to bankruptcy and suicide.
posted by reynir at 1:21 PM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

To add a "yes, and" to all of this: a massive part of the problem here is that - under UK law - computers are presumed to be "operating correctly". That means, legally speaking, if it came out of a computer it is presumed to be true and correct unless evidence can be produced to the contrary.

Yes, this is a bad idea.
posted by parm at 5:34 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]

When the first criminal cases were appealed following the civil case presided by Fraser J, the appeals won on two grounds.

"i) Ground 1: the reliability of Horizon data was essential to the prosecution and, in the light of all the evidence including Fraser J’s findings in the High Court, it was not possible for the trial process to be fair;
ii) Ground 2: the evidence, together with Fraser J’s findings, shows that it was an affront to the public conscience for the appellants to face prosecution"

The second point is essentially that the Post Office abused their position by prosecuting despite knowing that a fair trial was not possible, and as a result brought the system of law and justice itself into disrepute.

More than 700 sub-postmasters were convicted during the relevant period and most of those convictions still stand. Anyone whose conviction rested essentially on Horizon data would have their convictions overturned on appeal if they were willing and able to apply either to the Crown Court (if they were convicted at a magistrates court) or to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. I hope the publicity from the ITV drama will encourage more people to come forward and clear their names.
posted by plonkee at 8:11 AM on January 2 [1 favorite]

Post Office victims' compensation pot cut by half

Professor Chris Hodges, chair of Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, said in a letter to the government an unwillingness to appeal was due to a "deep distrust of authority", evidence being lost or destroyed and issues with compensation if a Post Office manager is not granted a retrial...

Last week, Prof Hodges said the convictions were "unsafe not only because they relied on the Horizon computer evidence, but also because of egregious systemic Post Office behaviour in interviews and pursuing prosecutions".

"This led to guilty pleas and false confessions, driven by legal advice to victims to minimise sentences, and by the psychological pressure of dealing with an institution systematically disregarding the truth and fairness," he said.

His board therefore decided the only viable approach was for all Post Office-driven convictions over the Horizon period to be overturned, so that the victims of the scandal could be[sic] receive compensation.

(to be clear, that conclusion hasn't been implemented, victims need to individually appeal their sentences to get them overturned)
posted by BungaDunga at 10:52 AM on January 2

Criminal investigation for potential fraud launched, Metropolitan police interview two people under caution.
posted by Lanark at 4:24 PM on January 5

Went to the Bay and found the ITV 4-part series about this that's on television right now and making all the waves that previous attempts to get the public's attention had failed to achieve.

I'm well outside of the UK and don't know where I might see it otherwise, but I'm glad I watched it. It's hella damning, really. A full-on example of why you should never trust a computer system to say whether anyone is guilty of anything.

I highly recommend. There's a torrent with a zillion seeds, so check it out if you're interested.
posted by hippybear at 6:55 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

A couple of interesting presentations on the technicalities:
The Horizon IT Scandal: From Computerphile a couple of years back. Talks about what the five ("ACID") essential design criteria for creating a transaction processing system - and why Horizon was shown to have failed on each. What stands out to me here is that - for all its scale - Horizon was not being asked to do anything remotely novel or terribly hard: sums, really.
Delivering the Fail - explains the various laws broken by the Post Office and Fujitsu. The point that the Post Office needed to try to maintain public and business confidence in its useless system.
posted by rongorongo at 3:45 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]

Rishi Sunak announces plan to pass law quashing Horizon scandal convictions

It really does seem like the publicity from the TV show forced his hand. Never mind the public inquiries, books, podcasts, news reporting- if it's on TV, then it matters.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:06 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

In case anyone thinks this has just blown up recently: The Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009   

• May 2009: Bankruptcy, prosecution and disrupted livelihoods – postmasters tell their story.
• September 2009: Postmasters form action group after accounts shortfall.
• November 2009: Post Office theft case deferred over IT questions.
• May 2010: A pilot of the new Horizon Online system at Royal Mail has been scaled back after connectivity problems and outages.
• February 2011: Post Office faces legal action over alleged accounting system failures.
• October 2011: 85 subpostmasters seek legal support in claims against Post Office computer system.
• June 2012: Post Office launches external review of system at centre of legal disputes.
• January 2013: Post Office admits Horizon system needs more investigation.
• January 2013: Post Office announces amnesty for Horizon evidence.
• January 2013: Post Office wants to get to bottom of IT system allegations.
• June 2013: Investigation into Post Office accounting system to drill down on strongest cases.
• July 2013: Post Office Horizon system investigation reveals concerns.
• October 2013: End in sight for subpostmaster claims against Post Office’s Horizon accounting system.
• October 2013: Former Lord Justice of Appeal Hooper joins Post Office Horizon investigation.
• November 2013: 150 subpostmasters file claims over “faulty” Horizon accounting system.
• September 2014: Fresh questions raised over Post Office IT system’s role in fraud cases.
• December 2014: MPs blast Post Office over IT system investigation and remove backing.
• December 2014: Why MPs lost faith in the Post Office’s IT investigation, but vowed to fight on.
• December 2014: MPs to debate subpostmaster IT injustice claims.
• December 2014: MP accuses Post Office of acting ‘duplicitously’ in IT investigation.
• January 2015: MPs force inquiry into Post Office subpostmaster mediation scheme.
• January 2015: Post Office faces grilling by MPs over Horizon accounting system.
• February 2015: Post Office CIO will talk to any subpostmaster about IT problems, promises CEO.
• March 2015: Post Office ends working group for IT system investigation day before potentially damaging report.
• March 2015: MPs seek reassurance over Post Office mediation scheme.
• March 2015: Retiring MP aims to uncover truth of alleged Post Office computer system problems.
• April 2015: Post Office failed to investigate account shortfalls before legal action, report claims.
• April 2015: Criminal Courts Review Commission set to review subpostmasters’ claims of wrongful prosecution.
• June 2015: Post Office looking to replace controversial Horizon system with IBM, says MP.
• July 2015: Campaigners call for independent inquiry into Post Office Horizon IT system dispute.
• October 2015: James Arbuthnot takes Post Office IT fight to House of Lords.
• November 2015: The union that represents Post Office subpostmasters has warned of a problem with the Horizon accounting system.
• November 2015: An email from Post Office IT support reveals a problem with the Horizon system and supporting processes that could lead to accounting errors.
• November 2015: Group litigation against Post Office being prepared in Horizon dispute.
• February 2016: Post Office faces group litigation over Horizon IT as subpostmasters fund class action.
• June 2016: Post Office chairman Tim Parker says there would be “considerable risk” associated with changing its Horizon computer system.
• November 2016: The legal team hired by a group of subpostmasters will take their case to the next stage.
• January 2017: The group action against the Post Office that alleges subpostmasters have been wrongly punished for accounting errors gets green light from the High Court of Justice.
• March 2017: 1,000 subpostmasters apply to join IT-related group litigation against Post Office.
• April 2017: Investigation into claims of miscarriages of justice in relation to a Post Office accounting system has appointed a forensic accountant firm.
• May 2017: Hundreds of subpostmasters have applied to join IT-related legal action since March.
• July 2017: Post Office defence in computer system legal case due this week.
• August 2017: Campaigners submit initial evidence in group litigation against Post Office over controversial Horizon IT system.
• October 2017: Subpostmasters’ group action against the Post Office reaches an important milestone.
• November 2017: An end is in sight for subpostmasters’ campaign against alleged wrongful prosecution, which they blame on a faulty computer system.
• November 2017: The High Court judge managing the subpostmasters versus Post Office legal case over an allegedly faulty computer system tells legal teams to cooperate.
• January 2018: Forensic investigation into Post Office IT system at centre of legal case nears completion.
• April 2018: Criminal Cases Review Commission forensic examination of the IT system at the centre of a legal case against the Post Office has raised further questions.
• May 2018: Post Office branches unable to connect to Horizon computer system for several hours after morning opening time.
• October 2018: After over a decade of controversy, next week marks the beginning of a court battle between subpostmasters and the Post Office.
• November 2018: Case against Post Office in relation to allegedly faulty computer system begins in High Court.
• November 2018: High Court case in which subpostmasters are suing the Post Office has revealed a known problem with a computer system at the core of the dispute.
• November 2018: A High Court trial, where subpostmasters are suing the Post Office for damages caused by an allegedly faulty IT system, ends second week.
• November 2018: Post Office director admits to Horizon errors and not sharing details with subpostmaster network.
• November 2018: The High Court trial in which subpostmasters are suing the Post Office has reached an important stage.
• December 2018: CCRC may hold off subpostmaster decision until after Post Office Horizon trial.
• December 2018: Court case where subpostmasters are suing the Post Office set to span at least four trials and extend into 2020.
• January 2019: Subpostmasters’ campaign group attacks Post Office CEO Paula Vennells’ New Year honour amid ongoing court case.
• January 2019: Thousands of known errors on controversial Post Office computer system to be revealed.
• March 2019: Tech under spotlight at High Court in second subpostmasters versus Post Office trial.
• March 2019: Post Office considered Horizon IT system “high-risk”, court told.
• March 2019: CCRC watching Post Office Horizon trial closely.
• March 2019: Judge rules that Post Office showed “oppressive behaviour” in response to claimants accused of accounting errors they blamed on Horizon IT system.
• March 2019: Post Office “lacked humanity” in the treatment of subpostmasters, says peer.
• March 2019: A High Court judge heard that the Post Office did not investigate a computer system error that could cause losses, despite being offered evidence.
• March 2019: The Post Office legal team in the case brought by more than 500 subpostmasters has called for the judge to be recused after questioning his impartiality.
• March 2019: A senior civil servant asked the Post Office to repay public money it had wrongly allocated to paying legal costs.
• April 2019: Subpostmaster claimants’ legal team makes application for the Post Office to pay millions of pounds of costs associated with trial.
• April 2019: Post Office to appeal judgment from first Horizon trial.
• April 2019: The Post Office’s claim that the judge overseeing the case concerning its controversial Horizon IT system was biased has been dismissed.
• April 2019: MP questions government over Post Office Horizon case.
• April 2019: Government says no conflict of interest in trial despite Post Office chairman’s dual role.
• May 2019: The Court of Appeal has refused the Post Office’s application to appeal a major decision in the Horizon IT trial.
• May 2019: The Post Office has applied for permission to appeal judgments from the first trial in its IT-related legal battle with subpostmasters.
• May 2019: The judge in the Post Office Horizon trial has ordered the organisation to pay the legal costs of its courtroom adversaries, and refused to give permission to appeal a major judgment.
• June 2019: Post Office asks Court of Appeal for permission to appeal judgment in first Horizon trial.
• July 2019: The Post Office has admitted that some subpostmasters are at risk of accounts not balancing due to an error it does not understand.
• July 2019: Problem revealed during High Court trial left subpostmaster with £18,000 surplus after IT system failed to register full amount of cash scanned in.
• August 2019: Subpostmasters suffering slow running and frozen terminals while Post Office searches for a fix to issues apparently caused by a software update.
• August 2019: The Post Office has fixed the latest problems with its Horizon system, affecting hundreds of branches. 
• October 2019: A High Court judgment for a trial that focused on the Post Office’s IT system at the centre of a multimillion-pound litigation will be announced early next month.
• November 2019: The Court of Appeal has rejected a Post Office application to appeal judgments made in its multimillion-pound battle with subpostmasters over IT system failures.
• November 2019: Peer calls for clear-out of Post Office board after Court of Appeal confirms major court defeat.
• December 2019: The Post Office has settled its long-running legal dispute with subpostmasters, and will pay £57.75m in damages.
• December 2019: Subpostmansters ended their legal battle with the Post Office at the optimal time, according to the lawyer that managed the High Court action.
• December 2019: Subpostmansters proved right on IT system failures as calls for full public inquiry mount.
• December 2019: Criminal Courts Review Commission to review Horizon judgment “swiftly”.
• December 2019: National Federation of Subpostmasters cries foul after court ruling on controversial computer system.
• December 2019: Former Post Office CEO apologises to subpostmasters over Horizon scandal.
• December 2019: Call for former Post Office CEO to step down from public roles after IT court battle lost.
• January 2020: Fujitsu must face scrutiny following Post Office Horizon trial judgment.
• January 2020: Subpostmaster group calls for government to pay legal costs for Horizon trial.
• January 2020: Why subpostmasters are calling on the government to pay Horizon trial costs.
• January 2020: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy says it did not make decisions in the Post Office’s recent court battle.
• January 2020: Government should not be allowed to dismiss subpostmasters’ claims over Horizon IT scandal.
• January 2020: Police sent information about potential Fujitsu staff perjury in subpostmaster prosecutions.
• January 2020: Prosecutions are a significant step closer to being sent to the Court of Appeal as Criminal Courts Review Commission forms a group of commissioners to review them.
• January 2020: Alan Bates: The “details man” the Post Office paid the price for ignoring.
• February 2020: The government has refused to pay the huge legal costs subpostmasters incurred in their battle with the government-owned Post Office, which they won.
• February 2020: Members of Parliament seeking a public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal face huge challenges, but pressure and time could force justice.
• February 2020: Calls for inquiry into Post Office IT scandal increase in Parliament, with cross-party support.
• February 2020: Care Quality Commission to review concerns over Paula Vennells’ appointment after they were raised by a former NHS consultant psychiatrist.
• February 2020: Government admits it was too passive managing Post Office as parliamentary pressure builds.
• February 2020: Minister says Post Office IT experts misled the government when it asked questions about subpostmasters’ concerns over Horizon IT system.
• March 2020: Boris Johnson commits to “getting to the bottom of” Post Office Horizon IT scandal.
• March 2020: Boris Johnson’s commitment to inquiry into Post Office scandal in doubt.
• March 2020: MPs call on PM to commit to full public inquiry into Post Office Horizon IT scandal.
• March 2020: Those who did not play by the rules in Post Office Horizon scandal “should face prosecution”.
• March 2020: MPs told to hold to account those responsible for Post Office Horizon IT scandal.
• March 2020: The Post Office has sparked anger with secret settlements with subpostmasters outside the recent legal action against it.
• March 2020: Labour MP Karl Turner tells Computer Weekly that the Post Office Horizon scandal is the most grotesque version of predatory capitalism he has ever seen.
• March 2020: MP Kevan Jones has warned a government minister not to repeat the mistakes of predecessors in relation to the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.
• March 2020: Criminal Cases Review Commission to use Microsoft Teams to ensure review of subpostmaster prosecutions is held on time.
• March 2020: Post Office postpones subpostmaster compensation scheme amid Covid-19 crisis.
• March 2020: Meeting reviewing subpostmaster applications to appeal criminal prosecutions moves into second day.
• March 2020: Subpostmaster prosecutions to be considered by Court of Appeal for miscarriages of justice.
• March 2020: How subpostmasters made legal history with biggest referral of potential miscarriages of justice.
• April 2020: Met Police examines information about evidence given in court by Fujitsu staff on the Horizon IT system.
• May 2020: Subpostmasters who had their lives ruined by the Post Office’s faulty IT system have received their damages after a High Court victory.
• May 2020: A senior Post Office executive at the centre of an IT scandal, who tried to mislead a High Court judge in relation to it, has left the organisation without fanfare despite many years of service.
• May 2020: Post Office re-examines hundreds of prosecutions that could have resulted from faults in Horizon IT system.
• June 2020: A campaign group representing subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted for theft and false accounting by the Post Office is raising money to help clear the names of victims of the scandal.
• June 2020: Subpostmasters to force scrutiny of government’s role in Post Office IT scandal.
• June 2020: The Criminal Cases Review Commission sends 47 more subpostmaster cases to Court of Appeal and asks government to review private prosecution powers.
• June 2020: Select committee chair writes to former Post Office CEO demanding answers over her role in IT scandal.
• June 2020: The government has been accused of launching a review that fails in getting to the bottom of one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
• June 2020: Subpostmasters will not cooperate with government review into IT scandal.
• June 2020: The government’s proposed review of the Post Office IT scandal has received a further setback as forensic accountants join subpostmasters in refusing to back it.
• June 2020: Call for government review of Post Office Horizon scandal to have the power to force individuals to give evidence under oath.
• June 2020: Subpostmasters seeking justice in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal are regaining momentum in Parliament.
• June 2020: Healthcare regulator will be discussing concerns about former NHS boss chairing an NHS trust at an upcoming meeting.
• June 2020: Second Sight is working with law firm in appeals by subpostmasters against criminal convictions in Horizon IT scandal.
• June 2020: Post Office and Fujitsu blame each other for many of the failings in the Horizon IT scandal that wrecked lives.
• June 2020: Parliamentary Justice Committee to hold short inquiry into the rules and regulations surrounding private organisations’ ability to initiate criminal proceedings.
• July 2020: Victims of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal need to raise thousands of pounds in a week or those responsible for their suffering will avoid scrutiny.
• July 2020: The government is set to face scrutiny over its involvement in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in modern UK history.
• September 2020: The government repeats that it won’t pay victims’ legal costs and confirms review into the scandal will not have the power to call witnesses.
• September 2020: Subpostmasters still not being told about all the known errors in the controversial Post Office branch accounting and retail system that they use.
• October 2020: The Post Office has chosen not to contest 44 out of 47 appeals, meaning most are likely to have their names cleared, but others still face a Court of Appeal battle for justice.
• October 2020: MPs are demanding the government holds a full statutory public inquiry into the Post Office IT scandal.
• October 2020: NHS regulator continues enquiries about the appointment of former Post Office CEO at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as more damning details emerge.
• October 2020: Government minister met with former subpostmaster online in an attempt to get victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal involved in government review.
• October 2020: The Post Office is focusing urgently on fixing an IT error suffered by a subpostmaster amid the ongoing IT scandal.
• October 2020: Labour politicians are calling for the government to give the Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry the power to force witnesses to give evidence if they don’t cooperate.
• October 2020: Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has asked for external review of its process when appointing controversial executive.
• November 2020: Government faces scrutiny of its handling of the Post Office IT scandal that destroyed subpostmasters’ lives and livelihoods.
• November 2020: Post Office branches offline during busy business hours after suffering an IT error that the Post Office said related to IT from supplier Fujitsu.
• November 2020: Fujitsu is refusing to explain what caused a national system outage in Post Office branches last week, despite the Post Office confirming the issue was the fault of the supplier.
• November 2020: The Metropolitan Police opens criminal investigation into Fujitsu staff who gave evidence in trials of subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted and even imprisoned for financial crimes.
• November 2020: Post Office criticised over vagueness of its explanation of the cause of a UK-wide IT failure that saw subpostmasters unable to do business.
• November 2020: Post Office says planned firmware update caused the problem that left branches unable to do business for 90 minutes.
• November 2020: Court documents reveal the names of the Fujitsu employees under investigation for potentially providing misleading information in criminal trials.
• November 2020: The government allowed the Post Office to ‘run amok’ and destroy lives, says complaint to Parliamentary Ombudsman.
• November 2020: Campaigning politician demands access to documents that could prove that the Post Office lied.
• December 2020: Government denies responsibility for the abuse inflicted on subpostmasters by the Post Office over faulty IT system.
• December 2020: CEO at the centre of the scandal that saw innocent people bankrupted and some sent to prison steps down from NHS role as pressure for her resignation grows.
• December 2020: History made as subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted in Horizon IT scandal have convictions quashed.
• December 2020: The appointment of a former Post Office executive, who tried to mislead a judge, in the Football Association of Wales has been questioned by an MP.
• December 2020: Court of Appeal indicates subpostmasters can pursue appeal route that could do more damage to Post Office’s reputation.
• January 2021: NHS trust defends its director appointment process following an external review of its recruitment of former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells.
• January 2021: Lawyers call for changes to digital evidence rule that made it easier for the Post Office to ‘bamboozle courts’ and make subpostmasters pay a heavy price for its IT failings.
• January 2021: The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has referred four more subpostmasters’ criminal convictions to appeal, as part of the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern UK history.
• February 2021: A former senior developer who worked for Fujitsu on the Post Office IT system that led to subpostmasters being falsely accused of fraud, has claimed bosses knew of fundamental flaws before going live.
• February 2021: Subpostmasters call for Boris Johnson to pause and reshape the government’s Horizon inquiry.
• February 2021: Vote of no confidence in Football Association of Wales boss triggered by recruitment of former Post Office executive who tried to mislead a judge in IT trial.
• March 2021: Government agrees to change private prosecution rules that were abused by the Post Office in its pursuit of subpostmasters wrongly accused of financial crimes.
• March 2021: Subpostmaster victims who have spent millions bringing the Post Office IT scandal to light have received no reply to their concerns from Boris Johnson.
• March 2021: MP condemns department’s ‘bizarre’ rejection of freedom of information request linked to Post Office IT scandal. 
• March 2021: Football Association Wales boss steps down after losing confidence motion triggered by appointment of an executive involved in the Post Office IT scandal.
• March 2021: The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is reviewing five cases of potential miscarriage of justice in relation to subpostmaster prosecutions.
• March 2021: Subpostmasters heading to Court of Appeal to clear their names in what is potentially the biggest miscarriage of justice in English legal history.
• March 2021: The Post Office does not have enough money to pay compensation to the subpostmasters it wrongfully prosecuted.
• March 2021: Angela van den Bogerd has left her role at the Football Association of Wales, following criticism of her part in Post Office IT scandal.
• March 2021: Court of Appeal hearing reveals Post Office instructed employees to destroy documents that undermined an insistence that its Horizon computer system was robust.
• March 2021: The Post Office was warned that a former Fujitsu employee had misled courts when giving evidence on its behalf.
• March 2021: Boris Johnson agrees with MP that those responsible for the Post Office Horizon scandal should be brought to book.
• March 2021: Former Post Office chief was paid over £400,000 when she left despite the organisation being involved in what would become the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history.
• April 2021: The UK government faces a potential judicial review over its Post Office Horizon IT scandal inquiry, after subpostmasters formally wrote to the government seeking one.
• April 2021: The government is listening to calls for changes in how digital evidence is considered in court, as Post Office IT scandal spells out current rule’s inadequacy.
• April 2021: The Post Office's controversial contract with Fujitsu has been extended another year to help the organisation manage its exit.
• April 2021: The Post Office is to move work done by Fujitsu in-house when its outsourcing contract ends, and is already recruiting IT experts.
• April 2021: The Post Office has revealed the end to its controversial Horizon IT system which, through its errors and the Post Office's denial of them, caused huge suffering.
• April 2021: The UK government is the only block to fair compensation for subpostmasters who were wrongly punished for accounting shortfalls.
• April 2021: The Court of Appeal has overturned the criminal convictions of 39 subpostmasters who were blamed and punished for accounting shortfalls caused by computer errors.
• April 2021: Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells has left roles in the church, Morrisons and Dunelm after postmasters’ convictions were overturned in the Court of Appeal.
• April 2021: The biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history is set to get bigger as more subpostmasters take their cases to the Court of Appeal.
• May 2021: Post Office IT scandal CEO has no excuse for her inaction in preventing the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history, says Criminal Cases Review Commission chairperson.
• May 2021: Subpostmasters, MPs and the public call for a full statutory judge-led public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal, following another damning court judgment.
• May 2021: Government says it wants to ensure a fair pay-out for the 555 subpostmasters who defeated the Post Office in a legal battle.
• May 2021: The Post Office has contacted hundreds of people it might have wrongly prosecuted for financial crimes.
• May 2021: The miscarriages of justice involving subpostmasters are the most disturbing element of the Post Office Horizon scandal – but it goes much deeper.
• May 2021: The supplier at the centre of the Post Office Horizon scandal has so far escaped the ramifications of its role in the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history.
• May 2021: Another two former subpostmasters have had their convictions for financial crimes overturned, following a hearing in Southwark Crown Court.
• May 2021: The government inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal is set to be made statutory with the power to compel witnesses and evidence.
• May 2021: The government confirmed that the inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal will be given statutory status and wider scope.
• May 2021: The Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance has agreed to meet the former judge heading up the inquiry into the Post Office scandal that ruined the lives of hundreds of subpostmasters.
• May 2021: Criminal Cases Review Commission will not allow pressure on its resources to prevent subpostmasters seeking a review of their criminal convictions.
• May 2021: Professional IT body wants changes to how computer evidence is used in court in the wake of the Post Office case.
• June 2021: The Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry begins with subpostmaster campaign group waiting for full details before committing its support.
• June 2021: Whatever the Post Office told government about its decision to sack investigators examining subpostmaster prosecutions for theft could identify if the government was part of a cover-up.
• June 2021: The Post Office has so far compensated about 400 subpostmasters who suffered losses as a result of computer errors that they were wrongly blamed for.
• July 2021: Another 10 subpostmasters are set to have their criminal convictions quashed as part of one of the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.
• July 2021: The government has made no contact with subpostmasters two months after it said it would work with them to ensure they get speedy and fair compensation.
• July 2021: The cost of a scheme set up to compensate subpostmasters who were victims of the Horizon IT scandal will exceed £300m.
• July 2021: The government will pay interim compensation within weeks to subpostmasters who were wrongly convicted of crimes due to computer errors.
• August 2021: A further four subpostmasters are set to have their wrongful convictions overturned in the latest development in the Post Office Horizon scandal.
• August 2021: The government has failed to provide fair compensation to the subpostmasters who exposed the full extent of the Horizon scandal to the world.
• August 2021: Subpostmasters demand more clarity on Horizon public inquiry before committing their support.
• September 2021: Six more subpostmaster convictions referred for appeal in Post Office IT scandal.
• September 2021: Government minister holds secret meeting with Post Office Horizon scandal victims.
• October 2021: The public inquiry into a scandal that saw subpostmasters imprisoned after being blamed for accounting shortfalls will hold its first public hearing early next month.
• October 2021: A government minister investigating the controversial Horizon IT project in 2000 described the Post Office board of directors as ‘appalling, short-sighted and partisan’.
• November 2021: The behaviour of Post Office senior management during the Horizon scandal was so egregious that the supplier of the faulty software has escaped a large financial penalty.
• November 2021: Former Fujitsu staff who gave evidence in subpostmaster trials have been questioned by police for a second time.
• November 2021: Former subpostmasters convicted of crimes based on data from error-prone Post Office computer system continue to embark on appeals.
• November 2021: The first hearing in the Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry hears why victims should be paid compensation immediately.
• November 2021:The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is investigating eight potential miscarriages of justice linked with faulty Post Office IT system.
• November 2021: The Post Office will waive professional legal privilege for documents relating to legal advice it received regarding subpostmaster prosecutions.
• November 2021 A total number of 65 subpostmasters have now had criminal convictions overturned in Post Office Horizon scandal.
• November 2021 Subpostmasters asked to withdraw support for Post Office scandal inquiry.
• November 2021: Seven more subpostmasters have been cleared after the Post Office charged them for crimes caused by its faulty Horizon software.
• November 2021: The Post Office made clear its support for a change in UK law regarding computer evidence that was making prosecution ‘onerous’ – a change which later helped to wrongfully convict subpostmasters.
• November 2021: The chair of the Post Office scandal public inquiry has confirmed the compensation of a group of subpostmasters will be revisited.
• December 2021: Government must go further after agreeing to pay compensation for wrongly convicted subpostmasters.
• December 2021: Pressure on government to pay fair compensation to subpostmasters left out of current schemes.
• January 2022: Almost 100 MPs have backed a call for the government to reverse its decision to exclude 555 subpostmasters from fair compensation.
• January 2022: A parliamentary select committee was told that the Post Office is unable to access information to accurately calculate compensation for some Horizon scandal victims.
• January 2022: The Post Office received subsidies worth over £1bn last year, including a £685m payment just last month, in a scheme labelled Post Office Historical Matters Compensation.
• January 2022: Government widens subpostmaster miscarriage of justice compensation scheme in Horizon scandal.
• January 2022: Government officials are open to finding a way to properly compensate victims of the Horizon scandal without setting a dangerous legal precedent.
• January 2022: The subpostmaster campaign group responsible for exposing the Post Office Horizon scandal is to meet with the government to discuss fair compensation for their suffering.
• January 2022: Fujitsu cannot hide away as taxpayers pick up the bill for the Post Office scandal triggered by its IT system, say peers.
• February 2022: Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal are being denied the millions of pounds they are owed as the government delays compensation resolution.
• February 2022: Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal are due to tell their devastating stories to the statutory inquiry.
• February 2022: MPs are demanding urgent action by the government to provide full compensation to a group of 555 Post Office Horizon scandal victims who have so far been left out.
• February 2022: Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal have been suffering in silence for many years, but the current public inquiry is giving them a voice, and people are listening.
• February 2022: Horizon inquiry questioning raises hopes of fair compensation for victims so far left out.
• February 2022: Government set to backtrack on untenable position on subpostmaster compensation.
• March 2022: The Post Office and Fujitsu failed to alert subpostmasters to a software error that caused them to be wrongly blamed for accounting shortfalls.
• March 2022: Horizon inquiry hearing sheds light on subpostmaster federation’s role in hushing up IT problems.
• March 2022: 555 subpostmasters to get fair compensation after government U-turn on its stance on High Court settlement.
• March 2022: Compensation goal finally in sight for 555 Post Office scandal victims, after 13 year campaign.
• April 2022: Fujitsu bags £430m government contracts despite rising cost of Post Office Horizon scandal.
• April 2022: The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission expects more subpostmasters with potential wrongful convictions to come forward.
• April 2022: Former subpostmasters who were wrongfully convicted and punished for crimes have not yet received full compensation over a year after their convictions were overturned.
• April 2022: A former Fujitsu worker has been questioned under caution for the third time as police investigate potential perjury in trials of subpostmasters wrongfully convicted of financial crimes.
• May 2022: Paula Vennells could be stripped of her CBE as the Honours Forfeiture Committee commits to reconsider its award in the light of the Post Office Horizon scandal.
• May 2022: Lawyer negotiating compensation for victims of Post Office scandal says the two sides are ‘poles apart’ on valuations.
• May 2022: Inquiry into Post Office scandal moves to Scotland, with differences in English and Scottish law raising further serious questions about subpostmaster prosecutions.
• May 2022: The chair of the Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry has brought forward hearings about compensation as victims warn that at this rate “people will die” before they get anything.
• May 2022: The Criminal Cases Review Commission is to contact 88 more potentially wrongfully convicted Post Office workers.
• May 2022: The Post Office Horizon IT system at the centre of a national scandal will be replaced by 2025, with a supplier expected to be named in August.
• May 2022: Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal in Scotland raise further questions about Post Office and government conduct.
• May 2022: Government accused of ‘passing the buck’ and ‘not knowing what it is talking about’ after stating it has no plans to review court rules on computer evidence.
• May 2022: Computer Weekly spoke to the barristers at Henderson Chambers that fought the Post Office in the High Court to expose the widest miscarriage of justice in UK history.
• June 2022: Two more Post Office Horizon scandal victims have had their wrongful convictions overturned.
• June 2022: The 555 subpostmasters who exposed the depth of the Post Office Horizon scandal could finally be fairly compensated.
• June 2022: Forensic accounting firm that ‘knows where the bodies are buried’ will be released from confidentiality obligations by the Post Office to give evidence to public inquiry.
• June 2022: Lawyers negotiating the compensation valuations for former subpostmasters who suffered wrongful convictions have brought in independent judicial scrutiny to break an impasse.
• June 2022: Subpostmaster campaign group is a step closer to achieving what it was originally set up to do as government launches compensation scheme for its members who did not receive fair payouts.
• July 2022: More former subpostmasters have their wrongful convictions for theft and fraud overturned in the Court of Appeal.
• July 2022: When the Post Office’s lie about the Horizon system failed to silence subpostmaster critics, it took more extreme measures, say victims of the scandal.
• September 2022: The Met Police have interviewed a former subpostmaster as part of an investigation into potential perjury by former Fujitsu staff.
• September 2022: Chair of statutory public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal has aired his disappointment over the slow progress in making interim payments to victims.
• October 2022: The public inquiry into the Post Office scandal has begun phase two with a request for adjournment amid allegations that the Post Office is failing to disclose relevant documents.
• October 2022: Victims demand that the perpetrators of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal face the public inquiry.
• October 2022: Fujitsu’s part in causing the extreme suffering of subpostmasters will be made clear as the IT supplier begins giving evidence at a statutory inquiry.
• October 2022: A dereliction of duty saw subpostmaster federation ignore its members when IT problems hit and allowed the Post Office destroy their lives.
• October 2022: Politicians are keeping up the pressure to block government contracts being awarded to Fujitsu because of its role in the Post Office Horizon scandal.
• October 2022: Problems reported with the Post Office’s Horizon IT system before its roll-out should have been regarded as a “show-stopper.”
• October 2022: Horizon system code writers lacked basic programming skills, according to the task force set up to investigate reported problems with the controversial software.
• October 2022: Trials of the Horizon computer system in Post Office branches in 1999 led to a warning from subpostmasters that software problems meant “a tragedy was not far away”.
• November 2022: ‘Hardball’ negotiations between the government, the Post Office and ICL meant subpostmasters were ignored and thrown into a tragedy that could have been averted.
• November 2022: Post Office investigators were so convinced that subpostmasters were cooking the books that they failed to investigate alleged IT problems, a public inquiry has been told.
• November 2022: SCCRC has referred six cases of potential wrongful convictions of subpostmasters to the High Court of Justiciary.
• November 2022: A former Fujitsu technology expert who defended the Horizon system’s robustness in court was unhappy after being ‘manoeuvred’ into acting as an expert witness.
• November 2022: Insider tells public inquiry that the Post Office continued to roll out the controversial Horizon system despite a ‘considerable’ number of errors, because it was too committed.
• November 2022: Former members of the ICL team developing software for the Post Office Horizon EPOSS system were unqualified and engaged in poor software development practices.
• November 2022: The Post Office IT scandal inquiry’s appointed expert IT witness was “troubled” by the lack of integrity of data from the Horizon system that was used to send people to prison.
• November 2022: Telegram from British Embassy in Tokyo to UK government reveals pressure on ministers to sign off controversial contract.
• November 2022: The National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP) deliberately kept stories of Horizon errors quiet because it “did not want to kill the project”.
• December 2022: The Post Office was ‘keen’ to make subpostmasters cover unexplained accounting shortfall as its business struggled, public inquiry hears.
• December 2022: The second phase of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal raised more questions over who did what, when and where, with shocking revelations at every turn.
• December 2022: The Criminal Cases Review Commission wants former subpostmasters to come forward if they think they were prosecuted by the Post Office based on data from the Horizon computer system.
• January 2023: Alan Bates, who fought for decades to expose the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, says it would be inappropriate to accept an OBE when former Post Office CEO still holds her CBE.
• January 2023: The advisory board set up to oversee compensation awards to 555 victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal has agreed a goal of returning them to the financial position they would have been in had the scandal not happened.
• January 2023: Two former Fujitsu workers, who are currently under police investigation for possible perjury, will give evidence and face questions in Post Office inquiry.
• February 2023: The Post Office messaging strategy was designed to reassure staff that the Horizon accounting system was robust after Computer Weekly first revealed problems in 2009.
• March 2023: Post Office attempted to replace controversial Horizon system 10 years ago, but was put off by project’s scale and cost.
• March 2023: IT worker tells public inquiry that the Post Office Horizon helpdesk was toxic, rudderless and racist.
• March 2023: One Post Office scandal victim was deliberately destroyed by the Post Office to deter other subpostmasters from challenging the integrity of its core computer system.
• April 2023: The CCRC has told former Post Office workers the door is still open  for them to come forward if they were prosecuted for financial crimes based on evidence from Horizon software.
• April 2023: The Post Office has extended a contract with Fujitsu after being unable to resolve technical issues related to migrating its IT to the cloud.
• April 2023: The Post Office ended a proposed contract with IBM to replace its controversial Horizon system after work had already started.
• May 2023: A total of 86 former subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted for financial crimes after computer errors showed phantom losses have had convictions overturned.
• May 2023: Fujitsu had no control over staff in one of its tech support teams accessing Post Office branch accounts remotely to make changes which could be hidden from subpostmasters.

posted by Lanark at 9:28 AM on January 10 [12 favorites]

I've been hearing about this for years, but didn't realize the coverage had been that entirely blanketing for nearly 15 years. Honestly, until this most recent blow-up in the media, I thought I'd read that the problem had been recognized and the situations were being resolved. It's really shocking that it even now STILL is only beginning to be resolved.

I hope the legislation that gets passed makes everyone as whole as they can be made. Watching that ITV series was really infuriating.
posted by hippybear at 12:46 PM on January 10

Also, Lanark, you creating that linked list of articles -- I know how much work that is, and thank you.
posted by hippybear at 12:47 PM on January 10

In case anyone thinks this has just blown up recently: The Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009
Kudos to writer Gwyneth Hughes and the other behind Mr Bates vs The Post Office, however. It takes considerable skill to take a story well known in the esoteric worlds of Software Engineering and, accounting and Law and give it the emotional punch that a story of false accusation and lives ruined deserves. I suspect there are many people who don’t understand the technical intricacies but who can immediately sympathise with those caught by flaws in supposedly infallible IT systems.
posted by rongorongo at 3:14 PM on January 10

Private Eye have made their report into the Horizon scandal free to access.

I hope we'll see some actual accountability of those in power who presided over all this. Some jail sentences for them might be a tiny step in the right direction for the UK justice system.

Thanks for the link to the Delivering the Fail talk rongorongo. It's a damning report, drawn mostly from Fujitsu and the Post Office's own reports.
posted by amcewen at 3:25 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

“Nearly a Thousand People Were Convicted of Stealing Over Decades. It Was a Computer Glitch.” Max Colchester and Joanna Sugden, The Wall Street Journal, 10 January 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 9:05 PM on January 11

You know, I don't want to get all James Somerton on the authors of that Wall Street Journal article, but there is nothing contained within it that isn't in the documentary Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office: The Real Story. Like literally tiny details are identical. Is there any original reporting in the piece?
posted by hippybear at 4:51 PM on January 12

If you thought the discourse had plumbed the depths, it turns out a) that 40% of those prosecuted are POC b) that PO management used racist codes / classification in their investigations [they're very sorry that they failed to disclose that to the inquiry]. I'm reserving particular side-eye for pols and pundits who are only now joining the pile-on being shocked, dismayed and finger-pointing IRL because they saw Toby Jones being British on the telly.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:10 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]

Let’s not forget the detail of the Post Office incorrectly claiming the compensation they paid out as tax deductible - this inflated their apparent profit which was used a justification for paying large bonuses to their chief executive. This puts them about £100 million in the red and may make them insolvent.
posted by rongorongo at 5:11 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]

It’s been very gratifying to see the post office scandal finally blowing up. I first heard about it from Marina Hyde, who’s been on it for years. But I wanted to highlight someone who was way ahead of everyone, Rebecca Thomson, who in 2009 broke the story in the aforementioned Computer Weekly. She was interviewed about it two years ago in the Times [archive link], on of many, many national news organizations that didn’t pick up on the story. Among the many incredible details in her interview, one I hadn’t seen elsewhere is that after she left journalism for a job at an accounting firm, the Post Office used their connection to the firm to silence her, years and years after she’d stopped reporting on it.

Also, while I’m at it, for people who have just heard about this story, it’s easy to think that the revelations are new. In the broad details, the facts of the case have been publicly known since 2012, it just took until now for the media to give this story the blanket coverage it should’ve gotten in 2012, or indeed 2009 when Thomson and Computer Weekly broke the news. The Computer Weekly’s timeline is very thorough.
posted by Kattullus at 12:33 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]

The Post Office incorrectly claiming the compensation they paid out as tax deductible
When you add on the likely HMRC penalties of up to 30% for this, the Post Office could be paying more in tax than the £138 M they have so far paid to the Postmasters.
Though given the Post Office is owned by the government, the tab will be picked up by UK taxpayers either way.
posted by Lanark at 2:55 AM on January 14 [1 favorite]

Is Post Office Limited part of the UK government? Wikipedia suggests it's a private corporation spun off of the Royal Mail.
posted by hippybear at 7:25 AM on January 14

The Post Office is a limited company owned entirely by the government, no doubt they had plans to sell it off at some point (as they did with Royal Mail) but that hasn't happened yet.
posted by Lanark at 7:55 AM on January 14

Also the individual postmasters are all franchises, so those are effectively separate small businesses. I think that's where a lot of the "them" and "us" attitude comes from in this case.
posted by Lanark at 5:49 AM on January 17