Post Office scandal victims in Scotland have convictions quashed
computerweekly.com
computerweekly.com
The post office in the UK has always relied on an extensive network of "subpostmasters" to run local branches. These are often people who run small businesses or shops and add basic postal services such as delivering packages, selling stamps etc to an existing shop. This is especially important as a service in small towns etc.
In 1999 the government brought in Fujitsu as an IT provider and insisted these subpostmasters adopt a fujitsu-developed accounting system called "Horizon" to account for the postal activities of these shops. They then (relentlessly) investigated and prosecuted an extraordinary number of these people for fraud based on the outputs of this system, which turned out to have been reporting incorrectly based of software bugs. This was covered up. About 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted for fraud and theft and over a hundred sent to prison even though as far as I am aware there is literally no evidence other than horizon of any wrongdoing by any of them.
The facts are finally emerging and justice is starting to be done although the perpetrators of the malicious prosecutions and the coverup have so far got off and victims have still not received compensation.
Here is a slightly more extensive summary https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Post-Office-Horizon-s...
And how the hell did the post office come to believe 700+ sub-post-masters were committing fraud? It strikes me as patently ridiculous that such a large number of people would be doing similar small-time accounting fraud. Nobody thought "huh, might be the systems?"
In this case, somebody should have pumped the brakes well before criminal proceedings. But, it seems like the higher-ups didn't want to look bad, so buried evidence and charged anyways, which should be criminal (no idea if it is, I'm no expert in UK law).
The Post Office knew their system was broken from at least 2003. Their response was to bury the report and threaten the consultant.
very tangential, very important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65FRxE7uMc
It looks like they will get compensation this time, but only after being featured on an ITV TV drama. The first time around the government drip fed compensation and massively reduced figures, including to people who served jail time for crimes that never happened. Many of the victims are old and some were made homeless because of the Post Office. It was just extra cruelty and maliciousness on top of the injustice they had suffered.
It's also important to know that the UK government knew about the flaws with the program but covered them up rather than dealing with the issue. It wasn't until a documentary came out about the issue that the public outcry grew large enough to actual prompt a full investigation.
I don't think the Post Office debacle features, but at the end of the Secret Barrister(1), a hypothetical example is given where the many critical systemic failings described in the book align to get an innocent person found guilty and imprisoned. It's pretty close to what actually happened to the subpostmasters (but for assault rather then fraud).
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Barrister. It's very good and all you can say after reading it is "Jesus, I just hope I stay lucky enough to never get involved in the courts". I don't think anything has improved since 2018.
The Post Office also knew for a fact their defense was false but continued to lie in court [2].
In England (but not Scotland), the Post Office itself acted as prosecutor separate to the normal justice system. Investigators were incentivized to find people guilty.
Only the Post Office (covering it up) knew there were so many and they didn't tell the court and in fact they told all the accused that they were the only one (or just a handful) so none of them knew either... its only after the campaigning and research of Alan Bates (one of wrongly accused subpostmasters, and after this week knighted for what he did in uncovering it so is now Sir Alan Bates) that it all came out, especially after a documentary was made about it suddenly the general public knew as well.
Private Eye magazine (a sort of political commentary/satirical news magazine in the UK) had been reporting it for years that there was clearly a problem as it was crippingly obvious that we didn't suddenly have a country full of hundreds and hundreds of fraudulent post office workers, but the average person doesn't read it and the MPs were happy to ignore it and believe Fujitsu over their own postmasters some of whom had been doing the job for decades prior to the mess.
The enquiry evidence that's been broadcasted recently from the key players is both fascinating and infuriating on what a mess and a coverup it was.
And at least four purportedly related to these prosecutions committed suicide[1].
Perhaps most alarmingly: prior to 1999, the burden of proof for proving that the Horizon system was working correctly would have fallen to the Post Office (as the prosecutor in these instances) and Fujitsu (as the developer). That rule was changed to presume that the computer system worked correctly unless there was explicit evidence to the contrary[2][3].
A very high barrier for a non-technical person to prove, especially in an extremely complex system.
It worries me how many people put unchecked faith into the systems that, now more-or-less, rule our lives whether we like it or not.
It worries me even more that a lot of computer programmers, systems engineers, et al, don't understand how their code affects others in bad and unintended ways, and why testing matters so much. Uncle Bob, as divisive as he is, hits this nail on the head with a depleted uranium sledgehammer[4] (19:47-24:33).
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/what-is-the...
[2] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252501510/BCS-demands-re...
[3] https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/bcs-calls-for-change-in...
I can't think of many programmers who would deny the possibility.
They did call the Fujitsu chief architect, who is now under investigation for perjury for his efforts (and I also imagine Fujitsu are less going to try to throw him under the bus and more have a tungsten bus dropped on him from orbit)
> Mr Jenkins, Fujitsu's former chief IT architect, is currently being investigated by the Metropolitan Police for potential perjury, the BBC understands.
> Mr Jenkins' report and an accompanying memo provide the clearest evidence yet that as early as autumn 2010 the Post Office and Fujitsu, which built the Horizon IT system, were aware of details about the software which could cast doubt on prosecutions, and were keeping them hidden.
> The memo, which summarised a series of meetings about the report, said that if the bug was widely known, it could cause a "loss of confidence in the Horizon system", provide branches with "ammunition to blame Horizon for future discrepancies" and have "potential impact upon ongoing legal cases".
> Mr Jenkins' testimony was also later used in the prosecution of many other sub-postmasters, where details of his report on the bug were again not disclosed.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68857142 [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68606121
Absolutely everything about this case is shocking and shows really evil behavior at every level. Evil isn't a word I ever use lightly, but Paula Vennells and her crew knew full well they were sending innocent people to prison and seem to have just doubled down at every opportunity. A good way to summarize the mundane evil of Vennells' character: when BBC One broadcast a news item about the scandal way back in 2014, she emailed the chair of the Post Office Alice Perkins to say it was just "hype and human interest" and that she was "more bored than outraged" by the whole affair. She then kept on imprisoning innocent people and lying about it.
Unfortunately one reason this case is neuralgic is that a big part of the blame lies with the toxic legacy of diversity hiring and the push for female CEOs at any cost. Something that came out recently is that the government and Post Office both knew that Vennells was completely unsuited to lead it way back in 2014 [1], with people saying she lacked knowledge had trouble working with people who challenged her, but:
The document also said it would be “more difficult” to remove Vennells due to the impending general election, which took place in 2015. “Ministers would be conscious of the political implications,” it said.
What political implications and which ministers? At the time the BBC were giving fawning bios that explicitly stressed in the headline that Vennells is a woman [2]. She was the responsibility of Jo Swinson, who was Postal Minister. Vennells was lying to Swinson too [3], so she isn't entirely to blame, but Swinson in turn is a feminist who felt it was very important to have more women in business and politics. She's written a book called "Equal Power" on gender equality, for example. Vennells was a high profile female CEO; firing her for mere incompetence was clearly not something civil servants thought Swinson would be willing to do. Instead Vennells was rewarded and made excuses for.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/06/off...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25965476
[3] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ex-post-office-boss-p...
> Emergency legislation to exonerate wrongfully convicted Post Office workers has completed its journey through Scottish Parliament and each will now receive initial compensation of £600,000, with the ability to claim more as financial redress for their suffering.