Post Office scandal sparks political turmoil

This year will very likely see a general election in the United Kingdom. In the ordinary course of events, this would mean the main parties cranking into life carefully-planned programs to build up their reputations and score as many points as possible off their rivals until an election is called, and the real contest starts.

But so far in 2024, the program that has dominated British politics is a TV program — one that has caught all major political parties off — guard.

Broadcast on New Year's Day, the drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office tells the real-life story of a miscarriage of justice dating back to the millennium, involving Post Office workers and a faulty computer system, which has seen hundreds of innocent people prosecuted, jailed, financially ruined and, the Daily Mirror newspaper reports, in the case of four, driven to suicide.

Despite in-depth coverage in a BBC podcast and investigative reporting by Private Eye magazine, what has become known as the Post Office Scandal received little mass media attention until the dramatization brought the story and its victims into people's homes, and the resulting public outcry has forced politicians into action, at breakneck speed.

The scandal relates to the introduction of a computer accounting system called Horizon, supplied by Fujitsu. Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 branch managers, known as postmasters and postmistresses, were prosecuted or convicted on charges including alleged false accounting, theft and fraud, using Horizon data that — incorrectly — showed money going missing.

So far, fewer than 100 of those convictions have been overturned, and no one has been held accountable.

Problems with the system, introduced in 1999, were reported almost immediately by one postmaster, Alan Bates, the drama's titular hero, but in 2003 he had his contract with the Post Office terminated for refusing to accept liability for accounting discrepancies.

Alan Cook was managing director of the Post Office from 2006 to 2010, during which time 161 subpostmasters were prosecuted and 57 imprisoned.

The Times newspaper reports that, in a letter to member of Parliament Brooks Newmark in 2009, Cook said Horizon was "very robust since its introduction some 10 years ago", subject to "rigorous testing", and "I am satisfied that there is no evidence to doubt the integrity of the Horizon system and that it is robust and fit for purpose".

In 2015, the chief executive of Post Office Limited, Paula Vennells, told a parliamentary committee: "If there had been any miscarriages of justice, it would have been really important to me and the Post Office that we actually surface those, and as the investigation has gone through, so far we have no evidence of that."

In the era of artificial intelligence and increasingly automated, faceless service providers, the tale of computers being trusted over people, and the injustice meted out to so many innocent victims has, after years of bubbling under, erupted into the mainstream and touched a nerve with the public. The response has been unprecedentedly swift.

Politicians and media outlets, many of which paid little attention to the story for 25 years, now talk of little else, and the scandal touches all the main political parties.

Horizon was introduced on the watch of the Labour Party government. Since then, 17 different ministers have had responsibility for postal services, including, during the coalition government of 2010 to 2015, the current leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, who said "I deeply regret that I was lied to on such a scale" by Post Office management.

"We were reassured time and again that the Horizon system was working. We were told there weren't that many postmasters affected. We were just told so many lies."

The ruling Conservative Party government is not untainted, either.

Michael Keegan was chief executive of Fujitsu UK from 2014 to 2015, when questions were being asked about Horizon's reliability, and in February 2015, he told the House of Commons business select committee "we can continue to have confidence in the Horizon system". His wife, Gillian Keegan, is education secretary in the current government.

Former home secretary Priti Patel, whose father was a postmaster, wrote on social media platform X: "Since I was elected in 2010, I have fought their cause in Parliament because for me this is personal. Post Office and Fujitsu must be held to account."

Other users were quick to point out, however, that a search of parliamentary record Hansard revealed she had spoken on the issue just once in 2010, and a trawl of her social media postings included mention of speaking at a Fujitsu business conference in 2016.

According to ITV News, despite years of complaints, since the Post Office abandoned Horizon-related prosecutions, Fujitsu has won more than 150 government contracts.

The only consequence of any kind so far for anyone at either the Post Office or Fujitsu is Vennells handing back a government honor in the face of a public petition that attracted more than 1 million signatures, and as recently as last month, the Environment Agency extended its flood alerts contract with Fujitsu until the end of next year, meaning it has spent just under 20 million pounds ($25.4 million) on the deal since 2016.

So far, the Post Office says around 138 million pounds has been paid out to around 2,700 sub-postmasters through three different compensation deals, but hundreds more are still waiting.

And Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake has said 1 billion pounds has been budgeted for compensation payments for what he called a "brutal and arbitrary exercise of power "by the Post Office.

After a generation of suffering and injustice that was largely ignored except for by the inquisitive few, just over a week after Mr Bates vs the Post Office was screened, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Parliament "this is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's history", as he announced plans for a blanket acquittal of all those wrongly convicted.

"People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own. The victims must get justice and compensation," he added. "We will make sure that the truth comes to light, we right the wrongs of the past, and the victims get the justice they deserve."

It may not have begun in the way anybody expected or planned it, but for all parties, and for the British public, the election countdown is well underway.