Review of late evidence doesn’t change Post Office Capture system report

A review of late evidence submitted to investigators reviewing the Post Office’s pre-Horizon Capture system has resulted in no significant changes to the report published last month.

The government commissioned an investigation into the Capture system to ascertain whether subpostmasters had been wrongly blamed and prosecuted for shortfalls in the accounting system.

This followed former subpostmasters coming forward in January, after the airing of ITV’s dramatisation of the Post Office Horizon scandal, with similar stories to those affected by the Horizon systems errors.

In its report, forensic investigation firm Kroll concluded there was a “reasonable likelihood” that Capture had caused accounting shortfalls for which the users were blamed and, in some cases, prosecuted.

But, as reported by Computer Weekly, the investigation was hampered by the late provision of information, which was only provided the day the report was due to be presented to the government and could not be included. According to a government-commissioned report, the late datasets included backup tapes and servers identified from the Post Office’s former finance headquarters in Chesterfield, and casework spreadsheets and summaries of documentation focused on criminal prosecutions sought by the Post Office since the mid-1980s.

Kroll has since reviewed the datasets and updated its report in an addendum, which concluded that based on further review, there were no changes to the conclusions in the report. “No significant or material changes have come about as a result of this review,” it said.

The Capture controversy is the latest aspect of the wider Post Office scandal, which was exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009 and involved thousands of subpostmasters being wrongly blamed and even prosecuted for unexplained account shortfalls, which were later proved to be caused by the error-prone Horizon IT system.

In January this year, then MP Kevan Jones, who now sits in the House of Lords, highlighted evidence of injustices caused by the Capture computer system used in Post Office branches prior to the introduction of Horizon. This followed former subpostmasters coming forward after watching the Post Office scandal dramatisation and documentary on ITV, with stories of the problems they had experienced when using the Capture system and the severe detriment they suffered.

One former subpostmaster who came forward is Steve Marston. He had a branch in Bury, Lancashire, and was prosecuted in 1996 for theft and false accounting following an unexplained shortfall of nearly £80,000. Marston said he never had any problems using the paper-based accounting system until his branch, which he ran from 1973, began using Capture.

“It is no surprise the additional information has not changed the report as we provided most of the evidence that was used,” said Marston. “Now that the full details are available to the government, we want a speedy resolution to this as time is not on our side. We can’t afford the current government to drag its heels on this like the previous government did over the Horizon scandal.”

Capture was a PC-based application developed by the Post Office and installed on a personal computer to carry out branch accounts. The software – referred to by some users as a “glorified spreadsheet” – was a standalone system, unlike Horizon which is a complex, networked system connected to centralised services.

The government will announce its next steps in December.

Rupert Lloyds Thomas, a former Post Office executive who has campaigned for former users of Capture, told Computer Weekly: “Two things need to happen. The government needs to announce what the scheme for redress will look like and cases of potentially wrongful convictions need to be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.”

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The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).

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• Also read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal •

• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story •

• Also read: Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence and incompetence means huge taxpayers’ bill •

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