Government trusted ‘abuser’ over the abused on Post Office scandal

The government trusted the views of the Post Office over allegations by subpostmasters that they were being mistreated over unexplained branch losses, and ignored what the subpostmasters and their supporters were saying, the public inquiry into the scandal has been told.

When, on behalf of constituents, MPs asked the government department responsible for the Post Office for answers regarding serious allegations against the Post Office, rather than investigating those allegations, the questions were sent to the Post Office itself for response.

In fact, questions were passed by government to then Post Office CEO Alan Cook, who it was revealed earlier in the inquiry instinctively believed that subpostmasters “with their hands in the till” were blaming Horizon for account shortfalls.

In what is now known as the Post Office Horizon scandal, hundreds of subpostmasters who experienced unexplained accounting shortfalls were prosecuted and convicted based on IT evidence from the Horizon computer system they used in branches. The subpostmasters alleged that the system was flawed and proved this to be the case in the High Court in 2019.

In 2009, Computer Weekly was raising serious concerns about the reliability of the Post Office’s Horizon computer system, and highlighting the mistreatment of subpostmasters by the Post Office.  

The government was being asked questions about this, but was happy to get reassurance that there was nothing in the allegations from the Post Office itself. For example, when former Computer Weekly reporter Rebecca Thomson wrote to her then MP, Brian Binley, in 2009 about the allegations, he wrote to the government. But the government just forwarded the allegations to the Post Office for response.

During the latest hearing in the Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry, Sam Stein, KC representing victims of the scandal, said the government was receiving “unusual” and “particularly strong” allegations.

“Subpostmasters being made to pay back money, prosecuted or turning to criminal acts [false accounting] is wholly unusual,” he put to Pat McFadden, who was a minister responsible for Post Office between 2007 and 2010, who agreed.

Stein continued: “What happened next is your organisation went back to the Post Office, who the subpostmasters regarded as ‘the abuser’, asking, ‘What’s going on?’” Stein referred to the Post Office’s reply, which came from former CEO Alan Cook to Binley, which said there were no problems.

Earlier in the hearing, McFadden said that the Post Office’s “emphatic”  reassurances that the Horizon system was reliable, combined with successful prosecutions of subpostmasters, was enough to convince government.

“It is really important to see what the Post Office was saying, and what I was really struck by looking at this correspondence is just how emphatic the Post Office reply is,” McFadden told the inquiry hearing. “They are saying two things, which coloured the replies and affected this situation for a long, long time.”

In the letter the Post Office “emphatically” stated there was no evidence of Horizon errors causing losses, as well as reference to court proceedings, which led to successful prosecutions of subpostmasters who had alleged accounting shortfalls were caused by Horizon errors.

McFadden was also referred to an email sent by Cook, who the government had relied on the respond to the Horizon allegations. In the email to the head of PR at then parent company Royal Mail, sent during the period when allegations were first being raised, Cook wrote: “My instincts tell that, during a recession, subbies with their hands in the till choose to blame technology when they are found to be short of cash.”

McFadden told the inquiry: “I saw this a few weeks ago at the public inquiry and the first time in detail on Monday, and I think it is shocking and revealing about the instincts inside the Post Office at the time.”

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 accounting software. It is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history (see below for timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal, since 2009

• 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 •