Dozens of subpostmasters begin legal bid to clear their names at Court of Appeal 

Dozens of subpostmasters who say they were wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting in the Horizon IT scandal are battling to clear their names at the Court of Appeal.

Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of postmasters were sacked or prosecuted after money appeared to go missing from their branch accounts.

Post Office bosses were told glitches in the Fujitsu-developed Horizon computer terminals in branches may be to blame but pursued prosecutions anyway. 

In 2019, the Post Office paid a £58million settlement to 557 postmasters following an acrimonious High Court battle, which found the Horizon accounting system contained ‘bugs, errors and defects’.

And last year, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred the cases of 42 former subpostmasters to the Court of Appeal. Their appeals today began at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Former subpostmasters Janet Skinner (left) and Tracy Felstead (right) outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, ahead of their appeal against a conviction of theft, fraud and false accounting

Taxpayer will foot the bill for Post Office IT fiasco

The Post Office faces a bill of ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ after it was deluged with claims from 2,400 sub-postmasters in the wake of the Horizon IT scandal.

Ministers yesterday revealed the taxpayer will bail out the Government-owned company as the cost is ‘beyond what the Post Office can afford’.

Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of postmasters were sacked or prosecuted after money appeared to go missing from their branch accounts.

Post Office bosses were told glitches in the Horizon computer terminals in branches may be to blame but pursued prosecutions anyway. One postmaster, Martin Griffiths, 59, took his own life after he was falsely suspected of taking £60,000.

The Post Office has already paid a £58million settlement to 557 postmasters following an acrimonious High Court battle, but now faces a further 2,400 claims under a new compensation scheme.

Dozens more will head to court to claim once their convictions have been overturned, with the biggest payouts likely to exceed £100,000. A lawyer involved in the case said the bill could run ‘into the hundreds of millions of pounds’.

Small business minister Paul Scully said: ‘The Government will provide sufficient financial support to the Post Office to ensure that the [compensation] scheme can proceed.’

He added that the number of applicants was ‘higher than the Post Office had anticipated’ and ‘the cost of the scheme is beyond what the business can afford’.

Sandip Patel QC, who represents some postmasters, said: ‘I would not be surprised to see potential claims in excess of £100,000, and in some instances it could be very much higher than that.The Post Office said: ‘Our priority is to fairly resolve the applications… as soon as possible.’

 

A High Court judge found there was a ‘material risk’ shortfalls in branch accounts were caused by the system in 2019.

The Post Office settled the civil claim brought by more than 550 claimants for £57.75million – without admitting liability – that same year. 

Mr Justice Fraser – who formally approved the settlement – also referred the case to the director of public prosecutions over ‘very grave concerns regarding veracity of evidence given by Fujitsu employees to other courts in previous proceedings’.

As a result of the High Court’s findings, the CCRC considers there is ‘a real possibility’ that the 42 subpostmasters’ convictions are unsafe.

Opening the appellants’ case on Monday, Tim Moloney QC said: ‘The appellants before this court were prosecuted by Post Office Limited between 2000 and 2013.’

He told the court that the Post Office has conceded that 39 of the 42 appellants’ appeals should be allowed, on the basis that ‘they did not or could not have a fair trial’.

Mr Moloney added that the Post Office has accepted that ‘the absence of disclosure prevented the proceedings from being fair’.

He said many of those 39 appellants had ‘pleaded guilty in the face of the difficulties that they faced in defending themselves, being deprived of any meaningful way of defending themselves’.

Mr Moloney told the court: ‘All had the shame and humiliation of arrest and prosecution.

‘All experienced the enormous psychological toll associated with that process.’

He added that many ‘received a custodial sentence – many immediately went to prison’.

Mr Moloney continued: ‘Some saw their marriages break up, others suffered bankruptcy and some are dead, having gone to their graves with their previous convictions still extant.’

One postmaster, Martin Griffiths, 59, took his own life after he was falsely suspected of taking £60,000. 

Mr Moloney said ‘damage’ was caused to a number of other subpostmasters, who he said were ‘blameless individuals’, whose cases are not before the court this week.

He said this ‘extensive damage’ was ’caused by unfair recovery of alleged debt and unfair trials stemming from the defective software and an abject failure on the part of the respondents to effectively assess, let alone effectively address, the defects in that software’.

He also said that there were ‘concerns’ about the Horizon system ‘from the very outset’.

Mr Moloney argued that ‘the very highest levels of management and governance in the Post Office were on notice of the real potential for Horizon to malfunction and misfire’.

But, he added, the Post Office ‘chose to disbelieve the subpostmasters […] it chose to ignore the distress that was being suffered by those subpostmasters’.

The Post Office is opposing 35 of those 39 cases on a second ground of appeal, which is that the reliability of Horizon data was ‘essential to (their) prosecution and conviction’ and their convictions were therefore ‘an affront to the public conscience’.

Four of the 42 appeals are not being opposed on either ground, while three are fully opposed by the Post Office, which has previously said it will not seek retrials of any of the appellants if their convictions are overturned.

The hearing before Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Picken and Mrs Justice Farbey is expected to conclude on Thursday or Friday, and it is expected that they will give their ruling at a later date.  

The Prime Minister has launched an independent inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal and the police are investigating two Post Office IT experts, which could result in charges of perjury. 

Last year a judge said the Post Office’s computer experts knew about problems in its IT system in 1999 – 15 years before the company stopped prosecuting postmasters.

Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of postmasters were sacked or prosecuted after money appeared to go missing from their branch accounts (file image)

Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of postmasters were sacked or prosecuted after money appeared to go missing from their branch accounts (file image) 

But despite the gravity of the case, not a single Post Office boss, civil servant or minister has been sacked.

Paula Vennells, 62, who ran the company between 2012 and 2019, is accused of covering up the fiasco and dragging hundreds of postmasters into the costly court battle.

She has been forced to resign from a series of prestigious roles but has held on to her CBE for ‘services to the Post Office and charity’. 

The Post Office earlier said: ‘Our priority is to fairly resolve the applications… as soon as possible.’