UK government ‘hasn’t learned lessons from post office scandal’
THE UK government has been accused of failing to act on the lessons from the post office scandal.
British prime minister Rishi Sunak has described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history. It involved the hounding and prosecution of thousands of people who owned and ran smaller post offices for alleged fraud between 1999 and 2015, the overwhelming majority of whom were falsely accused.
The initial fault was with Horizon, a digital accounting system installed by the IT multinational Fujitsu, which wrongly said post office branches had cash shortfalls. The Post Office, the company behind the network, then rejected any fault with Horizon and insisted operators must have taken the money, to the extent of covering up the real problem.
Overall, 3,500 branch owner-operators were wrongly accused and more than 900 prosecuted, with many of these jailed. Some suffered significant ill health and family breakup, and, in a handful of cases, suicide.
Union leaders at TUC have said British ministers ignored warnings going back years and refused to put in place safeguards to prevent future scandals involving publicly awarded contracts. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: ‘The government has failed to act on the lessons from this scandal despite repeated calls and warnings.’ A British government spokesperson said: ‘The Horizon scandal... was one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history, which is why we set up an independent inquiry to establish culpability.
‘It is right that we do not pre-empt its conclusions, but once the full facts are established, we will consider all options to hold those responsible to account – both legally and financially.’