‘Put Post chiefs in dock for this gross injustice’
MPs call for prosecutions over IT scandal
POST Office bosses should face criminal prosecutions over an IT scandal branded the ‘biggest miscarriage of justice in our history’, MPs demanded yesterday.
Up to 960 postmasters were wrongfully convicted of fraud, theft and false accounting after cash appeared to vanish from their tills.
But it later emerged that shortfalls in the accounts of local branches were the result of flaws in their Horizon IT system.
Even as evidence emerged that the computer system could be to blame, the Post Office continued to bully postmasters into pleading guilty to crimes bosses knew they had not committed.
Yesterday, in a furious session in the House of Commons, MPs demanded that former Post Office chiefs who oversaw the convictions should face justice.
One said the scandal was as big an injustice ‘as the Guildford Four’, the quartet wrongly convicted of the IRA bombing of two Surrey pubs in October 1974.
Conservative MP Dr Julian Lewis said: ‘This is one of the worst disasters in public life since the contaminated blood scandal.
‘If it is proven that Post Office executives were aware of the software faults but allowed innocent people to rot in jail anyway, they could be guilty of criminal negligence and possibly criminal conspiracy and ought to be brought to justice.’
Labour MP Karl Turner, a barrister and former shadow attorney general, added: ‘Postmasters were forced to pay back many thousands of pounds, money which was never in fact owed or indeed missing.
‘That in itself should trigger a criminal investigation.’
Labour’s science spokesman Chi Onwurah said: ‘ The Post Office Horizon scandal may well be the largest miscarriage of justice in our history.’
She added that it consisted of ‘900 prosecutions, each one its own story of dreams crushed, careers ruined, families destroyed, reputations smashed and lives lost, innocent people bankrupted and imprisoned’.
Tory MP Richard Graham said: ‘ Nothing should be ruled out, including criminal prosecution if justified.’
Fellow Conservative Bob Blackman added the ‘real criminals must be brought to justice’. Tory MP John Howell told the Commons: ‘This ranks as big a scandal as the Guildford Four.’
The Criminal Cases Review Commission has sent 47 convictions to the Court of Appeal to be overturned and is reviewing 14 more. A further 900 prosecutions are being reviewed by an independent law firm. But no one at the Post Office has lost their job over the scandal.
Paula Vennells, who was in charge from 2012 to 2019, walked away with £4.9million in pay and bonuses. Mrs Vennells, an ordained priest, oversaw a failed mediation scheme and sacked a team of independent forensic accountants after they found the ‘ phantom’ losses could have been caused by the IT system.
But the Post Office continued to recover debts and in 2017 she decided to fight 550 postmasters through the civil courts.
Despite this, Mrs Vennells was awarded a CBE for services to the Post Office and handed the role of chairman of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
Post Office prosecutions went ahead despite auditors warning in 2011 that some IT staff had ‘unrestricted access’ to postmasters’ Horizon accounts which could lead to ‘erroneous transactions’.
At the time Moya Greene, now a trustee at the Tate, was chief executive of Royal Mail, which controlled the nation’s post offices until 2012. Yesterday MPs called for an independent review promised by the Government to be led by a judge because of the scale of the scandal.
Two other people likely to face serious questions are Alice Perkins, Post Office chairman from 2011 to 2015, and Tim Parker, chairman since 2015.
The Mail has long campaigned on behalf of postmasters and helped 550 win a £58million civil settlement in December.
The Post Office said it ‘ welcomes the review announced by the Government and we will fully and positively engage’.
Mrs Vennells was contacted for comment. Miss Greene could not be reached ahead of publication.
‘Largest miscarriage of justice in our history’