Put the Post Office ‘experts’ in the dock

Judge says IT team blamed for wrongful conviction of postmasters could now face prosecution over glitch

POSTMASTERS wrongly jailed for stealing when a computer glitch was to blame could now see the people who helped convict them face prosecution.

The Post Office’s computer experts, who testified in numerous Crown Court trials, could find themselves in the dock.

In an extraordinary intervention yesterday, a High Court judge damned the ‘veracity’ of their evidence, and said he has asked the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to step in.

The dramatic development came at the end of a long-running court case brought by hundreds of postmasters whose lives were ruined when they were labelled criminals by their bosses over shortfalls in their branch accounts.

In reality, the Post Office’s Horizon computer terminals, found on every branch counter top, contained accounting bugs.

For 15 years the Post Office stubbornly insisted the computers never lied, calling the software ‘robust’. Its chiefs stood and watched as postmasters – many of them pillars of their village communities – were jailed as fraudsters. Others were declared bankrupt and lost their homes and livelihoods.

But yesterday, in an excoriating ruling, Mr Justice Fraser branded Horizon not ‘remotely robust’. It came after the Post Office finally caved in and agreed to pay £58million to settle the case out of court last week. The settlement was a victory for the Daily Mail, which has highlighted the scandal and campaigned to save village post offices.

Dozens of postmasters cheered outside the High Court in London after their victory was rubberstamped by the judge yesterday.

Mr Justice Fraser went on to drop his bombshell announcement about the Post Office’s computer experts from Fujitsu, the IT firm which it subcontracted to operate its Horizon computer system.

‘I have very grave concerns regarding the veracity of evidence given by Fujitsu employees to other courts in previous proceedings about the known existence of bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system,’ he said.

‘I have decided to write to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Max Hill, to see if any of these should be a matter of public prosecution. It is a matter for the DPP what, if anything, he does with this referral.’ Outside court, mother-oftwo Seema Misra, 44, who ran the post office in West Byfleet, Surrey, before she was jailed for 15 months when she was eight weeks’ pregnant, said: ‘I definitely feel they deserve to have their turn in the courtroom spotlight now.’

Out of 552 former postmasters who sued the Post Office, at least 34 still have criminal convictions. They have lodged cases with the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Post Office chairman Tim Parker said: ‘In reaching last week’s settlement, we accepted our past shortcomings and I sincerely apologised to those affected when we got things wrong. We have given a commitment to learn lessons from these events.’

A Fujitsu spokesman said: ‘While Fujitsu was not a party to the litigation, we take this judgment very seriously and will now review the findings in detail.’

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