HORIZON SCANDAL

Things you might not know about

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THE Post Office scandal has shown, once again that the government cannot be trusted to get anything right.

Hundreds were prosecuted thanks to a faulty computer system called Horizon. But what is it and who is behind it?

Here are some facts: 1

HORIZON is the outcome of the Pathway project, which commenced in 1994 and was announced by social security minister Peter Lilley at the 1995 Conservative conference. 2

THE goal was to computerise the payment of benefits at post offices, replacing Girocheques with swipe cards. It was thought this would reduce benefit fraud by £ 150 million per year. 3THE

contract to create the system was awarded in May 1996 to ICL Pathway Limited, a subsidiary created for the purpose in 1995 by

British computer company ICL, which was itself majority- owned by Fujitsu of Japan.

4BY

1998, the Pathway project was two years behind schedule, costs had increased, and there were concerns that magnetic swipe cards were becoming obsolete. The government considered cancellation, but Fujitsu talked them into keeping it.

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AFTER the scope of its use was reduced, Horizon was introduced by the Post Office in 1999, for tasks like accounting and stocktaking.

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POSTMASTERS complained about bugs in the system after it falsely reported shortfalls – often for thousands of pounds. 7POST

Office managers denied there was anything wrong with the system – despite their own experts knowing it was faulty. 8BETWEEN

1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 736 sub- postmasters and sub- postmistresses – an average of one a week – based on info from Horizon.

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FUJITSU signed a £ 48m deal in 2022 to maintain the Police National Computer, which stores details of all convictions and cautions, and fingerprint and DNA data. Their software services are also used by the taxman.

10THE

Horizon system is still used by the Post Office, which describes the latest version as “robust”.