The scandal over the treatment of Post Office sub-postmasters wrongly accused of fraud is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history and is hugely damaging to perceptions of the country’s institutions, their leadership and cultures. Interest in 2024 was triggered, in part, by ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, and by continuing revelations from the public inquiry in to the controversy. We round-up some of the key dates, people and moments in the Post Office’s Horizon computer scandal so far.
Before we turn to the details of the gross miscarriage of justice, there are two facts that must be understood. As a private company, and not a statutory body, the Post Office is not subject to government oversight. Thus it was able to bring private prosecutions against subpostmasters without the involvement of the CPS and police. Secondly, the subpostmasters did not have an effective membership body to defend their interests. The National Federation of Subpostmasters was criticised in April 2021 by Mr Justice Fraser who noted that “the NFSP is not remotely independent of the Post Office, nor does it appear to put its members’ interests above its own separate commercial interests”.
The timeline
The story of the Post Office scandal has been a slow burner starting 25 years ago with the rollout of the Horizon computer system, a vast IT project awarded to Fujitsu (which bought and then absorbed UK computing firm ICL in 2002) that was designed to reduce benefit fraud and cut costs. The project at one point faced cancellation as the new Labour administration had reservations over the scheme’s management, but nonetheless it went ahead in 1999. The first convictions of sub-postmasters over shortfalls, based on Horizon data, took place in 2000.
As early as 2003 outside experts were already aware of faults. IT expert Jason Coyne was instructed to examine the Horizon system as a neutral expert witness in the Post Office’s civil case involving the Cleveleys Post Office branch in Lancashire. Coyne told the Post Office and Fujitsu that there were defects with the hardware, software and interface of the system showing balance shortages. He said the technology installed was “clearly defective” and the majority of errors could not be attributed to Cleveleys subpostmaster Julie Wolstenholme. Fujitsu disputed Coyne’s report at the time and said he had misunderstood and taken a “very one-sided view” based on incomplete figures.
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Because Wolstenholme had claimed unfair dismissal and the case was settled out of court, Coyne’s findings did not become widely known.
In 2004 subpostmaster Alan Bates approached Computer Weekly journalist Tony Collins over his suspicions about the Horizon system. But with only one source it was not possible to publish a story. It was not until 2008 when further cases of subpostmasters being prosecuted emerged – Lee Castleton and Jo Hamilton – that Computer Weekly could begin running articles. First journalist Rebecca Thomson then, from 2010, Karl Flinders began investigating the Horizon system and the prosecutions of subpostmasters.
Between 2000 and 2015 more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted on the basis of the faulty Horizon software. Many lost their life savings, and were forced to live in near-poverty; some were jailed; there were four suicides. More than 60 have died without receiving any compensation for their wrongful treatment, an echo of the recent Windrush scandal. Overall, 3,500 branch owner-operators were wrongly accused. In one case, in 2010, Seema Misra pleaded guilty to six counts of false accounting, and was found guilty of theft following a trial in the Crown Court. She was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment for the theft and six months’ imprisonment concurrently on each count of false accounting. She was ordered to pay compensation of £40,000 to the Post Office. She served four months in prison while pregnant. Her case was among those overturned by the court of appeal in 2021.
The Post Office during this period used threats of legal action to prevent the “fraud” cases being publicised and told staff in its call centre – the first contact point for sub-postmasters having problems – to tell callers they were the only ones experiencing problems. But where IT experts were used to defend sub-postmasters, the Post Office often backed down as long as the defendant signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Vast legal fees were paid by the Post Office to ensure sub-postmasters who refused to accept they had done wrong. For example, the Post Office spent more than £300,000 on winning a case brought by Lee Castleton, a sub-postmaster in Bridlington, over an unexplained shortfall of £35,000. Castleton cited Horizon problems as the cause of the shortfall. He was bankrupted by the case.
2015: An independent investigation led by a firm called Second Sight was halted by the Post Office after its evidence suggested that there had been serious miscarriages of justice. This prompted former sub-postmaster Alan Bates to launch a group litigation order. BBC Panorama covered the scandal and raised public awareness.
2019: Justice For Sub-postmasters Alliance won a High Court case, led by former sub-postmaster Alan Bates. Mr Justice Fraser found “bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system caused discrepancies in postmasters’ branch accounts”. He dismissed an attempt by the Post Office to have himself recused from the trial. The Post Office agreed to settle out of court for £58 million, but the sub-postmasters’ legal costs amounted to £47 million, leaving them with only about £20,000 each. The Criminal Cases Review Commission now began to look at further prosecutions with a view to quashing them.
2020 onward – the Public Inquiry
2020: The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry was established in non-statutory form on 29 September. It was converted to a statutory inquiry on 1 June 2021 under Wyn Williams. It is gathering evidence from all parties and will consider whether the Post Office has learned the lessons and embedded the cultural change necessary from the findings in Mr Justice Fraser’s judgments and the impact on affected postmasters.
2021: The Court of Appeal quashed a further 39 convictions. The court made the rare finding that the Post Office had acted in such a way as to subvert the integrity of the criminal justice system and public confidence in it.
2021: Separate to the Bates litigation, more than 120 sub-postmasters brought an employment tribunal claim against the Post Office arguing they should be classed as “workers” and entitled to paid holiday, pension rights and sick pay.
2022: The claim (Baker and Others v Post Office), which would have gained new rights for the 8,500 sub-postmasters in the UK, did not succeed. The Central London employment tribunal ruled in March 2022 that the postmasters were not required to render personal service under their contracts. This meant they did not meet the ‘limb b’ definition of the worker status test. They were therefore not workers. The tribunal did acknowledge that postmasters were under the control of the Post Office and integrated into the Post Office’s business, but noted that these factors could be present in contractual relationships other than employment relationships.
May 2023: It was revealed that the Post Office had included within its executive bonus scheme a target related to completing the work needed for the inquiry. It was also reported that Post Office fraud investigators used racist terms to categorise black workers. Documents published between 2008 and 2011, obtained via a freedom of information request, showed that fraud investigators were asked to group suspects based on racial features. The categories on the document included “Chinese/Japanese types”, “Dark Skinned European Types” and “Negroid Types”.
September 2023: The government announced that sub-postmasters who have had their convictions on the basis of Horizon evidence overturned would be offered compensation of £600,000 in full and final settlement of their claim.
January 2024: The early January screening of Mr Bates vs the Post Office by ITV, starring Toby Jones and Lia Williams, brings a wave of public and media interest in the case. The public inquiry hears from Stephen Bradshaw, a Post Office investigator, who was involved in allegations against sub-postmasters. He told the inquiry he had heard reports of problems with the Horizon software, but wasn’t “technically minded… I would expect that to come from the people above”. He had been accused of mafia-like behaviour by subpostmasters, allegations which he rejected. On 10 January the UK government announced it was going to launch legislation to exonerate wrongly convicted Post Office branch managers and said there would be a “new upfront payment of £75,000 for some of those affected”. On 13 January it emerges that the Post Office could be facing a £100 million bill after claiming inflated tax relief figures for its compensation payments to postmasters.
On 17 January, Gerald Barnes, a software developer at Fujitsu since 1998, worked on numerous technical tasks relating to the shift from the Post Office’s use of paper-based accounting methods to the automated Horizon IT system. “Error handling wasn’t as good as it could have been if designed properly from the start,” he said. The following day, 18 January, Fujitsu announced it would not bid for further UK government contracts while the inquiry was running.
In a very significant development on 19 January Paul Patterson, European CEO, Fujitsu, tells the inquiry that the Post Office was made aware of bugs in Horizon between 1999-2018 and said he did not know why evidence of software bugs were not provided to subpostmasters when they were being prosecuted. He said such withholding of evidence was “shameful”. Eight days later (27 January) Post Office chairman Henry Staunton – in post for only a year – is sacked by business secretary Kemi Badenoch who said new leadership was needed. Staunton later claimed that the government wanted to stall compensation payments to the wrongly convicted subpostmasters. Badenoch denied this but claim and counter claim continued.
7 March Jane Davies, who was Post Office HR director between December 2022 and July 2023 states that her allegations of misconduct involved Post Office chief executive Nick Read and did not involve Henry Staunton, as the Post Office had implied. However, Read is exonerated on 17 April by a barrister-led inquiry while Staunton is criticised over his use of language regarding women by the barrister’s report.
27 March Channel 4 airs tape recordings of conversations between forensic accountants Ian Henderson and Ron Warmington (of Second Sight, who were investigating the scandal until being dismissed in 2015) and various Post Office employees and executives including IT specialist Simon Baker. These confirm that the Post Office did know at least as far back as 2013 that the individual data from subpostmasters could be altered and was being altered by Fujitsu at its Bracknell base. Baker reveals to Henderson that he had told PO executives Alwen Lyons and Susan Crichton that Fujitsu had admitted they could access subpostmasters’ accounts secretly. Crichton says on the tape that Paula Vennells had not been made aware of this crucial information.
The conversation on tape came a day before a meeting between James Arbuthnot and Vennells. Henderson and Warmington are heard on the tape urging the Post Office executives to brief Vennells. Henderson and Warmington’s Second Sight investigation was halted by the Post Office in 2015 “for getting too close to the truth”, they said. Channel 4 play the tapes to James Arbuthnot in March 2024 who openly weeps on hearing them. He says it’s appalling that a British institution could act in such a manner.
9 April Subpostmaster Alan Bates gives evidence to the public inquiry and brands the Post Office an “atrocious organisation” that needed scrapping and starting again in a different guise. An email chain showed that, as early as July 2013, the Post Office was drafting a letter to its insurers to notify them of potential issues with Horizon. It showed a Post Office lawyer had written: “From a PR perspective, it would look bad if this got into the public domain.” Bates accuses Post Office law firm Womble Bond Dickinson of “failing in their disclosure obligations”. Bates said from the very start claimant firm Freeths had written to request copies of the known error logs, but that WBD had replied it was not sure if such a thing existed. This was “disingenuous at best”, claimed Bates. The inquiry sees emails between Andrew Parsons, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, Post Office general counsel Susan Crichton and head of corporate finance Charles Colquhoun in 2013. Parsons is shown to have advised the Post Office not to leave a “paper trail” as reports started coming in that the Horizon system was faulty. He had written: “My own hesitation is whether this is strictly necessary to do. From a PR perspective it would look bad if this got into the public domain – sign of guilt/concern from the board.” In 2017 he told Post Office senior managers, in response to a statement issued by Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance, “let’s not forget that Alan Bates has a somewhat loose relationship with the truth”.
12 April Post Office managing director (2006-2010) Alan Cook insisted to the inquiry during the morning session that he hadn’t realised the Post Office itself brought prosecutions against sub-postmasters until three years into his tenure. He admitted there would have been a higher bar had a third party – such as the DPP and Police – brought the prosecutions. An email he’d written in 2009 indicated he thought that subpostmasters were likely to put their hands in the till during economic downturns. He said he became aware of the issues around the accuracy of the Horizon IT system after a press report and letters from MPs in 2009. A lawyer representing subpostmasters accused him of lying. Cook said he apologised unreservedly. Adam Crozier, CEO Royal Mail 2003-2010 (Post Office was part of Royal Mail until 2012) gives evidence during the afternoon session. He said it was a “huge regret” the Royal Mail board was not aware of the issues at the Post Office.
17 April Post Office chief executive Nick Read cleared after investigation of Jane Davies’s whistleblowing allegations (see 7 March).
17 April Allan Leighton, who chaired Royal Mail from 2002 to 2009, when it also owned the Post Office, told the public inquiry that he had “absolutely not” received any warnings that the Horizon system was unreliable. He said he was aware that the prosecutions were conducted by the Post Office (rather than the DPP and police), unlike other senior executives Alan Cook and Adam Crozier who have said they had not been aware of this. The inquiry also heard from Post Office fraud investigator John Longman who commented on the case of Seema Misra, 48, the Surrey subpostmaster who was wrongfully jailed while eight weeks pregnant after being accused of stealing £74,000. Longman said that evidence that may have cleared Misra would have cost the Post Office £15,000 to provide.
18 April During a hearing in which Post Office in-house lawyer Rodric Williams is questioned, an email from external Post Office law firm Womble Bond Dickinson is considered. This urged the Post Office “try and suppress” disclosure of a key document for “as long as possible” as subpostmasters prepared for their group litigation. Williams told the inquiry it was a “regrettable” email. He added that the email was sent before orders for disclosure were made in the litigation.
19 April Rodric Williams tells the inquiry that in 2014 he had missed a key finding contained in a report by Deloitte, which he had coordinated. The finding was that Fujitsu may be able to alter subpostmasters computer records on Horizon, despite the company’s assurances this was not possible.
25-26 April – former chief people officer and business improvement director Angela van den Bogerd tells the inquiry she did not remember seeing 2010 email telling her that Horizon could be accessed remotely.
3 May – Post Office lawyer Jarnail Singh denies he knew about bugs in the Horizon system while sub-postmaster prosecutions continued. But the inquiry is told Singh was forwarded an email on the eve of the 2010 trial of Seema Misra, a sub-postmistress who was sent to jail while pregnant. The email identified bugs in the Horizon system that should have been disclosed in Misra’s trial. Singh denied having read the email, despite being presented with evidence that he saved a copy to his hard drive and printed it off.
22-24 May – Paula Vennells, former chief executive of Post Office tells the inquiry that she, wrongly, decided against re-examining historic cases against subpostmasters. She repeatedly told the inquiry that she could not recollect key conversations and events. After the Second Sight report the Post Office decided to start a mediation process with subpostmasters. In August 2013 she sent an email to senior staff saying she was concerned this would lead to high levels of compensation. The inquiry saw a memo in which Post Office lawyer Susan Crichton was criticised internally for commissioning Second Sight. Vennells wrote that Crichton had “put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business”. Vennells maintained she had not been trying to cover anything up. On the final day of evidence she named five senior Post Office staff who had “let her down” by withholding information as the scandal developed; she listed the senior IT executives Mike Young (who the inquiry has not been able to locate), and Lesley Sewell; and the general legal counsels Susan Crichton, Chris Aujard and Jane MacLeod.
24 May Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Act 2024 was set for royal assent.
5 June Former Post Office chair Alice Perkins (2011-15) gives evidence to the enquiry. She reveals that Angus Grant, an auditor from Ernst & Young (E&Y), told her soon after she started her role that EY had concerns about Horizon. Grant told Perkins Horizon was a risk, that there were concerns over whether it captured data correctly, and that subpostmasters suspected of theft were claiming it was because of a problem with the system. Perkins said she wrongly interpreted this as being about the auditors’ ability to audit the accounts: “I don’t think, wrongly, that I would have made the connection with the operation of Horizon at the branch level.” She said she felt that Fujitsu was too powerful in its relationship with the Post Office. Perkins also discusses the revelation that government officials had discussed removing Paula Vennells from her role as chief executive of the Post Office in 2014.
18 June Forensic accountant Ian Henderson, a director of Second Sight Investigations, who helped to uncover the Post Office scandal, told the inquiry that a senior lawyer appeared to be involved in a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He said documents showing conclusively that sub-postmasters were innocent were not disclosed. Henderson, appointed in 2012 by the Post Office to investigate Horizon-related cases, said that by February 2015 he believed there was a “cover-up by POL and possibly a criminal conspiracy”. He said there was compelling evidence in at least two cases – those of subpostmasters Jo Hamilton and Seema Misra – that potentially exculpatory material had not been disclosed, either at trial or subsequently. He told the inquiry that in Misra’s case, the Post Office knew about bugs in Horizon but made a public interest immunity application at the time of her prosecution in 2010 to prevent disclosure of these documents. The application was granted and the documents were not disclosed to Misra, who was pregnant with her second child when she was jailed for 15 months. In Hamilton’s case, Henderson uncovered a Post Office security report in 2015 stating that there had been no evidence of theft or that cash figures had been deliberately inflated. Hamilton was nonetheless charged with theft and false accounting and pleaded guilty to the latter charge in 2006. He told the inquiry that in June 2015 he had received a letter from Rodric Williams, a Post Office in-house solicitor, asserting privilege over the Hamilton security report. “I found this assertion to be absurd and to be immensely worrying,” Henderson wrote in his witness statement. “It was beginning to look more like a cover-up than a genuine concern about legal professional privilege.”
20 June The Solicitors Regulation Authority reveals that more than 20 live investigations are under way into solicitors and law firms linked to the scandal. The SRA said it was investigating solicitors’ management and supervision of cases and the strategy and conduct of prosecutions and subsequent litigation. This includes the handling of the group litigation Bates v The Post Office. The investigation will look at whether solicitors breached their duties relating to expert witnesses, whether they breached disclosure obligations and whether they improperly applied legal privilege to protect communications from disclosure. Issues relating to the mediation scheme are being examined, including the potential overcharging of claimants, use of non-disclosure agreement and labelling of correspondence.
3 July Former Post Office chair Tim Parker denies hiding a key report he commissioned into the Horizon IT system from members of the Post Office board. The 2016 report, written by former top Treasury lawyer Jonathan Swift, raised concerns about the accounting software which was later found to be faulty. Parker tells the inquiry he “regrets” taking advice from the organisation’s legal chief to keep secret a critical report that could have supported the claims of subpostmasters wrongly accused of theft and false accounting. Like many previous witnesses he claimed he did not recall many key events. He had commissioned the Swift report in response to the 2015 BBC Panorama programme which prompted Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe to ask Parker to prioritise looking into the allegations around Horizon. Swift suggested the Post Office may have “bullied” subpostmasters into pleading guilty to false accounting by charging them with the higher crime of fraud despite having insufficient evidence of fraud being committed. Swift said that the issue was of “real importance to the reputation” of the Post Office and a “stain on the character of the business”. Park told the inquiry he wished he’d shared the report’s findings “in a way”.
16 July Fujitsu IT security analyst Andy Dunks gave witness statements in dozens of cases against Post Office sub-postmasters despite saying he had limited knowledge of how the Horizon system worked, the inquiry heard. Among those whose cases he contributed to were those of including Seema Misra, Jo Hamilton and Lee Castleton. In 2006, before he gave evidence in the Castleton’s case, Dunks’ boss Peter Sewell wrote: “That Castleton is a nasty chap and will be all out to rubbish the Fujitsu name. It’s up to you to maintain absolute strength and integrity no matter what the prosecution throw at you.”
18 July Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was postal affairs minister from 2010 to 2012. He told the inquiry that when in the role he wasn’t aware that the Post Office carried out prosecutions against sub-postmasters. He added that he was “lied to” about serious flaws in the IT system – someone senior must have known the truth, he said. He insisted that the decision to meet subpostmaster Alan Bates in October 2010 was his own and not, as was put to him, for “presentational reasons” adding that he found Bates to be credible. Current Labour cabinet member Pat McFadden was employment relations and postal affairs minister from 2007 to 2009. He told the inquiry the Post Office was “emphatic” in defence of Horizon but emphasised that the Post Office was an arm’s length body from government although ministers had ultimate responsibility for it.
25 July Vince Cable, who was business secretary between 2010 and 2015, told the inquiry that officials did not consider Horizon issues to be serious and said he should have been better briefed. He said he had not known at the time who Alan Bates was. He concurred with Bates’s description of Post Office middle management as “thugs in suits”. He said it was only in 2015, close to his end of time in office and after the Second Sight investigation had been sidelined, that he began to “smell a rat”. It would have helped, he said, if MPs working on behalf of subpostmasters, such as James Arbuthnot, had approached him directly about the issues rather than send him “polite” letters.
Greg Clark was business secretary between 2016 and 2019 and told the inquiry he also had a negative view of Post Office management. He said bosses were insensitive, dismissive and even rude to sub-postmasters. He added that the Post Office prosecutions were brought in a way “that was, I’m afraid, corrupt, unreliable, and totally conscionable”.
Key figures
Simon Baker: IT specialist at the Post Office who learned that Fujitsu could alter Horizon records of subpostmasters and informed Second Sight investigators.
Simon Blagden: Fujitsu non-executive director who stepped down in 2019. A Tory donor, Blagden was appointed chair of Building Digital UK by then digital secretary Nadine Dorries in 2022.
Alan Cook: Post Office managing director from 2006-2010. He told the inquiry in April 2024 that he didn’t know the Post Office could instigate criminal proceedings without police involvement. An email written by him in 2009 indicated he felt subpostmasters were “likely to have their hands in the till” during hard times.
Adam Crozier: CEO Royal Mail 2003-10. Post Office Ltd became independent of Royal Mail in 2012.
Gareth Jenkins: former chief IT architect for Fujitsu who provided reports backing up the reliability of Horizon in a number of Post Office prosecutions. Jenkins has asked the public inquiry for immunity against incriminating himself and has been investigated by police amid concerns his court evidence wasn’t consistent with information he may have had about problems with the system.
Allan Leighton: chaired Royal Mail from 2002 to 2009, when it also owned the Post Office. He told the public inquiry in April 2024 that he had “absolutely not” received any warnings that the Horizon system was unreliable. But he said he was aware that the prosecutions were conducted by the Post Office (rather than the DPP and police), unlike other senior executives Alan Cook and Adam Crozier who have said they had not been aware of this.
David Miller: Chief operating officer Post Office (retired in 2006). Gave assurances to executives that the Horizon system was robust and fit for purpose in July 1999, when he was Horizon programme director. He later told the public inquiry he “should not have said” this. He had been told of problems with Horizon, the inquiry heard. Joined the Post Office in 1970.
David Smith: managing director of Post Office in 2010 who (by email) congratulated the legal team behind the conviction and jailing of pregnant sub-postmistress Seema Misra. He told the public inquiry in April 2024 that the email was “pretty poorly thought through”. Also he revealed he had been told by Paula Vennells and Susan Creighton in 2010 that the Horizon system was “pretty much tamper-proof”.
Tim Parker: chairman of Post Office Ltd from October 2015-2022. In June 2016, he told sub-postmasters that replacing the Horizon system would “incur considerable risk”.
Paul Patterson: European CEO, Fujitsu. Admitted to the public inquiry that the firm had known the IT system was faulty since the 1990s. Has said Fujitsu will contribute to redress for victims, estimated to reach £1bn.
Alice Perkins: was chair of the Post Office after its separation from Royal Mail in 2011. She left the post in 2015. She chaired the sub-committee that saw independent investigator Second Sight sacked in April 2014 after finding bugs in Horizon. Wife of former MP and foreign and home secretary Jack Straw.
Nick Reid: Chief executive Post Office since September 2019. Misconduct allegations were made against him by Jane Davies, chief people officer, but on 17 April he was exonerated after an inquiry led by barrister Marianne Tutin, of Devereux Chambers. The allegations had been made by chief people officer (2022-23) Jane Davies under the Speak Up whistleblowing programme.
Angela van den Bogerd: had a 33-year career at the Post Office with jobs including network change operations manager, head of network services, head of partnerships, director of support services, and people and change director. Was briefly head of people at the Football Association of Wales after leaving the Post Office in 2020. She was criticised by the judge in the 2019 group case for not giving frank evidence and seeking to mislead.
Paula Vennells: CEO of Post Office 2012-2019 and group network director 2007-2012. Awarded CBE in New Year’s Honours List 2019, which she has now offered to return.
Rodric Williams Post Office in-house solicitor
Womble Bond Dickinson: Post Office legal representatives accused by Alan Bates of failing their disclosure obligations.
Campaigners and journalists
MPs who supported the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance
James Arbuthnot: first as an MP (Conservative) then as a Lord, Arbuthnot campaigned on behalf of the subpostmasters, initially via his north-east Hampshire constituent Jo Hamilton, who contacted him asking for help in 2009. Kevan Jones (Labour) for North Durham. Andrew Brigden (Conservative, now Independent) for north west Leicestershire.
Key journalists
Karl Flinders, Rebecca Thomson (both Computer Weekly), writers and investigators Nick Wallis and Richard Brooks (have written a book, articles for Private Eye and BBC Panorama; Wallis was consultant on Mr Bates v the Post Office), John Sweeney (presenter of key BBC Panorama in 2015)
Investigators
Ian Henderson, Ron Warmington of Second Sight, who discovered documents pointing to system failings and whose investigations was prematurely closed by Paula Vennells in 2015. In 2013 the duo urged Post Office executives to inform Vennells that Fujitsu could alter subpostmasters’ Horizon records. Jason Coyne, an IT expert witness instructed by Post Office lawyers (Weightman Vizards now Weightmans) in 2003 in one of the first civil cases brought by the Post Office against an employee accused of misappropriating money (see above). He found major defects with the Horizon system but his evidence was ignored. Coyne was also an expert witness in the 2018 High Court group litigation order where a group of 555 subpostmasters sued the Post Office. He was instructed by the judge to inspect the Horizon system but Post Office employees prevented him from touching any equipment.
Whistleblowers
Fujitsu developers provided campaigners with evidence that subpostmasters’ account figures could be altered remotely. One told ComputerWeekly in 2021 that he had made his superiors aware of bugs early on in the Horizon rollout and urged them to scrap the system.
Correction: This article was amended on 2 October 2024 to remove reference to a Simon Jenkins. This name should have been Simon Baker.
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