The Great Post Office Scandal: The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster which put innocent people in jail

The Post Office Horizon IT scandal began at the turn of the century when the Post Office network was automated. A novel PFI-funded IT system called Horizon was rolled-out into the Post Office network. At the time, suppliers Fujitsu described it as the “largest non-military IT system in Europe”. Horizon didn’t work properly, and errors and discrepancies appeared in hundreds of Subpostmasters’ accounts.
The Post Office held Subpostmasters liable for these discrepancies. Thousands were forced to pay the Post Office sums they didn’t owe, many were sacked. Some 800 people were prosecuted by the Post Office and many were sent to prison.
In 2019, after a three year multimillion-pound legal battle, in which the Post Office was supported by the government, the Post Office admitted defeat and settled out of court. Dozens of criminal convictions are due to be overturned at the Court of Appeal in March. There have been suicides, mental health breakdowns and hundreds of family tragedies. No one has been held responsible for the false prosecutions.