The Post Office Scandal is one of the largest miscarriages of justice of recent times and has ruined the lives of thousands of sub-postmasters.  

A flawed computer system manufactured by Fujitsu called Horizon showed that totally innocent sub-postmasters had supposedly stolen thousands of pounds from their own post offices but of course nothing of such happened.  

Thousands of innocent people were prosecuted without cause, but nobody has taken the blame neither the Post Office, nor Fujitsu nor the British Government: but whose fault is it? 

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the blame has to lie at the foot of the Post Office as it was their blind loyalty to Horizon’s integrity and desire to protect their image that led to the needless prosecution of thousands of innocent subpostmasters with often questionable evidence. 

The Post Office perpetuated a scheme of subterfuge and deception through their persistent pig-headedness in not accepting they had been involved in any wrongdoing.  

From the all but useless Horizon helpline telling thousands of subpostmasters they are were only one having these issues to refusing to admit there was remote access to Fujitsu’s system – something they only relented on in court.   

Not telling the full story became something of a recurring theme throughout the court cases and investigations as the Post Office felt the need to redact and withhold as much as possible in order to try and shift the blame elsewhere or make any investigations crawl along at a snail’s pace to the point where they limited the access the investigators they hired (Second Sight) had – I detect something of a coverup.  

The final argument I will make towards the Post Office being mostly to blame (although you could go on for days) is that they made scores of unsafe prosecutions with them even identifying on their own records that there was not enough evidence to prosecute and doing exactly that.  

Due to a bizarre quirk of the British legal system, the Post Office can investigate and bring about private prosecutions without the involvement of the police nor the Crown Prosecution Service which led to 900 prosecutions with over 100 hundred overturned so far.  

The next guilty party in this scandal is Fujitsu – the Japanese company that made the Horizon system at the heart of this scandal.  

Fujitsu are one of the government’s so-called ‘strategic suppliers’ who have been awarded 150 government IT contracts since the Horizon farce so it could be quite easily argued that they too were keen to cover up the failings with the system in order to secure more lucrative contracts in the future.  

Another dubious case in this whole messy affair is the case of a Michael Rudkin who was the chair of the National Federation of Subpostmasters. After complaints about Horizon came into the federation, he visited Fujitsu and was shown that Fujitsu staff could really access Post Office branch terminals remotely – something that was previously vehemently denied. 

In the days that followed, a considerable discrepancy was found on the Horizon terminal at Mr Rudkin’s Post Office that didn’t really exist – coincidence?  

The final party who must shoulder some of the blame for this is the British Government who ultimately own the Post Office.  

Throughout the course of dealings regarding Horizon, the Post Office spent almost £400 million on legal costs and someone may have to pick up the tab for billions of pounds of compensation.  

Furthermore, it has since been confirmed that former Prime Minister Tony Blair was aware of some flaws within Horizon before its implementation but the project was continued and the government continued to have a lack of oversight over the Post Office and its heavily dubious actions.  

In conclusion, the majority of the blame has to land at the door of the Post Office as it was their prosecutions that caused the utter misery subpostmasters felt although there are other parties who too must be held accountable. The Post Office Scandal is a multifaceted miscarriage of justice and is one that hopefully the government and the UK in general will learn from.  

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