Horizon is a computer system used by part of the United Kingdom's postal service, Post Office Ltd. In 2013 the system was being used by at least 11,500 branches, and was processing some six million transactions every day. Horizon was introduced in 1999, and from then onwards unexplained discrepancies and losses began to be reported by sub-postmasters. The Post Office maintained that Horizon was "robust" and that none of the shortfalls or discrepancies in sub-postmasters' branch accounts were due to problems caused by Horizon. Sub-postmasters unwilling or unable to make good the shortfalls were sometimes prosecuted (by the Post Office's in-house prosecution team) for theft, false accounting and/or fraud. This was done on IT evidence alone, without proof of criminal intent. Despite this, some sub-postmasters were successfully persuaded by their own solicitors to plead guilty to false accounting, on being told the Post Office would drop theft charges. Once the Post Office had a criminal conviction, it would attempt to secure a Proceeds of Crime Act Order against convicted sub-postmasters, allowing it to seize their assets and bankrupt them. According to press reports, these actions by the Post Office caused the loss of dozens of jobs, bankruptcy, divorce, unwarranted prison sentences and one documented suicide. In 2019 the Horizon Issues trial judgment in the Bates & Ors v Post Office Ltd group litigation at the High Court found that bugs, errors and defects did exist and that it was possible for these to cause apparent discrepancies or shortfalls in branch accounts or transactions, and to undermine the reliability of Horizon accurately to process and to record transactions. Mr Justice Fraser found that this had happened on numerous occasions. In September 2020, the Post Office declared it would not oppose 44 postmasters' appeals against conviction. In December 2020 six convictions were quashed, and in April 2021 the Court of Appeal quashed a further 39 people's convictions. The BBC called the convictions "the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice". In April 2021 Post Office Chief Executive Nick Read announced that the Horizon system would be replaced with a new cloud-based IT system.
The system cost £1 billion and was designed by ICL/Fujitsu Services.[1][2] According to Post Office Ltd, the name Horizon encompasses:
The system was originally introduced in 1995 on a pilot basis in a small number of post offices, alongside a joint work programme between the Department of Social Security's Benefits Agency and Post Office Counters Ltd. The objective of this programme (known as the BA/POCL Programme) was to provide an automated system for making benefits payments through post offices and thereby reduce fraud.
At the Conservative Party conference in October 1995, the social security minister Peter Lilley brandished a smartcard as the intended replacement for the benefit book, declaring that, with the Benefits Agency and ICL, Post Office Counters Ltd would install smartcard reading terminals at every branch, through a private finance initiative (PFI) to be delivered under a commercial contract. At the time smartcards were under consideration as part of the full system, but a final choice of technologies had not been made.
After a lengthy competitive procurement exercise which began in late 1994, the contract for further development and full implementation in all post offices was awarded in May 1996 to ICL's Pathway division, which had been created for the purpose.[4] ICL later became part of Fujitsu.
In 1999, four years and £700m of taxpayers' money after the pilot scheme began, the Government, by now Labour, stopped the scheme in its tracks. The Department of Social Security withdrew from the deal, leaving ICL/Fujitsu to run the system. ICL has since criticised the PFI payment criterion: it would have been paid partly on how many customers Post Offices attracted. Stuart Sweetman, the then group managing director of customer and banking services for Consignia (the name used at the time by the then holding company for Post Office Counters Ltd, Parcelforce and Royal Mail), said in 2001: "Looking back, I think it was over-ambitious ... You can't export all the risk to a supplier."[5]
Problems with the system were first reported by Alan Bates, the sub-postmaster at Craig-y-Don, in around 2000.[6] He reported his concerns to Computer Weekly in 2004, who finally gathered sufficient evidence to publish them in 2009.[7] A campaign group on the issue, Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) was formed by Bates and others in September 2009.[8][9]
An initial investigation failed, at first, to find the cause of the problems. As a result, an independent investigative firm Second Sight were brought in to conduct a separate, independent inquiry, in 2012.[8][10] At around this time, Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office.[8]
In July 2013, Post Office Ltd admitted (after an interim review by Second Sight) that software defects with Horizon had indeed occurred, but that the system was effective.[10] The review discovered problems in 2011 and 2012, when Post Office Ltd discovered defects which had caused a shortfall of up to £9,000 at 76 Post Office branches.[10] However, more than 150 sub-postmasters continued to raise issues with the system, which they claimed had, by error, put them in debt by tens of thousands of pounds, and that in some cases they lost their contracts or went to prison.[10][11]
The report – which was treated as confidential – described the Horizon system as, in some cases, "not fit for purpose".[11][12] The lead investigator for Second Sight claimed that there were about 12,000 communication failures every year, with software defects at 76 branches and old and unreliable hardware.[1] The system had, according to the report, not been tracking money from lottery terminals, tax disc sales or cash machines – and the initial Post Office Ltd investigation had not looked for the cause of the errors, instead accusing the sub-postmasters of theft.[11] The report was dismissed by the Post Office.[13] However, it was leaked to the BBC in September 2014. The BBC's article on the report also said that training on the system was not good enough, that "equipment was outdated", and that "power cuts and communication problems made things worse".[11]
Post Office Ltd then went into mediation with the affected sub-postmasters.[11] By December, however, MPs had criticised Post Office Ltd for how it handled the sub-postmasters' claims, and 140 of those affected had withdrawn their support for the Post Office-run mediation scheme.[14] 144 MPs had been contacted by sub-postmasters about the issue, and James Arbuthnot, the MP leading on the matter, accused the organisation of rejecting 90% of applications for mediation.[14] Post Office Ltd said that the claims by Arbuthnot were "regrettable and surprising".[14] Arbuthnot further claimed that Post Office Ltd had been "duplicitous", and said that:[2]
I do not want to build up hopes that the other methods are going to be more successful than the current ones, so I will not be specific – but it will involve legal and political campaigns.
In February 2015, ComputerWorld UK, a UK trade magazine for IT managers, reported that Post Office Ltd were obstructing the investigation by refusing to hand over key files to Second Sight.[1] Post Office Ltd (Angela van den Bogerd) claimed in the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee hearing of 3 February 2015[15][16][17] that they "have been working with Second Sight over the last few weeks on what we agreed at the outset. We have been providing the information", but the lead investigator for Second Sight, when asked by Adrian Bailey if that were the case, said "No, it is not", as he had not been given access to prosecution files, which he needed to back up his suspicions that Post Office Ltd had brought cases against sub-postmasters with "inadequate investigation and inadequate evidence".[1] He said that these files were still outstanding eighteen months after they had been requested.[2]
In March 2015, Private Eye and other sources reported that Post Office Ltd had ordered Second Sight to end their investigation just one day before the report was due to be published, and to destroy all the paperwork which they had not handed over.[2][18] Post Office Ltd then scrapped the independent committee set up to oversee the investigation, as well as the mediation scheme for sub-postmasters, and published a report which cleared themselves of any wrongdoing.[18]
Of the 136 cases, 56 had been closed, and Post Office Ltd would put the rest forward for "mediation" unless a court ruling prevented them from doing so.[2] After ending the inquiry, Post Office Ltd said that there were no wide-scale problems, and that:[2][19]
This has been an exhaustive and informative process which has confirmed that there are no system-wide problems with our computer system and associated processes. We will now look to resolve the final outstanding cases as quickly as possible.
In 2019, class action civil litigation, Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd,[20] brought by 550 sub-postmasters was settled by the Post Office.[21] Significant fees for counsel, repayment of legal financing, and payment of the legal financing "success fee" were deducted from the £58 million settlement.[22]
Mr Justice Fraser, the judge overseeing the civil action noted that the approach of the Post Office to the case
amounted, in reality, to bare assertions and denials that ignore what has actually occurred, at least so far as the witnesses called before me in the Horizon Issues trial are concerned. It amounts to the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat.
In court, Fraser criticised testimony given by Post Office witnesses. The judge said Angela van den Bogerd (Head of Partnerships, Post Office) "did not give me frank evidence, and sought to obfuscate matters, and mislead me."[23]
Fraser commented on the evidence given by Stephen Parker, Head of Post Office Application Support, Fujitsu ((As of April 2021) Senior Commercial Manager at Capgemini): "I do not consider that Mr Parker was interested in accuracy in any of his evidential exercises. ... I do not consider his evidence in his witness statements to have been remotely accurate, even though he stoutly maintained that it was."[24]
Paula Vennells (then Chief Executive, Post Office), subsequently apologised to workers affected by the scandal, saying:[25]
I am truly sorry we were unable to find both a solution and a resolution outside of litigation and for the distress this caused.
Her letter to the Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee[26] states:
The message that the Board and I were consistently given by Fujitsu, from the highest levels of the company, was that while, like any IT system, Horizon was not perfect and had a limited life-span, it was fundamentally sound.
and:
I raised this question [of whether Post Office or Fujitsu had the ability to access and alter branch information remotely] repeatedly, both internally and with Fujitsu, and was always given the same answer: that it was not possible for branch records to be altered remotely without the sub-postmaster’s knowledge. Indeed, I remember being told by Fujitsu’s then CEO when I raised it with him that the system was “like Fort Knox”.
In May 2014 Fujitsu had announced Michael Keegan's appointment as Head of Fujitsu UK & Ireland stating his experience included "senior leadership roles at the Royal Mail Group/Post Office Ltd".[27]
Michael Keegan clarified in May 2021 that Paula Vennells did not have this conversation with him as he had only met her once for 30 minutes, and Horizon was not discussed. He also stated that his previous role at the Post Office had no connection to the Horizon platform.[28] Criminal prosecutions of postmasters by the Post Office using Horizon data had ceased before Michael Keegan was appointed as CEO of Fujitsu UK and Ireland for 15 months commencing April 2014.[29]
In December 2019, The Register reported that Mr Justice Fraser would be passing a file on to the Director of Public Prosecutions.[30][31] A number of cases are under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission raising the possibility of actions for malicious prosecution.[32][33]
Arbuthnot, by then sitting in the House of Lords as Baron Arbuthnot of Edrom, said in November 2019:[34]
My own suggestion is that the government should clear out the entirety of the board and senior management of the Post Office and start again, perhaps with the assistance of consultancy services from Second Sight, who know where the bodies are buried.
In March 2020 the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) decided to refer for appeal the convictions of 39 Post Office applicants. The Commission said it would be referring all those cases, which involve convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting, on the basis of the argument that each prosecution amounted to an abuse of process.[35] In May 2020 the Criminal Cases Review Commission decided to refer a further eight such convictions for appeal, bringing the total to 47.[36]
In January 2021 the CCRC decided to refer a further four people's convictions, bringing the total to 51.[37]
In April 2021, after an appeal before three judges, Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Picken and Mrs Justice Farbey DBE, thirty nine of the convicted former postmasters had their convictions quashed,[38] with a further twenty two cases still being investigated by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Earlier in December 2020, the convictions of six other former postmasters were overturned due to wrongful conviction.[39] The executive chairman of the legal firm representing many of the postmasters, Dr Neil Hudgell, said "now Post Office officials must face criminal investigation for maliciously ruining lives by prosecuting innocent people in pursuit of profits", and called for the Prime Minister to convene a judge-led inquiry.[40]
The Communication Workers' Union called for Vennells' appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), made in 2019 for "for services to the Post Office and to charity", to be rescinded.[41] In April 2021, after the overturning of the thirty nine convictions, Vennells resigned as a director of Dunelm and Morrisons and as an associate Church of England minister.[42]
Evidence about the case was also heard by Parliament's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee on 10 March 2020.[43][44]
On 19 March 2020, in a debate in the House of Commons, Kevan Jones MP criticized former Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells, for her role in the scandal.[45]
On 26 February 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed to hold an independent inquiry.[46] In a written ministerial statement on 10 June 2020 Paul Scully, Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Labour Markets, announced the scope of the Independent Review into the Post Office Horizon IT System and Trials.[47] The inquiry, led by Sir Wyn Williams, began work in Autumn 2020 and issued a call for evidence on 1 December 2020. The first public hearing session took place on 15 January 2021[48]
On 8 April 2021 Post Office Chief Executive Nick Read announced that the Horizon system will be replaced by a new IT system which would be "more user-friendly, easier to adapt for new products and services, and cloud-based to ensure easy maintenance and ready interoperability with other systems." In a speech to senior staff, he said:
We are already taking the first steps towards migrating off the Horizon system for good, in favour of a modern, cloud-based system which postmasters will find more intuitive and easier to operate.
This will not be easy – it will after all be among the biggest, if not the biggest, IT roll-out in the country when the time comes.
But the change is both necessary and overdue, and it begins now.
In the same speech, Read called on the government to properly compensate victims of the Horizon scandal.[53]
The content is sourced from: https://handwiki.org/wiki/Horizon_(IT_system)