Filming has begun on a 4 part drama about the Horizon scandal, that destroyed the lives of over 500 post office sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. A star studded cast including Toby Jones and Julie Hesmondhalgh, will take us through the persecutions of the workers and how Alan Bates a sub-postmaster stood up to the Post Office and took them to court.
It is hoped that this drama will be on our screens in 2024, on ITV 1 and ITVX.
The Post Office Horizon scandal is one of the most significant legal, technological, and institutional failures in the UK’s history. It’s a saga that took place over two decades and involved thousands of sub-postmasters, an allegedly faulty computer system, and a series of court cases leading to the largest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.
The scandal began with the introduction of the Horizon IT system, supplied by the Japanese company Fujitsu, in Post Office branches across the UK in 1999. The system was designed to modernize the Post Office’s operations, handling everything from financial transactions and stocktaking to record-keeping.
However, soon after the system was implemented, sub-postmasters started noticing discrepancies between their physical cash count and the digital records maintained by Horizon. These shortfalls ranged from a few pounds to tens of thousands. Sub-postmasters were contractually obliged to make good any losses, and many plunged into debt as they attempted to cover these apparent shortfalls.
The Post Office, rather than acknowledging the possibility of faults in the Horizon system, accused sub-postmasters of theft and false accounting. This stance led to the prosecution of hundreds of individuals based on the evidence from the Horizon system, with the Post Office acting as both prosecutor and judge. Many of the accused were convicted, with penalties ranging from hefty fines and ruined reputations to prison sentences.
Meanwhile, the Post Office and Fujitsu reportedly knew about potential issues with the Horizon system. There were claims of bugs, software glitches, and errors that could potentially affect financial transactions and records. This evidence was, however, not presented in the court cases against the sub-postmasters.
This institutional denial persisted until a group of 550 sub-postmasters launched a civil lawsuit against the Post Office in 2017, arguing that the Horizon system was fundamentally flawed and was the real cause of the discrepancies. The case, known as Bates and others v Post Office Ltd, resulted in a damning judgment in 2019.
In a landmark ruling, Justice Fraser found the Horizon system to be unreliable, highlighting its potential for bugs, errors, and discrepancies. He noted that the Post Office had engaged in a “most dreadful” abuse of trust in its treatment of sub-postmasters. The Post Office was ordered to pay £58 million in settlement, although for many sub-postmasters, the financial and emotional damage had already been done.
The ruling paved the way for the criminal convictions of 39 sub-postmasters to be overturned in the Court of Appeal in December 2020, with the court denouncing the Post Office’s “institutional obstinacy or refusal to consider” the possibility that Horizon was at fault.
The scandal has caused significant reputational damage to the Post Office and raised serious questions about the role of Fujitsu and the governmental oversight of the Post Office. As of 2021, several investigations were underway to understand how this situation could have happened and to ensure it could not happen again. Meanwhile, hundreds more cases connected to the Horizon scandal were under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
