Sub-postmasters begin appeal to overturn convictions

The Post Office turned itself into “the nation’s most untrustworthy brand through its own behaviour” in its defence of a faulty computer system, the Criminal Court of Appeal was told on Monday.

The appeal court is this week deciding whether to quash the criminal convictions of 42 sub-postmasters who claim they were wrongly prosecuted by the state-owned Post Office after its faulty Horizon computer system led to financial shortfalls in their branch accounts between 2000 and 2013. 

The Post Office insisted they repay supposedly missing money — in some cases tens of thousands of pounds — and prosecuted them for theft and false accounting. 

The 42 cases were referred to the appeal court last year by the Criminal Case Review Commission, an independent body which investigates miscarriages of justice. It made the referral after the High Court concluded in a separate civil lawsuit brought by 550 sub-postmasters that the Post Office’s Horizon software contained IT bugs which triggered discrepancies in branch accounts.

In his opening speech, Tim Moloney QC, acting for most of the 42 sub-postmasters, argued that the convictions were unsafe. The Post Office had failed to investigate problems with the Horizon computer system and failed to disclose critical evidence about software bugs to the sub-postmasters’ defence lawyers, making it impossible for them to get a fair trial, he said.

Many sub-postmasters “pleaded guilty in the face of the difficulties they faced in defending themselves”, Moloney told the court, adding that the sub-postmasters suffered “shame and humiliation” by being arrested and prosecuted 

“A large number received custodial sentences and immediately went to prison, some saw their marriages break up and others suffered bankruptcy. Some are dead having gone to their graves with their previous convictions extant,” Moloney said.

He told the court that as far back as August 1999 there had been concerns about the reliability of Horizon within the Post Office, adding that “alarm bells should have rung” at the number of prosecutions. “A number of lives have been ruined as a result,” Moloney said.

Sam Stein QC, a barrister representing several sub-postmasters, said that by its alleged attempts to protect the Horizon computer system from criticism the Post Office had “turned itself into the nation’s most untrustworthy brand by its own behaviour”.

The Post Office is not opposing 39 of the 42 appeals on one of the two grounds of appeal: that critical evidence had been withheld by the Post Office ahead of trial.

However it is fighting 35 out of those 39 cases on a second appeal point: that the circumstances in which the prosecutions went ahead represents an affront to public justice. The Post Office is not opposing four of the 39 cases on either ground but it is fighting three of the 42 cases on both grounds.

Brian Altman QC, representing the Post Office, will present his case later in the week. On Monday he said each case was fact specific and the Post Office believed problems in the test phase of Horizon had been resolved when it was rolled out in 2000. “It does not mean that the Post Office knew or believed there were any issues moving forward that could have caused the problems identified 20 years later in litigation,” he said. The hearing continues.