Post Office hires ex-police to check its investigators in Horizon scandal

The Post Office has enlisted a team of former detectives to investigate its own staff’s work regarding the Horizon scandal, including those involved in the prosecution of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. Allegations of misconduct have emerged during the ongoing public inquiry into the scandal, which has been called one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history. More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 due to faulty software provided by Japanese firm Fujitsu, which meant that sub-postmasters were prosecuted for stealing money when in fact the computer system provided incorrect information. Many of those convicted have been financially ruined and some have since died or taken their own lives, while others went to prison for false accounting and theft.
 
The Post Office has said that it takes any allegations of wrongdoing extremely seriously and will investigate through established procedures, with relevant findings from the internal investigation being passed on to the police or acted on by the Post Office itself. The company has been criticised for past investigative practices.
 
A new team has been recruited to look at the quality of past investigations as a response to allegations arising during the ongoing inquiry, which will hope to share information with as many former postmasters as possible. The government has recently announced new legislation that will clear the names of those wrongly convicted. Sir Wyn Williams is leading a public inquiry into the scandal. 
 
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who served as post office minister from 2010 to 2012 apologised for not apologising sooner to victims and their families of the scandal. The key thing now is to make sure that those exonerations happen quickly, that they get the compensation quickly and that they get to the truth with the inquiry.