The UK Post Office Scandal, a true horror story

It was 1999 when the U.K.'s state-run Post Office introduced Horizon computer software, designed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, to manage financial transactions in branches across the country. Employees in charge of these branches soon began reporting that Horizon was reporting false cash shortfalls, but their warnings went unheeded, and accounting errors continued to appear in branch accounts. Those in charge of the Post Office refused to admit Horizon's shortcomings, and instead began relentlessly persecuting employees starting in 2000.

Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of Post Office employees, deputy directors and branch operators, were prosecuted and convicted based on accounting information generated by Horizon. Post Office employees are usually very recognized and valued community members, trustworthy people who manage locals' savings and pensions. Because of the government's accusations, many of them served prison sentences after being convicted of theft. Many faced financial ruin because they were ordered to repay the money Horizon said they had stolen. Many were publicly humiliated, singled out, and had their friendships and families destroyed. Many were divorced, and many committed suicide. These were hardworking, locally respected people who became outcasts and criminals overnight, and these labels accompanied many of them to the grave.

In 2009, a trade publication reported on allegations of Horizon failures, but it was only in 2015 and thanks to pressure from the media and members of Parliament, when the Post Office began investigating the issue, although its boss Paula Vennells declared to the authorities that there was no evidence of any error. For years, the Post Office, which has the power to investigate and prosecute without the need for police intervention, continued to ignore reports and complaints that highlighted problems with the computer system developed by Fujitsu. In 2019, a group of former Post Office employees won a high court case in which their sentences were declared unfair and the Horizon system was found to be at fault. In 2021, the ruling was confirmed on appeal, overturning the convictions and paving the way for compensation.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the convictions an "appalling miscarriage of justice" and pledged to introduce a new law to exonerate the accused employees.

For more than 20 years, hundreds of good people suffered public scorn, misery and injustice. For example, Parmod Kalia was accused of stealing more than 20,000 Great British pounds (roughly $25,500) and sentenced to six months in prison in 2001. Seema Misra was eight weeks pregnant when she was sentenced to 15 months in prison for the theft of 74,000 pounds: "I had been warned that there was a possibility of me being imprisoned. But I honestly couldn't see for a second how they could punish me like that for something I hadn't done. At that moment I had faith in the justice system. When the judge said I had been sentenced to 15 months in prison, I fainted. If I hadn't been pregnant, I would have taken my life. I was at rock bottom." Noel Thomas, 77, was jailed accused of stealing 48,000 pounds. Around 3,500 employees were wrongly accused of stealing money from Post Office branches. More than 900 were prosecuted by the Post Office, which not only did not listen to the warnings but also did not question the statistical impossibility that, out of nowhere, thousands of people with no criminal record who were valued in their communities would become criminals all of a sudden, at exactly the same time as a software system with numerous complaints of ineffectiveness was implemented.

In the early days of 2024, public fury erupted. The reason was that this scandal, which had ruined the lives of hundreds of good people, came to light thanks to a television series: "Mr Bates vs the Post Office: The Real Story." The four-part series chronicles the legal battle of one of Horizon's victimized employees, Alan Bates, against the Post Office, which had falsely accused him of theft. After the series aired, the public began to ask for explanations and demand that the authorities be held accountable, due to the fact that the majority of those who had been wrongly accused had not yet received justice. The British government, which is enduring a turbulent political moment, came under enormous pressure to speed up the legal process of reviewing convictions. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, interviewed last Sunday, called the convictions an "appalling miscarriage of justice" and pledged to introduce a new law to exonerate the accused employees.

However, the reality is that to date, no senior Post Office official has been punished. The most exposed, Vennells, received more than 4.5 million pounds ($5.7 million) in salary and bonuses during her seven-year tenure, until she resigned in 2019 as the initial judicial reviews began. After the scandal broke out with the television series, Vennells agreed to return her CBE (Commander of the British Empire, a decoration that the government proposes and awards to the King or a member of the Royal Family) honor that was awarded to her in 2019 for her services with the Post Office. Former Postal Affairs Minister Sir Ed Davey, now a political leader, was also caught in the eye of the storm because he refused to meet with Alan Bates in May 2010, saying in a letter that the man and his cause "would be of no use to no useful purpose." While these misfortunes were occurring, Fujitsu continued to earn multiple contracts with the British government. In fact, the Post Office paid Fujitsu 95 million pounds to expand Horizon.

It is increasingly evident how the worst bureaucrats take advantage of the citizens who keep the system running.

Current Minister for Postal Affairs Kevin Hollinrake claimed there had been a "brutal and arbitrary exercise of power" and added that 1 billion pounds had been budgeted for compensation payments, which of course will come from British taxpayers. When asked by the BBC why it took a television program to address an injustice that became known more than a decade ago, Hollinrake said: "We are people ourselves, of course. We ourselves watch television and see these things, and we and other people within the government realize that this is a situation that we have to resolve." Justice Secretary Alex Chalk was suddenly "shocked" and called on Fujitsu to "face the consequences," but Fujitsu has received more than 6.5 billion in public contracts since 2013, even though its performance failures were known.

The Post Office scandal is the best metaphor for the abysmal distance that exists between political and corporate elites and ordinary people throughout the West. It is increasingly evident how the worst bureaucrats take advantage of the citizens who keep the system running despite often having their most basic rights, such as access to justice, be taken away from them. Those who do not respect property, safety and life are often released, but people who have respected the rules are mercilessly persecuted. Once again, the ordinary citizen has been betrayed by an ethically deficient establishment.

Ordinary people no longer expect anything from their elites, their politicians, their governments.

The hundreds of postal employees whose lives were ruined, who were unjustly convicted, were not defrauding the treasury with subsidies or privileges improperly requested or leveraged by identity politics. They were not demonstrating violently to impose their sectarian slogans or to impose their politically correct ideology. They were plain citizens who were not under the umbrella of victimhood, but on the contrary, marked as privileged by woke culture. They are the people who keep countries' lights on, the taxpayers who support the elites and their strategically visible groups.

The Post Office scandal exposes the inability of state institutions to serve any positive purpose, systematically converted into tragic abuse. The Post Office is state-owned and run by a well-paid class of elites who are unaccountable for their mistakes. It is, as always, the overpaid and out of control corporate bureaucratic class against the common people. These ineffective bureaucrats are incapable of surviving in the private sector and, whether by stupidity or evil, inevitably overpay and choose the worst contractors. The responsibility never falls on politicians who continue to show their disinterest in the common good unless a television series exposes them, in which case they go overboard to appease the mob. Ordinary people no longer expect anything from their elites, their politicians, their governments. They know that they will not receive fair treatment unless, exceptionally, a media scandal breaks out. This persistent crisis of trust and representation is not surprise. Everyone already knows that the best are in the hands of the worst.