The 1999 legal change enabled the Post Office scandal, the inquiry said

The computer-based evidence of the entered presumption could not be wrong

John Bartlett, director of assurance and complex investigations at the Post Office, told the Post Office IT Inquiry that changes to legal evidence introduced in 1999 effectively allowed the scandal to happen .

Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, computer evidence could only be provided to the courts together with proof that the system was working properly. However, following a review by the Law Commission, this requirement was dropped in favor of a presumption that a computer is working properly, unless evidence to the contrary can be provided.

In the series of private prosecutions initiated by the Post Office against deputy postmasters accused of fraud, theft and false accounting, this tipped the scales heavily against the defendants, who had no knowledge or resources to challenge the unexplained losses in their accounts that the faulty computer system. introduced Many simply pleaded guilty to avoid jail time.

The Post Office submitted the following to the Law Commission’s evidence request, in support of the proposed change: “I consider that computer evidence, in principle, is no different from any other type of evidence, and that, generally speaking, it should be admissible, so that any argument in court would be related to its weight rather than its admissibility.

“So I feel there should be a presumption that the machine is in good working order and so on, and if the defense wants to argue the contrary, of course they should be able to. At the present time, therefore, I feel that the testing requirements are too strict and may hinder the processes.”

The Horizon system acted as EPOS for thousands of UK post offices, as well as a backend financial system that tallied accounts. It was developed by ICL, later taken over by Fujitsu, and introduced in 1999. However, from the time of its introduction the system introduced unexplained account imbalances which the post office automatically attributed to deputy postmasters.

The legal change introduced in 1999 is compounded by the Post Office’s anachronistic power to bring its own criminal proceedings to court, a power that dates back to 1683, bypassing the usual checks and balances to which the prosecutions instigated by the police. by the Fiscal Service of the Crown.

The Post Office continued to prosecute deputy postmasters even after evidence of serious problems with Horizon was published in 2009.

In fact, as more evidence emerged over the next decade, the Post Office covered up the problems and even assured Ed Davey, postmaster general from 2010 to 2012, that the system was working well.

More than 700 deputy postmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and convicted of fraud, theft or false accounting between 1999 and 2015. Many more were prosecuted but not convicted and forced to make up the shortfalls with their own money.

At least four suicides have been linked to the scandal.

The investigation has found that senior Post Office executives were aware of problems with the ICL/Fujitsu-developed system but did nothing to prevent prosecutions.

The convictions were only overturned after a class action against the post office led by former deputy postmaster Alan Bates.