Between 2000 and 2020, an estimated 2,500 British post office owners were falsely accused of accounting fraud and theft, including Peter Holmes. The weekly balance sheet shortages faced by the ‘postmasters’ turned out to be the result of computer errors.
‘I don’t worry about anything – except my weekly balance.’ With goosebumps, Marion Holmes read the sentence with which her late husband Peter closed a letter to his bosses at the British Post in 1999. At the time, he wrote in response to a crash course about a new computer system that he had to work with in his post office. “He already suspected that something was wrong,” said his 79-year-old widow. He even threatened to resign. If only he had, but he loved his job.’
It turned out that there was indeed something seriously wrong with Horizon, Fujitsu’s new accounting system. Between 2000 and 2020, an estimated 2,500 British post office owners would be falsely accused of accounting fraud and theft, including Peter Holmes. However, the weekly balance sheet deficits they faced turned out to be the result of computer errors. The Post Office Horizon scandal has been called the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history, but the fight for justice is difficult for the victims.
poignant stories
In Leeds, Cardiff and London, victims or their relatives have had the opportunity to make their experiences public in recent weeks. Day after day, Sir Wyn Williams, the former judge leading the investigation into this scandal, heard testimonies from people who have been wrongly convicted or have lost their homes. Stories also about divorces and suicides. A father of three children was found to have spent a year and a half in prison. He wasn’t the only one. Even the victim’s lawyer, Dave Enright, sometimes had to shed a tear at the harrowing stories.
Marion Holmes sat there with a framed photo of her husband Peter, who passed away seven years ago. After working as a police officer, hotel owner and postman, he had started working as a post office manager in Jesmond, a neighborhood in the north of Newcastle, more than a quarter of a century ago. She said that after the introduction of Horizon, he had to deal with deficits on the balance sheet. Initially he supplemented them out of his own pocket, but at a certain point that was no longer feasible. The helpline was known as the ‘hell line’.
Three auditors came by for a search, the widow says a few weeks later, sitting in her living room and surrounded by photos of her husband. “They didn’t ask if money had been stolen, but where the money had gone, the 54 thousand pounds. When they saw a new carpet in the bedroom, they asked if it had been bought with stolen money. It was unbelievable, unreal. Peter was a very honest man. He once drove back to the restaurant after a family dinner, after he discovered at home that a meal was missing from the receipt.’
Hugely humiliating
Post Office Ltd took him to court, who placed him under house arrest for three months for false bookkeeping. After all, he had replenished the mysterious shortages out of his own pocket. With name, surname and photo he appeared in the newspaper, as a convicted ex-policeman. ‘After this case he would never be the old Peter again, his humor was gone, he was quieter. Because he was convicted, he was no longer allowed to work as a driver for a volunteer organization that helps cancer patients. A few years later he was dead. Brain tumor.’
Because many of the 11 thousand post offices are owned by people of Asian descent, this community has been disproportionately affected. Faisal Aziz, 46, bought a post office in Sheffield in 2015 with his wife Shahla. He too soon had to deal with mysterious cash shortages, and Faisal also supplemented them until this was no longer possible. ‘I put in nearly £40,000 and finally had no choice but to sell the post office. For 15 thousand pounds, a loss of 105 thousand.’
‘I’m trying to build a new life,’ he says, ‘but I can’t concentrate. All day long I think about the debts I have now. We have been living without income for years. We borrow from friends and family, which is very humiliating,” says the father of five. ‘My mother in India was very ill and wanted to see my youngest children again. I had to explain to her that we couldn’t come because we had no money. I was very ashamed. She’s dead now.’
Completely innocent
The victims are now waiting for compensation, but Post Office Ltd, a company with the state as sole shareholder, has been resisting for years. “They’ve hired the best lawyers to keep every claim as low as possible,” said Holmes, who is fighting for justice on behalf of her late husband. A group of 555 ‘postmasters’ had already successfully filed a civil claim two years ago. They got a pittance, all the more so because four-fifths of the converted £68 million to the no win, no feelawyers went.
Now that the victims have told their stories, the substantive investigation will begin. It will not only look at the technical side of the scandal, the software and hardware that turned out to be unsuitable. There are so many questions. Why didn’t a bell ring when all of a sudden all post offices had to deal with shortages? Why were there never any surpluses? Where has all the money gone? Why did the mistress of Post Office Ltd receive a royal honour? Why were the victims consistently told by the auditors that they were the only ones, when they knew they were not?’
“The magnitude of the scandal is hard to comprehend,” says attorney Enright. ‘Anyone who ever goes to the post office comes into contact with an injured person.’ The government sees the mood and has said that each victim will receive what he is entitled to, without going into financial details. For Holmes, it’s simply a matter of fairness. The victims want answers and want the money that has been stolen from them. But not all wounds can be healed. “My Peter never saw the day when it was officially announced that he was completely innocent, that his name was cleared.”
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