The Post Office Scandal Explained

• Imagine being falsely accused of a crime.
• Thousands of sub postmasters in the UK have faced this reality.
• A faulty accounting system led to wrongful prosecutions.
• The UK government and Post Office ignored the problem.
• The story reveals the resilience of those fighting for justice.

Hi, welcome to another episode of Cold Fusion. Imagine being falsely accused of a crime you didn't commit. Your friends and family don't believe you because the government themselves said that you stole money. Think about it, how would you feel? What would you do?

This didn't happen to just one person, but thousands of people in the UK. In the UK, many local Post Office branches aren't run directly by the Post Office but by independent operators known as sub postmasters. They are self-employed individuals who manage and finance their branches under contract, but they run their own businesses serving the community and ensuring that every transaction, every bill payment, parcel shipment, and balance check is accounted for.

So let's say that you're one of these sub postmasters working in your small town Post Office. You're handling letters, parcels, and payments. And at the end of each day, you reconcile the accounts, making sure that the digital records actually match the cash in your till. But then one day you notice something. The numbers just don't add up. Your system says that there's a shortfall, but you know for a fact that nothing is missing. And yet, according to the Post Office and the government, the accounting system is perfect. Which means that there's only one other explanation: you're to blame.

A routine audit turns into accusations of theft. Fraud they call it. Suddenly you're no longer a trusted figure in your community. The Post Office, once your partner, becomes your prosecutor. Courtrooms replace counters and prison walls loom. Your reputation, finances, and entire life crumble in an instant.

Between 1995 and 2015, these sub postmasters were wrongly accused, prosecuted, and in many cases, imprisoned. At the heart of it all was a faulty accounting software called Horizon. But what's worse is that the Post Office, the UK government, and those in positions of authority were well aware of the software problem. But they doubled down. They silenced whistleblowers, ignored and tampered with evidence. And in order to protect their own reputation, they waged ruthless legal battles.

The scandal resurfaced recently with Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office, a gripping drama aired by ITV, one of the UK's major television networks. The series reignited public outrage, forcing the Government to introduce new legislation to overturn the wrongful convictions and speed up compensation for victims, many of whom are still waiting.

Today I can announce that we will introduce new primary legislation to make sure that those convicted as a result of the Horizon scandal are swiftly exonerated and compensated. Every year the Government spouts, "We will get them paid by the end of the year." Last year the Minister said, "We will get them paid by December this year." Well, it hasn't happened, but we’ve got to take a step back. How on earth did all of this happen in the first place?

Today we're taking a deep dive into the Post Office Horizon scandal. It's an unbelievable saga that has been called the UK's largest miscarriage of justice in its history. It's also the story of the resilience of those who fought hard for the truth.

So let's get started. You are watching Cold Fusion TV, but before we get started, just some quick housekeeping. Cold Fusion episodes are now available on Spotify, so you can watch them there if you prefer.

It was the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history.
700 hardworking postmasters and postmistresses were prosecuted for theft, fraud, and false accounting from the late 90s to 2015. But the problem was not the workers. It was dodgy accounting software. The story begins in the late 1990s, a time when the UK Post Office sought to modernize its operations. Determined to step into the digital age, it introduced the Horizon IT system.

It was a new digital accounting and transaction management software meant to streamline financial records across thousands of Post Office branches in the UK. Developed in the late 90s by ICO, a British company later acquired by Fujitsu, Horizon was designed for one purpose only: to replace the traditional paper-based bookkeeping system. Now all payments, transactions, and financial information would be digital. And on paper, that sounded great. But in reality, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

From the very beginning, things went very wrong. When Horizon was first deployed in 1999, cracks in the system started appearing almost immediately. Sub postmasters across the country began noticing discrepancies in their accounts. Some figures just didn't add up. Sometimes it was small amounts, like £100 or so. Other times it was catastrophic. Tens of thousands of pounds seemingly vanishing into thin air.

The Post Office's response was chillingly consistent. "The system is perfect," they insisted. "It must be human error." The truth, however, was far more troubling. Horizon was riddled with bugs and glitches. Coding errors or crashes could create phantom shortfalls. These invisible faults within the software itself would show that money was missing, when in fact nothing was wrong. For many, this was just the beginning of their ordeal. Later they would be accused of theft, fraud, and false accounting. And the sub postmasters were now forced to repay the so-called missing amounts.

For some, this meant remortgaging their homes or even draining their life savings. For others, it was even worse. If they couldn't pay, the Post Office took them to court. During the whole ordeal, over 700 postmasters were taken to court.

"I had to sell our wedding rings and everything because it got so bad at one point, and to lose that was heartbreaking." It’s just not that. The UK government's Crown Prosecution Service filed another 283 cases. Over 200 were jailed while countless others lost their businesses, homes, and reputations. And very sadly, at least four took their own lives. They were overwhelmed by the shame of wrongful accusations.

As you can see, this wasn't merely just a legal issue or a problem with some code. It was a real, genuine human tragedy. So we have to ask, what secrets were hidden away by the UK government and Post Office to protect their reputation? Let's explore.

Enter David McDonald, a former Deputy Development Manager at Fujitsu; he saw the chaos unfold firsthand. In 1998, before the system was released, he co-wrote a report exposing Horizon's flaws. The report bluntly stated, "whoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming." McDonnell later testified in 2022, describing the development team behind the Horizon software as a complete disaster.

"It was like the Wild West. No standards, no design documents. There was no structure, no discipline. It was crazy." And the code itself? It was worse. It was so bad, it was beyond anything I've ever seen. Even in the 25 to 30 years since that project, I've never seen anything like that before. Some of the stuff we found buried in the code was unbelievable. There was unreachable code. It was a mess. Even the testing team thought the coding quality was laughable. They told me outright that testing was a waste of time.

David McDonald wasn't there just to criticize, though; he did propose a fix. Basically, step by step, take out the faulty code and replace them with new modules alongside the old ones and then check if it all works. It sounds reasonable, right? But Terry Austin, the Horizon program manager, didn't think so. David McDonald's practical suggestion was dismissed, leaving him baffled. McDonald said it could have been one of two things: either a basic misunderstanding or an effort to sweep the problems under the rug. But the incompetence continued.

Instead of fixing the root problems, Fujitsu introduced CSR, basically a monitoring tool that flagged the problems but didn't solve them. McDonnell likened it to patching a sinking ship. "Imagine the engineers telling the captain that there's a hole in the boat, and instead of fixing it, they paint a line outside to see how fast it's sinking." That was what CSR was.

By late 1999, McDonald had been reassigned and the same errors and bugs persisted. They didn't listen to him. There were, in fact, so many bugs that they later filled a 119-page appendix in court documents. And this brings us to the heart of the issue: a systemic culture of denial and deflection.

The technical failures of the Horizon system were bad enough, but they were made far worse by a culture of denial at the very top. As time went on, instead of addressing the growing pile of discrepancies, Post Office executives clung to the illusion of Horizon's reliability. This wasn't ignorance; it was deliberate. Many internal warnings of Horizon's flaws were ignored and evidence revealed that some officials misled both the courts and Parliament to protect their system’s reputation.

Documents brought to light during the inquiry showed that the Post Office executives knew about Horizon's reliability issues but chose to suppress the truth. Fujitsu, the system's developer, was no innocent bystander either. The company pressured the UK government to push the project forward despite glaring flaws. To understand just how deep the failures ran, the inquiry had to go back to the system's origins in 1996. Even back then, alarm bells were ringing.

The British Embassy in Tokyo stepped in, warning the UK government that scrapping the deal with Fujitsu ICL could lead to job losses and harm trade relations. Instead of halting the troubled project, the government and the Post Office doubled down, playing hardball to ensure Horizon's rollout. Even though it was clear that the system wasn't ready, the truth may have stayed buried if not for a few brave whistleblowers who risked their careers to expose it.

For example, Richard Roll, an IT specialist, worked for Fujitsu in the early 2000s. He discovered that Fujitsu engineers had backdoor access to Horizon systems and they could remotely alter financial records. The Post Office denied this claim in court for years. And when Richard tried to reveal the truth, he was threatened and silenced. Beyond targeting individuals, the Post Office and Fujitsu worked to suppress evidence. They buried reports and lobbied to delay investigations.

Even the National Federation of Sub Postmasters, the NFSP, which was supposed to protect sub postmasters, betrayed them. Instead of advocating for victims, they covered up complaints and pressured sub postmasters to cover the fictitious missing money, ultimately sweeping millions of disputed funds under the rug. The culture of denial wasn't just negligence. It was stubbornness on steroids.

The Post Office clung to their story like their reputation depended on it, because, well, it did. Their largest claim was that Horizon was reliable, with nearly 12,000 branches using it. They claimed that only a few hundred had issues, so it must be fraud or human error. This, of course, fell apart in court. Their second line of reasoning for being so stubborn was that the contracts between Fujitsu and the UK government were worth multiple millions of pounds. And this meant that if Fujitsu admitted the faults, it could cost them millions and damage UK-Japan trade relations. The Post Office was now tied to Fujitsu.

The organisation found themselves unable to easily switch to another supplier, leaving them trapped in a failing system. Most consequential of all, their reputation was on the line, and they had to protect it. Acknowledging the flaws in the software would have led to lawsuits and public humiliation. But all of these justifications fell apart under scrutiny. Instead of fixing Horizon, the Post Office actually used faulty data to prosecute innocent people, literally ruining their lives.

But some people wouldn't take this lying down. Enter Alan Bates. One of the first people to challenge the Post Office narrative was Alan Bates, a former sub postmaster from North Wales. He was the main character portrayed in ITV's Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office drama. Here's a brief timeline of his story.

In 1998, he invested his life savings into a Post Office counter. By 2000, the faulty Horizon software said that there was a £6,000 shortfall. His protests were ignored. Then, in 2003, the Post Office terminated his contract, leaving him £60,000 in debt. But instead of giving up, Mr. Bates fought back. In 2009, he took his story to Computer Weekly. This was the very first major media coverage of the Horizon scandal.

In the same year, he founded the Justice for Sub Postmasters Alliance, a movement that would eventually go on to expose the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history. Finally, in 2019, after years of legal battles, the High Court ruled Horizon as unreliable. Mr. Bates was vindicated. The court case confirmed that hundreds of sub postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted.

"I felt they were going to make a lesson of my case because a number of other people knew what was going on there in time, and I think it was something that Post Office liked to try and give lessons on how they were in charge." And in the scandal's wake, we can see the true human cost.

A sub postmaster in Hampshire was accused of false accounting in 2003 after unexplained shortfalls. Terrified of prison, she pled guilty. Living with a criminal record for years, "I almost feel a bit like I've got survivors guilt because, you know, many of my colleagues that I fought alongside in court haven't been settled, and I feel that I feel guilty for it."

But my husband's getting older and I didn't want him to go into his 80s still waiting for money. We had a mortgage and he was working five days a week until he was 75. I had 10 cleaning jobs and there comes a point where you run out of road and you just get exhausted. So you think, well, we've just got to sort it out.

Seema Meisra, eight weeks pregnant, was wrongfully convicted of theft in 2010 based solely on Horizon's faulty data. She was sent to prison and endured years of stigma and isolation. Her conviction was finally overturned in 2021, but the damage had already been done.

"It was horrible. I've seen the email before. It's just like seeing it again. It makes me more and more angry." Apologize for his apologies. Haven't accepted it. It was really bad. You know, they missed so many chances to apologize before they missed that.

"How can they, how can I accept the apology? They need to apologize to my 10-year-old, you know, they took his mum away on his birthday. I was eight weeks pregnant. So, you know, they need to apologize to my younger son. It's terrible."

So this whole situation was a disaster. But in all of this, there's one question. What about the Post Office executives and Fujitsu officials who let the disaster unfold? What happened to them? Well, unfortunately, as you could probably guess, the answer is almost nothing. Senior Post Office executives faced no serious criminal charges. Many quietly resigned, severance packages intact. Meanwhile, their victims were left to rebuild their lives.

Paula Venls, the Post Office CEO during the height of the scandal, finally admitted in 2024 that the Post Office misled the court. But for many, her remorse came too late. Fujitsu avoided any real consequences, and this was despite their direct involvement in evidence tampering. A UK parliamentary report suggested that Fujitsu should be banned from all future government contracts. But as of early 2025, no action has been taken.

Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the Horizon scandal "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history," yet those responsible walked free. What do you think?

"It says that it's taken an ITV drama to get your government to refocus on the issue of the scandal of the Post Office. And don't you think after all this time, it would now be a good idea to just quash all the remaining convictions?"

So first thing to say is this is an absolutely appalling miscarriage of justice. The stories are appalling. People were treated absolutely appallingly. That's wrong, and we should do everything we can to make it right. The UK government has announced new compensation schemes. In total, £289 million has been paid out so far, and that's to over 2,800 people. But it's by no means done, unfortunately. And sadly, thousands of victims are still waiting for justice.

So there you have it, the story of the UK's biggest miscarriage of justice. The UK government and Fujitsu tried to hide their catastrophic mistakes, even though it was clear that they were in the wrong. The truth, however, couldn't stay buried forever. From developers and executives to government officials and industry representatives, this case laid bare the culture of denial and the failures at every level.

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So what do you guys think about this story? What would you do if you were wrongly accused of stealing money? Let me know in the comment section below.

So anyway, my name is Dgogo and you've been watching Cold Fusion. I'll catch you again soon for the next episode. Cheers guys, have a good one. Cold Fusion, it's me thinking.