Sir Ed Davey, leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, has faced harsh criticism this week for his role in the Horizon IT scandal, after it was revealed that he failed to act on claims that sub-postmasters were being wrongly accused of theft and false accounting by the Post Office.
But experts and campaigners say that members of all three main political parties could have done more to address claims over the nearly two-decade scandal that has ruined hundreds of lives.
Seventeen ministers have been responsible for the postal service brief since the flawed Horizon system was rolled out to Post Office branches under a Labour administration in 2000.
It was only following a landmark 2019 Court of Appeal case that the Post Office’s leadership was forced to concede that there were systemic issues with the Horizon system. It took several months before then prime minister Boris Johnson committed to an independent public inquiry into what has become one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice.
More than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted using data from faulty Horizon software between 2000 and 2014; only 93 convictions have been overturned.
Although several sitting MPs tried to act on behalf of aggrieved constituents, and select committee hearings were held to discuss complaints, “there is no political party that comes out of this well, we have to face up to that”, said Lord James Arbuthnot, a former Tory MP and one of the few in Westminster who fought for the government to take the issue more seriously.
Labour 1998-2010
Concerns first emerged about the accuracy of the Horizon computer system developed by Japanese company Fujitsu in 1998 when Harriet Harman, then secretary of state for work and pensions, wrote to prime minister Tony Blair telling him there was “a serious risk” that the project would fail either to deliver its objectives or to do so within a worthwhile timescale.
Harman added it would be “prudent to take stock before committing to further investment”.
Following Harman’s letter, Alistair Darling, then chief secretary to the Treasury, commissioned an interdepartmental working group, known as the Horizon Project Review Group, to address some of the problems with the programme.
Blair received a Treasury briefing in 1999 outlining a list of failures relating to the Horizon system. But ministers failed to investigate the extent of the problem and broadly relied on evidence provided by the Post Office, which had strong financial incentives to downplay concerns, according to evidence given to the Horizon inquiry.
The official rollout of Horizon began across thousands of Post Office branches in January 2000; later that year the first six postmasters were convicted of false accounting and theft.
Stephen Timms, the Labour minister for postal affairs between 2002 and 2004, dismissed concerns raised by a campaigner about a dispute with the company over accounting relating to the Horizon system, saying that the issue was a matter for the Post Office, not the government. A handwritten note on the letter stated: “I am trying to find out what the dispute is here.”
In a 2004 letter to the MP representing accused sub-postmaster Alan Bates — who became a campaigner for those wrongly accused and was the subject of the TV drama that has galvanised public outrage over the scandal — Timms wrote that the Post Office “found no evidence to suggest that there is any fault with the Horizon system and maintain(ed) that the decision to terminate Mr Bates’ contract was legitimate”.
Timms told the FT that the correspondence “doesn’t seem to have provided a basis for me taking the matter further at that stage” and noted he was reshuffled into a different job in 2004.
Pat McFadden, who became minister responsible for postal services in 2009 conceded last week to Times Radio that he may have been told about the Horizon scandal but said he was focused on Post Office closures, which were more pressing and controversial at the time.
Liberal Democrats 2010-15
Davey was minister for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs in the coalition government between 2010 and 2012. After Bates wrote to him several times and suggested he initiate an independent investigation into cases being raised by the campaigning group Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance, Davey responded that they were a matter for the Post Office.
Although Davey subsequently met Bates he continued to distance the government from the case, maintaining that ministers could not intervene in legal proceedings.
From 2015 to 2021, after leaving office, Davey also acted as an adviser to Herbert Smith Freehills, a law firm that advised the Post Office during the 2019 Court of Appeal case and acted for it in compensation claims and disclosure to the public inquiry.
Davey told Sky News this week: “I wish I knew then what I know now, that this was a conspiracy on a huge scale with the Post Office lying to victims, to judges, to ministers of all political parties over decades.” He has also said in a statement that he had no knowledge of Herbert Smith Freehills’ work on behalf of the Post Office during his stint as adviser.
Jo Swinson, who would go on to become leader of the Lib Dems, took over as postal affairs minister in 2012, and downplayed evidence found by an independent review into problems with the Horizon system.
In written statement to parliament the following year she said: “Contrary to misleading media reports, the review explicitly confirms that ‘we have so far found no evidence of system-wide problems with the Horizon software’.” She also sought to distance the government from the ongoing court cases saying it “cannot intervene in the legal process to review or appeal past convictions”.
When the Post Office terminated an inquiry and mediation scheme it had set up in 2013, and attempted to prevent the publication of an independent report by forensic accountancy firm Second Sight, Swinson wrote to Bates saying that the government could not compel the report to be published.
Swinson told the FT she had “repeatedly probed and questioned civil servants and Post Office Ltd about Horizon”. She added: “It is clear that Post Office Ltd misled me and other Ministers on multiple occasions.”
Conservatives 2015-24
In 2015, Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, who was minister for postal affairs in 2015, told the incoming Post Office chair Tim Parker to conduct a thorough review of the Horizon system. He commissioned Jonathan Swift KC, a senior lawyer, to investigate. The review raised serious concerns about postmasters who had been encouraged to plead guilty to reduce their sentence but was not published in full until 2022.
Richard Moorhead, a professor of legal ethics and member of the government’s Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, said its findings should have been disclosed in court cases in 2020, given they “showed the Post Office had been advised they had not been telling the truth about Horizon”.
Neville-Rolfe said she was no longer a minister when Swift completed his report in 2016, and noted she continued to ask questions about the scandal as a backbench MP.
Margot James, who in 2016 succeeded Neville-Rolfe as postal services minister, admitted in 2021 that she “probably didn’t do enough” to help sub-postmasters convicted in gross miscarriages of justice and wished she had “done more”.
Paul Scully, a minister in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in 2020 wrote in a submission to a select committee that: “Preliminary conclusion of the (Swift) review . . . finds no systematic problem with the Horizon system.”
Later that year, after some victims began to have their convictions quashed, ministers opened an independent statutory investigation into the scandal, though Scully had initially rejected this move.
This week he told the FT he believed one should have been called years earlier to save postal workers the cost and pain of lengthy court cases.
“All three political parties had a role to play,” he said.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week labelled the affair an “appalling miscarriage of justice”.
The government is currently considering a blanket exoneration for sub-postmasters following criticism that it had been slow to deliver justice and compensation to victims.