Did government allow Post Office to sack forensic accountants to cover up Horizon scandal?

“Assuming the Post Office did brief the government on its reasons, the Post Office either gave a truthful account of the reasons for sacking Second Sight and withdrawing from the mediation, or it gave an incomplete and misleading explanation. If the Post Office gave a truthful explanation, that would arguably make the government complicit in the cover-up of tremendous, unprecedented and widespread injustice. On the other hand, if the Post Office gave a misleading explanation to government why has there not been the slightest suggestion of this from the government.”

“I am of the view there almost certainly was a cover-up. Who was involved remains to be seen.”

Second Sight was getting close to the truth in 2015 and had requested further evidence, including all the prosecution files for subpostmasters taken to court by the Post Office.

Ian Henderson, co-founder of Second Sight, said: “At the request of the Parliamentary Select Committee, I provided further evidence justifying our need for access to the full prosecution files.”

In February 2015, Henderson wrote to MPs with his reasons for the request. He explained that the prosecution knew there was insufficient evidence to support a charge of theft, but proceeded with it, nonetheless; the offer by the prosecution to remove the charge of theft was used to put pressure on the defendant to plead guilty to the false accounting charges and to make good the alleged losses; the threat of proceeding with a charge of theft was primarily to assist in the recovery of losses, and not in the interest of justice; and the prosecution insisted that, as part of the agreement to drop the charge of theft, no mention of alleged problems with the Horizon computer system would be made.

“The new facts that have come to light as a result of examining a single complete legal file have identified a number of issues that indicate possible misconduct by a prosecutor on behalf of Post Office and a possible miscarriage of justice,” said Henderson.

Second Sight was sacked a month later, with the Post Office citing that the mediation scheme had run its course.

A Post Office spokesperson said: “Post Office publicly announced in March 2015 that it was putting forward all remaining [subpostmaster] cases in the scheme forward for mediation, except those which were the subject of previous Court rulings.  The scheme’s working group set up to assess whether cases should move forward to mediation was therefore closed. Second Sight’s engagement with Post Office continued to enable them to finalise remaining case reviews that were ongoing at that stage.

“Concerns had been expressed by Post Office and by applicants that the Scheme was taking longer than those involved would have liked. These delays were acknowledged by Sir Anthony Hooper in a letter to the then Minister for Employment, Consumer Affairs and Equalities, Jo Swinson MP, in December 2014.”

At the time when the Second Sight contract was terminated, Angela van den Bogerd, Post Office head of partnerships, said: “This has been an exhaustive and informative process which has confirmed that there are no system-wide problems with our computer system and associated processes. We will now look to resolve the final outstanding cases as quickly as possible.”

In 2009, a Computer Weekly investigation revealed the stories of seven subpostmasters affected by the losses which led to many more who had suffered losses coming forward (see timeline below for Computer Weekly coverage of the scandal).

BEIS, the government department responsible for the Post Office, had not provided comment at the time of publishing.