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At the time smartcards were under consideration as part of the full system, but a final choice of technologies had not been made.Īfter a lengthy competitive procurement exercise, begun in 1994, the contract for further development and full implementation in all post offices was awarded in May 1996 to ICL's Pathway division, which had been created for the purpose.
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#Po office install
The objective of this programme (known as the BA/POCL Programme) was to provide an automated system for making benefits payments through post offices and thereby reduce fraud.Īt the Conservative Party conference in October 1995, the social security minister Peter Lilley brandished a smartcard as the intended replacement for the benefit book, declaring that, with the Benefits Agency and International Computers Limited, Post Office Counters Ltd would install smartcard reading terminals at every branch, through a private finance initiative (PFI) to be delivered under a commercial contract. The system was originally introduced in 1995 on a pilot basis in a small number of post offices, alongside a joint work programme between the Department of Social Security's Benefits Agency and Post Office Counters Ltd. The system cost £1 billion and was designed by ICL/Fujitsu Services. In April 2021 Post Office chief executive Nick Read announced that the Horizon system would be replaced with a new cloud-based IT system. : 137 The BBC called the convictions "the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice". The appelants should not have been prosecuted or convicted. The prosecutions were found to be an abuse of process and an affront to the conscience of the court. The court also made the rare finding that the Post Office had acted in such a way as to subvert the integrity of the criminal justice system and public confidence in it. In December 2020 six convictions were quashed, and in April 2021 the Court of Appeal quashed a further 39 people's convictions. In September 2020, the Post Office declared it would not oppose 44 postmasters' appeals against conviction but it did unsuccessfully oppose their appeals against improper prosecution. Mr Justice Fraser found that this had happened on numerous occasions.
#Po office trial
In 2019 the Horizon Issues trial judgment in the Bates & Ors v Post Office Ltd group litigation at the High Court found that bugs, errors and defects did exist and that it was possible for these to cause apparent discrepancies or shortfalls in branch accounts or transactions, to undermine the reliability of Horizon accurately to process and to record transactions.
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According to press reports, these actions by the Post Office caused the loss of dozens of jobs, bankruptcy, divorce, unwarranted prison sentences and one documented suicide. Once the Post Office had a criminal conviction, it would attempt to secure a Proceeds of Crime Act order against convicted sub-postmasters, allowing it to seize their assets and bankrupt them. Despite this, some SPMs were successfully persuaded by their own solicitors to plead guilty to false accounting, on being told the Post Office would drop theft charges. Public prosecutions also occurred in Scotland, Northern Ireland and in the Crown Court. These were largely private prosecutions by the Post Office relying on IT evidence alone, without proof of criminal intent. Between 19 there were 918 successful prosecutions. Sub-postmasters unwilling or unable to make good the shortfalls were sometimes prosecuted (by the Post Office's in-house prosecution team) for theft, false accounting and/or fraud. The Post Office maintained that Horizon was "robust" and that none of the shortfalls or discrepancies in SPMs' branch accounts were due to problems caused by Horizon. From 1999 onwards unexplained discrepancies and losses began to be reported by sub-postmasters. By 2013 the system was being used by at least 11,500 branches, and was processing some six million transactions every day. In 1999 the UK Post Office introduced a computer accounting system named Horizon.
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3.5.1 Hamilton & Others and Post Office Ltd – April 2021.3.4.2 Permission to appeal Judgment No 4 – May 2019.3.4.1 Permission to appeal Judgment No 3 – November 2019.3.3.2.6 Judgment No 6 Horizon issues – December 2019.3.3.2.5 Judgment No 5 Common Issues costs – June 2019.3.3.2.4 Judgment No 4 Application for recusal – April 2019.3.3.2.3 Judgment No 3 Common Issues – March 2019.3.3.2.2 Judgment No 2 Application to strike out evidence – October 2018.3.3.2.1 Judgment No 1 Applications to alter timetable – November 2017.3.3.1 Post Office Ltd v Castleton – January 2006.3.2.1 R v Christoper Trousdale & Others – December 2020.