Police consider corporate manslaughter charges over UK Post Office software linked to 13 suicides

Police investigating the scandal around the UK Post Office Horizon IT system linked to the suicide of a numbers of its users are now considering corporate manslaughter charges against the companies involved, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has said.

The Post Office Horizon accounting system scandal is now seen as the UK’s biggest ever IT disaster and its worst miscarriage of justice. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for fraud, theft and false accounting.

Accounting discrepancies and shortfalls recorded by Horizon resulted in 236 being sent to prison. The Post Office claimed the discrepancies were the result of mistakes or fraud by sub-postmasters, but it later emerged that the system itself was at fault on a huge scale.

This resulted in the setting up of an official Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry in 2020 to look into the actions of the Post Office and the supplier which built the Horizon system, Fujitsu. At the same time, a separate 100-officer police operation dubbed ‘Operation Olympos’ was launched to investigate possible criminality.

The news that the police are now considering charges of corporate manslaughter is partly explained by the publication in July of part one of the inquiry’s final report. This concluded that the accounting fraud prosecutions were a factor in at least 13 suicides, with a further 59 people telling the inquiry that they’d contemplated taking their own lives.

According to this week’s NPCC update, the criminal investigation is currently focusing on eight suspects, five of whom had been interviewed under caution. Altogether, police had identified 53 persons of interest, many of whom might later become suspects, the NPCC said in a news briefing.

“We have not made any arrests, as it is not necessary given the way we interview and use additional warrants where necessary to secure additional material. We continue to focus on the offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice, but we are additionally considering corporate manslaughter charges,” the NPCC said.

Criminal charges

In UK law, corporate manslaughter is a criminal charge brought against organizations under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 where senior management are accused of grossly breaching their duty of care to an individual leading to their death. Prosecutions of this type have been uncommon, mainly because proving executive gross negligence sets a high bar.

However, this week’s NPCC update also raises the possibility that police might bring a separate common law charge, gross negligent manslaughter, against specific individuals. The police haven’t indicated who might be in the frame for such a charge, but it would presumably relate to decision makers working for the Post Office, Fujitsu or their advisors.

“The primary and sole focus at present remains the offences of perverting the course of justice and perjury and this has not changed. However, as was done with fraud offences previously, advice is being sought from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) around the offences of corporate and gross negligent manslaughter,” the NPCC said without elaborating on possible targets.

Separately, the NPCC said it was appealing for victims who signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with the Post Office to come forward and speak to its investigation team. The NDAs would no longer be enforced, the NPCC said.

False Horizon

The Post Office started using Fujitsu’s Horizon accounting system in 1999, initially as ‘legacy’ Horizon until 2010 and then in a second version called Horizon Online, or HNG-X. Its purpose was to automate sales, stocktaking, and accounting across 18,500 post offices. Sub-postmasters were migrated from a paper-based accounting system to an online one that recorded all money going into and out of their accounts centrally.

The system had problems from its earliest days, with the first inquiry report finding that Fujitsu knew the system was prone to intermittent “bugs, errors and defects.” These included phantom withdrawals that could leave sub-postmaster accounts showing sometimes large discrepancies.

Instead of admitting to these problems, the Post Office steadfastly insisted the system was reliable and that the errors, sometimes running into thousands of pounds, were the result of sub-postmaster mistakes or deliberate theft.

Between 2000 and 2017, shortfalls affected 3,500 sub-postmasters, resulting in over 900 private prosecutions and 736 convictions. “All of these people are properly to be regarded as victims of wholly unacceptable behaviour perpetrated by a number of individuals employed by and/or associated with the Post Office and Fujitsu from time to time, and by the Post Office and Fujitsu as institutions,” said July’s first inquiry report.

Despite this week’s update, the Horizon scandal still has some way to go, with trials resulting from subsequent prosecutions not expected until 2027 or later.