Police Launch Nationwide Criminal Investigation Into Post Office Scandal

Members of the Justice For Subpostmaster Alliance (JFSA) protest outside Aldwych House in central London, England, on May 24, 2024. Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

The Metropolitan Police will coordinate a nationwide criminal investigation related to the Post Office scandal, the force has confirmed.

The Met began a criminal investigation in January 2020 focused on “offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice” in matters concerning the Post Office and Fujitsu, Scotland Yard confirmed in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

A national investigation has been agreed by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and forms the “next phase” of the inquiry, Scotland Yard said.

The investigation has to take into account findings of the ongoing public inquiry, which is due to conclude the year. The inquiry’s final report is expected to be released in the autumn of 2025. This means that it is not likely any charging files will be submitted to the CPS before 2026.

Confirmation from the Met on the status of the investigation was made following a report in The Guardian that some 80 detectives will be deployed for the criminal inquiry.

‘Full Investigation’

Met Commander Stephen Clayman, who oversees the investigation, said in the statement seen by The Epoch Times that a “team of detectives has been painstakingly working through millions of documents manually and with the help of specialist software, in parallel with the Public Inquiry.”

Commander Clayman said, “Given the significant scale of the investigation, it has been agreed by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) that the next phase of the investigation will be a national policing effort, coordinated by the Met, with the pursuit of justice at its heart.”

“We do not underestimate the seriousness of the task at hand and we are determined to carry out a full investigation with independence, precision and integrity,” he added.

The investigation began following a referral from the director of public prosecutions and has seen Scotland Yard working closely with Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for the past four years.

More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015, despite growing evidence that Fujitsu’s Horizon IT system was faulty and was giving the misleading impression that money was going missing from branches.

A High Court judge ruled in December 2019 that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in branch accounts were caused by the IT system. A public inquiry into Horizon was launched in February 2021.

‘Miscarriage of Justice’

In January 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history,” as he launched a bill to exonerate and compensate those wrongly accused, some of whom were imprisoned.

On Friday, the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill received Royal Assent, passing into law on the final sitting day of Parliament before it was dissolved ahead of the July 4 General Election.

Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake told colleagues in the House of Commons, “It’s an historic day because convictions will, as a result of this legislation, be overturned on royal assent–and with His Majesty’s agreement that means they will be overturned tomorrow.”

This means that convictions of theft, fraud, false accounting, and other offences for subpostmasters will be quashed and relevant cautions will be deleted from records.

The bill will apply in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, with the Scottish Parliament set to pass its own law to a similar effect, because of Scotland’s distinct legal system. Those whose convictions have been quashed will be eligible for compensation from the Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme.

Mr. Bates Vs The Post Office

Last month, the Post Office inquiry heard from leading campaigner and former subpostmaster Alan Bates who had had his contract terminated by the Post Office in 2003 after he refused to accept liability for shortfalls in the branch’s accounts.

He began a campaign after hearing others had suffered the same problems with the Horizon system, telling the inquiry that it became “something you couldn’t put down.”

The inquiry heard that Mr. Bates—played by Toby Jones in the ITV drama “Mr. Bates Vs The Post Office” which brought the issue to wider public knowledge—accused Sir Ed Davey in 2010 of allowing the Post Office to be “asset stripped by little more than thugs in suits” and criticised the then-minister for postal affairs for delaying a meeting with him.

Former sub-postmaster Alan Bates leaves after attending a Business and Trade Select Committee hearing in at Portcullis House, where MPs are due to hear evidence in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, in London, on Feb. 27, 2024. Annabel Lee-Ellis/AFP via Getty Images

In response, a spokesman for the Liberal Democrat party said that Sir Ed, now the leader of the party, had been “lied to” about the extent of the issue with Horizon.

“No one knew the scale of these lies until the whistleblower from Fujitsu revealed the truth several years later. Ed has said that he’s sorry that he didn’t see through the Post Office’s lies, and that it took him five months to meet Mr. Bates,” the spokesman said.

Chris Summers and PA Media contributed to this report.