Post Office criticised over treatment of sub-postmasters

The Post Office has been accused of failing to properly investigate the cause of cash shortfalls at sub-post offices before launching court proceedings for theft, fraud and false accounting.

The Post Office also withheld vital documents from Second Sight, the forensic accountants it commissioned to review its actions, the firm said.

The controversy affects more than 100 former sub-postmasters who ran some of the hundreds of smaller post offices across the country. Some were prosecuted and even jailed as a result of the accusations, while others lost their homes because they had to pay back supposed shortfalls.

The Post Office is entitled to prosecute individuals directly, without recourse to the Crown Prosecution Service. It can also dock payments to postmasters to cover shortfalls recorded by the Horizon accounting system with their agreement.

Second Sight was commissioned by the Post Office to investigate in August 2013 and said in a final report on Monday that the shortfalls could have been caused by criminals using malicious software, IT system failures or human error.

The Post Office issued a 92-page rebuttal arguing that the report included a number of unsubstantiated assertions and repeated complaints made by a small number of former postmasters.

"Over the past three years there have been exhaustive investigations which have not found any evidence of systemic problems with the Horizon system," a Post Office spokesman said.

Alan Bates, chairman of the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance, a campaign group established in 2009, called for a wider investigation in the wake of the findings.

"What's the point of commissioning a report if you don't stand by it?," he said. "Once the parliament is convened, we'll push the MPs for a totally independent investigation where the Post Office isn't spoon-feeding information."

The Post Office said there had been 150 applications to its Complaints Review and Mediation Scheme, established two years ago, out of almost 500,000 users.

Rubinna Nami, who was jailed for 12 months in 2010 for false accounting of £43,000, is one of those.

Her husband Mohamed said on Monday the report was a "vindication" for her. The couple from Shrewsbury lost their house and cannot find work because of the conviction.

She maintains that she was inadequately trained and the Post Office was more interested in prosecuting than investigating errors she says were caused by the software system.

Mr Nami said the report tallied with their experience. The Post Office "are so arrogant. They need to be cut down to size," he said.

He said the mediation process was on hold until after the election but his MP, Conservative Daniel Kawczynski, was backing them.

Former Conservative MP James Arbuthnot, who previously led the MPs' campaign in support of the sub-postmasters, repeated his call for an independent inquiry. More than 100 MPs have backed his decision to withdraw support for the mediation scheme, which was set up to address the sub-postmasters' claims.

The Communication Workers Union accused the Post Office of bullying behaviour towards postmasters "who feel they are helpless victims of a computer system gone wrong".

"CWU is not convinced by the claims made by the Post Office in their own investigations which effectively call into question the professional integrity and competence of Second Sight," it said. "We find it unfair that the Post Office challenges this report whilst having gagged Second Sight so that they cannot defend themselves."

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