A damning report into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal has concluded that at least 13 people may have taken their own lives after being accused of wrongdoing.
The report, issued as part of the long-running inquiry into the faulty Horizon IT system used in Post Office branches, described the impact on subpostmasters as “disastrous” and said it heard evidence from 59 others who had also contemplated suicide as a result of the pressures from the scandal.
Approximately 1,000 subpostmasters were wrongfully prosecuted by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015 after the faulty Legacy Horizon software made it look as though money was missing from their accounts.
Tuesday’s 162-page report, written by inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams, also concluded Post Office bosses knew the Horizon IT system had widespread faults, but had “maintained the fiction” it was accurate for years.
Sir Wyn said: “Although many of the individuals who gave evidence before me were very reluctant to accept it I am satisfied from the evidence that I have heard that a number of senior, or not so senior employees, of the Post Office knew or at the very least should have known that Legacy Horizon was capable of error.
“Yet, for all practical purposes, throughout the lifetime of Legacy Horizon, the Post Office maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate.”
The report also found the Legacy Horizon system’s 2010 replacement – known as Horizon Online – was also “afflicted by bugs” and that employees of Fujitsu and the Post Office “knew that this was so”.
