THE Post Office scandal is “not done yet” as key figures have yet to appear in front of the ongoing public inquiry, an SNP MP has said.
Hundreds of people who owned and operated Post Offices were wrongfully investigated, prosecuted and convicted between 1999 and 2015 after the faulty Fujitsu accounting software Horizon made it appear as though money was missing from their outlets.
The scandal has attracted huge attention since the airing last week of the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, starring actor Toby Jones.
Since then, the Metropolitan Police have confirmed for the first time the Post Office is under criminal investigation over “potential fraud offences” committed during the Horizon scandal.
And it has been reported that 50 new potential victims have approached lawyers since the programme was broadcast.
SNP MP Marion Fellows, who has campaigned on the issue as chair of the Commons All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Post Offices, said she believed there is more still to be uncovered about what happened.
She said Paula Vennells - who was in charge of the Post Office when it routinely denied problems with the Horizon IT system - and a key former Fujitsu engineer were yet to give evidence to the inquiry chaired by Sir Wyn Williams.
Fellows told the Sunday National: “[The scandal] is ongoing and I believe there will be more coming out – exactly what, I cannot tell you but every time you think it can’t get worse it does.
“That has been my experience of it.”
The MP for Motherwell and Wishaw (below) described attending a day of the public inquiry when it was in Scotland last year.
She said: “You just wanted to sit there and weep. These were just honest, ordinary hard-working folk and their lives were ruined by this, absolutely ruined.
“In some cases, they didn’t even take people to court, they just got people to pay them back money – and where did that money go? Into Post Office profits – yet they had never stolen anything.”
The campaign for justice in the Horizon scandal has been going on for years, with postmasters first telling their stories to Computer Weekly in 2009.
But it wasn’t until more than ten years later - after a long court battle - that the Post Office agreed to pay compensation to victims. An inquiry was set up by the UK Government in September 2020 and converted to a statutory inquiry in June 2021.
Fellows said that over the years, those affected had faced hurdles such as having to fill in complicated forms to apply for compensation, and highlighted a series of revelations about the behaviour of the Post Office.
Last year the Post Office apologised for using racist terms to describe postmasters wrongly investigated as part of the Horizon scandal, after an internal document showed fraud investigators were asked to group suspects based on racial features.
There was also an outcry after it emerged top executives at the organisation had been handed thousands of pounds of bonuses for simply cooperating with the public inquiry – which the Post Office later admitted had been wrongly paid.
Fellows said that Fujitsu, Vennells and the Post Office team at the time of the scandal have never been called to account.
She said: “People lost everything, absolutely lost everything, some died by suicide and they were innocent.
“It’s the largest miscarriage of justice in the UK ever and for years it was hidden.
“It has started to come out now, but we are not nearly there yet.”
But she also warned at the “heart” of the issue was the Post Office network which still has a vital role in society - despite the increasing move to digital services.
“I know we all live differently and a lot of us are online etc, but it ties in with bank closures - for years, banks have been saying we can close because there is a Post Office and you can get cash there," she said.
“But Post Offices do much more than that – they are civic institutions, almost, those who are least able – the disabled, elderly and people who just live their own lives close by - they need Post Offices.”
