Second Post Office IT Scandal

In January, The i Paper's northern reporter, Steve Robson, uncovered claims that the Post Office had been wrongly prosecuting sub-postmasters for years before the discredited Horizon IT system was first introduced.

Eight months on, as a result of his groundbreaking investigation, the Government has confirmed that a second Post Office IT system is likely to have been faulty and may have led to wrongful convictions prior to Horizon.

It is a nationally significant moment, and vindication for affected postmasters who have said that without Steve's reporting, this day may never have come.

Steve's investigation - interviews with former postmasters, obtaining internal Post Office documents, court records and transcripts, and Freedom of Information (FOI) requests - pieced together the “second scandal” involving Capture, a primitive accounting system introduced by the Post Office in the early 1990s.

His exclusives led to the Government launching its independent review and admitting it may have to extend its Horizon compensation schemes.

The primary source of the investigation was Steve Marston, 68, who was charged with criminal offences after Post Office auditors alleged £79,000 was missing from his Greater Manchester branch in 1997. He maintains his innocence but claims Post Office investigators pressured him into pleading guilty to avoid prison.

Despite scant available evidence after more than 25 years, Steve worked doggedly to corroborate Mr Marston’s story, including tracking down a paper copy of his indictment record from Preston Crown Court’s archives and cuttings from local newspaper coverage.

He also found more former sub-postmasters who were prepared to go on the record, including 73-year-old Liz Roberts, a sub-postmaster’s wife who was jailed for two-and-a-half years in 1999 despite insisting her innocence. She died just a few weeks after her story ran.

Steve's reporting has had real world impact - Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who has supported Horizon victims for years, became convinced of a “second scandal” and questioned why the Post Office had not come clean about Capture cases before.

The Post Office admitted it was “very concerned” and in February chief executive Nick Read told the Business and Trade select committee that there appeared to be at least four potentially wrongful convictions involving Capture and that the system had been used by at least 1,000 sub-postmasters.

In May, the Government appointed US firm Kroll to investigate and in September, they confirmed what Steve's reporting had already exposed: that there were faults with Capture, that the Post Office knew of these faults but prosecuted postmasters anyway - and that it even went as far as to ignore claims of faults when presented by defence lawyers in court.

Thanks to data obtained by Steve under FOI laws, we now know hundreds of postmasters may have been wrongly convicted for accounting issues related to Capture. Steve's reporting has been praised by MPs including new Post Office minister Gareth Thomas - who said he was "horrified" by Capture faults - and by postmasters and their relatives who believed they would never be heard. True public interest journalism.