Berliner Tageblatt - UK post office scandal may have caused 13 suicides: inquiry

The Post Office wrongfully prosecuted around 1,000 subpostmasters -- self-employed branch managers -- between 1999 and 2015.

Errors in tech giant Fujitsu's Legacy Horizon accounting software incorrectly made it appear that money was missing from their accounts.

Many ended up bankrupt after being forced by the Post Office to pay back the missing funds. Some were jailed.

Dozens who were later exonerated died without ever seeing their names cleared.

Inquiry chair Wyn Williams said that there was a "real possibility" that 13 people killed themselves as a result of their ordeal.

Ten people attempted to take their own lives and 59 contemplated it, the report into the scandal found.

Many of the prosecutions took place after questions were raised about the software's reliability.

Police are investigating possible fraud committed during the scandal.

"I am satisfied from the evidence that I have heard that a number of senior, and not-so-senior employees of the Post Office knew or, at the very least should have known, that Legacy Horizon was capable of error," Williams said in the report.

"Yet... the Post Office maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate," he added.

A "number of senior" people at the Post Office were aware the system was capable of error before it was changed in 2010, he said.

- Miscarriage of justice -

Welcoming the findings, former branch manager Jo Hamilton said the report showed "the full scale of the horror that they unleashed on us".

Williams described the picture of the scandal that had emerged as "profoundly disturbing".

"Many thousands of people have suffered serious financial detriment. Many people have inevitably suffered emotional turmoil and significant stress.

"Many businesses and homes have been lost. Bankruptcies have occurred, marriage and families have been wrecked," he said.

Among those who gave evidence to the inquiry was former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells who was quizzed about what she knew and when.

Vennells broke down in tears when recalling the case of one man who took his own life after being wrongly accused over a £39,000 ($49,537) shortfall at his branch.

The long-running saga hit the headlines after the broadcast in January 2024 of a television drama about the managers' ordeal, which generated a wave of sympathy and outrage.

Fujitsu's European director Paul Patterson told a parliamentary committee later that the firm, which assisted the Post Office in prosecutions using flawed data from the software, was "truly sorry" for "this appalling miscarriage of justice".

Many of those involved are still battling for compensation.

The government's Department for Business and Trade (DBT) said last month that 7,569 claims out of the 11,208 received had now been paid, leaving 3,709 still to be settled.

Alan Bates, a former branch manager who led the fight for justice, has said the compensation process has "turned into quasi-kangaroo courts".

Bates, who was awarded a knighthood by King Charles III for his campaign to highlight the scandal, told the Sunday Times newspaper in May the DBT "sits in judgement of the claims and alters the goal posts as and when it chooses".

Post Office Minister Gareth Thomas said last month the government had made it a priority to speed up the delivery of compensation since taking office in July 2024.

J.Horn--BTB