The Horizon Compensation Advisory Board (HCAB) has once more rejected the Post Office’s latest justification for objecting to appeals against criminal convictions for users of its Capture software.
In a letter to Post Office chairman Nigel Railton, the latest in a series of exchanges, HCAB chair Christopher Hodges said the latest justifications given by Railton were neither balanced nor persuasive.
Last month, Hodges, an emeritus professor of justice systems at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford, wrote to Railton expressing the group’s concerns over the Post Office’s controversial decision to contest appeals against convictions based on Capture software.
In response, Railton stated that the Post Office approach was “in accordance with the rules and requirements” of the judicial system.
Hodges wrote back in an excoriating letter, stating that contesting the Capture appeals “completely undermines any trust in statements that the Post Office is sorry, has changed, and can now be trusted” in the ongoing scandal of subpostmasters wrongfully convicted as a result of flawed accounting software.
Railton then responded on 28 May. He wrote: “[The] Post Office is bound either to concede or ‘oppose’ an appeal and there is no ‘third way’. And based on what we have seen in the cases we’ve looked at so far, we have no choice but to ‘oppose’ – however uncomfortable that is for Post Office and, I am very sorry to say, distressing for the individuals involved. In essence, this is because it is not clear as to the extent that Capture evidence was relied upon and there does seem to be evidence unrelated to Capture which the court may conclude means that these particular convictions are not unsafe (the test the court itself has to apply).”
He added: “None of this changes our recognition of past failings or our commitment to seeing unsafe convictions overturned. It is precisely because of that history that we believe it is important to proceed carefully and transparently, and to support the court in reaching the right outcome in each case.”
But in a letter dated 12 June, Hodges wrote in reply: “Colleagues and I have considered carefully the extensive legal argument that you set out. It is not balanced or persuasive and does not change our view.”
He added: “It is just not right, just or fair that the Post Office should object to these appeals, given that it was the perpetrator of the fundamental injustice that caused this whole scandal, and such harm to victims, both convicted and unconvicted.
“In corporate governance terms, the conflict of interest for the Post Office is blatant.”
As well as Hodges, the HCAB is made up of campaigning peers James Arbuthnot and Kevan Jones, along with Richard Moorhead, a law professor at Exeter University.
Hodges wrote that the “cases have been considered and investigated independently by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which concluded that there is a clear case that the convictions are unsafe.”
He added: “The decisions are up to the Court of Appeal. Should it feel in need of assistance in deciding the appeals, it can no doubt arrange this independently.”
Railton’s view has changed since January when, in a business and trade select committee hearing, he said that, as with Horizon-related convictions, legislation should be used to overturn Capture convictions.
Capture was a PC-based software application that pre-dated the Horizon system, which has been at the heart of the scandal.
Three appeals, of what are known as pre-Horizon cases, have been sent to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) so far. Two of these are convictions based on the Capture system, and one is related to a conviction based on a system known as the Automatic Payment Terminal (APT).
The CCRC is also reviewing around 30 more cases of prosecutions based on software that pre-dates Horizon.
Computer Weekly first exposed the Post Office scandal in 2009, with the stories of seven subpostmasters who suffered due to faulty accounting software – our full coverage of the scandal since that time is shown in the timeline below.
