The Post Office has made its first official apology to subpostmasters who used its faulty Capture accounting software and were blamed and punished for unexplained shortfalls.
Ken Tooby received a letter from a senior executive who “apologised sincerely and unreservedly” on behalf of the Post Office for “failings and impact” on Tooby’s late wife June, who spent years challenging the Post Office over alleged shortfalls in the accounts at her branch in the north-east of England.
June Tooby, who died in 2020, was relentlessly pursued by the Post Office and never revealed to her husband the amount of pressure she was under.
In the letter, Simon Recaldin, remediation unit director at the Post Office wrote: “It is clear through the efforts of former postmasters and their families that there were significant failings at Post Office relating to Capture. We are truly sorry for these failings and their impact on all concerned, including your late wife, June.
“We deeply regret that June was not able to receive this apology herself, see these issues recognised alongside the Horizon scandal, denied the opportunity to see the truth uncovered, for justice to prevail and see her good name restored.”
Tooby was sued by the Post Office for more than £55,000 and taken to court in 2003, following unexplained shortfalls in branch accounts. She was declared bankrupt.
Last year, an independent investigation was commissioned into Capture, which found there was a “reasonable likelihood” it had caused shortfalls in branch accounts, which ruined lives.
The apology comes after campaigning by former Capture users who, until the ITV dramatisation of the Post Office Horizon scandal in January last year, had been in the dark over how IT errors could cause losses they were blamed and punished for.
The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009. Thousands of subpostmasters were wrongly blamed and even prosecuted for unexplained accounting shortfalls caused by the error-prone Horizon IT system, which was implemented several years after Capture had been introduced.
After years of campaigning, subpostmasters who had suffered as a result of errors in Horizon were finally put at the centre of national debate when the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office brought their stories to wider public attention.
In the same month, Kevan Jones, an MP at the time who now sits in the House of Lords, highlighted evidence of injustices caused by the Capture computer system used by some Post Office branches prior to the introduction of Horizon.
Echoes of Horizon
Jones had visited a subpostmaster who he thought may be a victim of Horizon, but when he realised the dates involved, it became clear another system could be at fault.
Since the drama put the scandal at the centre of debate, successive governments have been forced to act. In May 2024, the former Conservative government introduced legislation to exonerate about 900 former Horizon users who were convicted based on evidence from Fujitsu’s faulty system.
Now the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is reviewing 21 cases of potential wrongful conviction, put forward by law firm Hudgell Solicitors, where the Capture IT system could be a factor. This is an increase from 17 just weeks ago and from five in November last year.
Capture was a PC-based application developed by the Post Office and uploaded onto a personal computer to carry out branch accounts. The software was a standalone system, unlike Horizon, which is a complex, networked system connected to centralised services.
More cases come forward
Thousands of subpostmasters used Capture and there are more and more cases coming to light with glaring similarities to those related to Horizon.
A Kent subpostmistress who was convicted of theft from her branch in the 1990s is one of a new wave whose families are fighting to clear their names.
Patricia Owen, who was convicted in 1998 of theft from her Post Office branch in Canterbury over a shortfall of £6,000, is one of the 21 cases Hudgell has put forward to the CCRC.
Owen, who died in 2003, denied the charges against her but was found guilty on five counts of theft. She received a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.
Owen’s daughter, Juliet, said her mother never recovered from the sentence: “It destroyed my mum. Her world came to an end when she lost her Post Office and was prosecuted. It was awful,” she said.
“One day I remember them sitting us down and telling us that mum was being prosecuted and that they had to go to court. We managed to get an independent computer expert to look over everything and he said there were malfunctions with the software, so we were hopeful ahead of the court case. The expert didn’t turn up on the day, and we never found out why.”
Peter Lloyd-Holt, who died aged 75 in 2021, was sacked in 1994 from his role as a subpostmaster in Bolton after accounts at his branch showed unexplained shortfalls.
His wife Agnes, who worked as an investigator for the Department of Work and Pensions at the time he was sacked, said life was never the same again: “That was the beginning of the end. He was interviewed under caution without representation. I was contacted but not allowed to attend,” she said.
“He was eventually told in March 1995 that he wasn’t going to be prosecuted, but he was still held responsible for the shortfalls and we were made to pay back a considerable sum.
“I had to work overtime to pay the mortgage and to pay back what the Post Office alleged we owed them, and that meant we suffered financial hardship as there had to be cutbacks,” she added.
Lloyd-Holt’s son, Paul, said: “What happened to my father destroyed him. When my dad was interviewed he submitted all his documentation and evidence to clear his name, ledgers and dockets and spreadsheets, but they were never returned, so there is little evidence available to us to clear his name.
“Any evidence like bank statements have been lost over time, so we need the support of the solicitors to do this. He never could move on though, it always cast a shadow over his life, and our lives as a family. Now, we’re in a position where we only have our own memories, and we are having to contact many organisations and bodies to see what extra evidence we can uncover.”
The Post Office Horizon scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to accounting software (see below timeline of all Computer Weekly articles about the Horizon scandal, since 2009).
