The government has promised financial redress and justice for subpostmasters who suffered as a result of unexplained losses when using its Capture accounting system, which pre-dated the controversial Horizon system.
Like victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal, subpostmasters were made to pay back the shortfalls caused by software errors, with some prosecuted for financial crimes.
After months of campaigning, former Capture users were told in September that the government would provide a response to evidence from an investigation report by forensic experts Kroll, which found there was a “reasonable likelihood” the Post Office accounting software caused accounting losses.
In that response, business and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “It is thanks to testimony of postmasters that this has been brought to light and failings have been discovered. We must now work quickly to provide redress and justice to those who have suffered greatly after being wrongly accused. I’d like to encourage anyone who believes they have been affected by Capture to share their story with us so we can put wrongs to right once and for all.”
The Capture accounting system, used in branches in the 1990s, has become part of the Post Office Horizon scandal, which was triggered by errors in the Horizon computer system introduced in 1999 to all Post Office branches.
It was proved in the High Court in 2019 that the Horizon software caused unexplained accounting shortfalls, which subpostmasters were held responsible for. Many were financially ruined by repaying phantom losses and hundreds were wrongly convicted of financial crimes, with more than 100 jailed. The Post Office Horizon scandal is now considered one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
Since ITV broadcast a dramatisation of the Post Office scandal, former subpostmasters came forward to former MP and now peer Kevan Jones with stories of problems experienced with the Capture system. Former users were also prosecuted and convicted, some lost businesses and many had huge financial losses from repaying shortfalls.
Scarce information
An estimated 2,000 branches used Capture, but the extent of problems is difficult to ascertain because many used it over 30 years ago. As a consequence, information is scarce and some users have passed away.
Under extreme public scrutiny, the government and the Post Office acted quickly to listen to Capture users, in contrast with the Horizon problems, which took almost 20 years and hundreds of millions of pounds before the Post Office and government acknowledged there was a problem. About 80 former Capture users have now come forward to Hudgell Solicitors for support with their cases, which include prosecution and ruined businesses.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which started reviewing subpostmaster convictions that were based on evidence from the flawed Horizon system in 2015, is now looking into Capture-based prosecutions. It took until 2021 for the first Horizon-based convictions to be overturned in Southwark Crown Court and the Court of Appeal.
The influential Horizon advisory group has already recommended the government legislate to overturn convictions of subpostmasters based on the error-prone Capture system. In response, the government said: “The Post Office Offences Act 2024 was a truly exceptional response to unprecedented circumstances where hundreds of convictions based on evidence from the Horizon system were considered to be unsafe.
“The CCRC is looking into a small number of convictions which may be based on evidence from the Capture computer system,” it added. “If they consider that there is a real possibility that these convictions are unsafe, they will be referred to the Court of Appeal.”
Government uncertain
The government has admitted it is currently uncertain how many criminal prosecutions were based on Capture evidence, which will add to the difficulty for claimants to corroborate their claims with evidence.
But Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said: “It’s taken a long time to reach this point, which is why my priority now is to deliver justice and redress to postmasters as swiftly as possible.
“We will do everything we can to correct the mistakes of the past and ensure they are not repeated,” he added.
The Post Office has been asked by the government to review its records urgently and send information to the CCRC and the Scottish CCRC.
The Post Office Horizon scandal may bare the name of Fujitsu’s error-prone system, but it was the action of people at the Post Office, Fujitsu and the civil service that caused the scandal. Computer errors caused unexplained losses, but didn’t decide to wrongly prosecute subpostmasters.
Horizon and Capture are poles apart in terms of technology. Capture was software, available in the early 1990s, that the subpostmaster could buy and download onto a PC to do their accounts. Horizon is a major enterprise system that connects to Post Office systems and is used in all branches, of which there are about 12,000.
But the treatment of subpostmasters that experienced unexplained shortfalls while using it had the same hallmarks. For example, data on Post Office prosecutions of subpostmasters revealed worrying similarities to how it treated Horizon and Capture users who suffered unexplained losses.
According to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, in the six years before Capture was introduced by the Post Office to automate manual processes, fewer than five subpostmasters were investigated over accounting shortfalls in four of the years, seven investigations were carried out in 1992, and 11 investigations took place in 1993. But in the following six years, the number of investigations increased dramatically to an average of 191 a year, reaching 378 in 1998.
This mirrors a dramatic change that followed the introduction of the Horizon system to branches in 1999, in relation to the number of subpostmasters convicted of financial crimes. According to a separate FOI request from 2020, in the seven years between 1991 and the year before Horizon’s introduction, an average of six subpostmasters were convicted per year, compared with an average of 52 a year in the 13 years following its introduction, until the Post Office stopped prosecuting in 2013.
Another echo of the Horizon scandal was inadequate training on the system. Subpostmasters used Capture software without any training from the Post Office, a failing that mirrors one of the causes of the Post Office Horizon scandal, where training was inadequate.
Despite a Post Office document from 1995 outlining the training users received, former subpostmasters, who encountered serious problems with Capture, have come forward revealing they had no training.
The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to the accounting software (see timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal below).