A draft report reveals that the Post Office spent £100m  fighting sub-postmasters in court despite knowing its defence was untrue. The Post Office was shown evidence by 2017 that losses could be due to errors in the Horizon IT system or remote tampering, but kept arguing in the Bates Vs Post Office Ltd case that theft or mistakes by sub-postmasters must be to blame.

Patrick Green RC, the lead barrister for the sub-postmasters in the Bates case, said these finding were “absolutely shocking and don’t think the case should have happened.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted because of faults with Horizon, which was developed the Japanese IT company Fujitsu whose failed attempts by Fujitsu to correct system errors remotely.  The total cost to the Post Office in the legal action was £100m of public money even though the evidence they were fighting were untrue, ruining hundreds of life.

Former prime minister Tony Blair knew of the flaw with Post Office’s Horizon IT system but still went ahead.