Prime minister yet to respond to serious subpostmaster concerns over Horizon IT scandal inquiry
Summary
Prime minister Boris Johnson has not responded to two letters from subpostmasters expressing their concerns over the government-instigated inquiry into what has been described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history. “I am indeed aware of the scandal to which [Kate Osborne MP] alludes and the disasters that have befallen many Post Office workers, and I am happy to commit to getting to the bottom of the matter in the way that she recommends,” the prime minister said in Parliament last year. According to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the inquiry was designed “to ensure that lessons are learned, and that concrete changes take place at the Post Office”. If true, this may provide evidence of a concerted conspiracy (within senior management at Fujitsu and possibly also the Post Office) to pervert the course of justice on an extraordinary scale. The Post Office denied this, and about 900 subpostmasters were prosecuted for theft and false accounting, with some sent to prison, in what has been described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history (see timeline below).