The Post Office is blocking attempts to overturn convictions linked to its faulty Capture software claiming sub-postmasters were able to receive a “fair trial” despite its flaws, The i Paper can reveal.
At least 29 sub-postmasters are still waiting to clear their names despite the Government having accepted the findings of an independent review that Capture, a primitive piece of accounting software rolled out in the 1990s, was defective.
An investigation by The i Paper revealed how sub-postmasters were forced to hand over cash, sacked, and in some cases prosecuted, in a precursor to the Horizon scandal.
A new Capture compensation scheme is open with the first victims having already received £10,000 interim payments and some receiving final settlement offers.
But those who were criminally prosecuted by the Post Office will not receive a penny until they are able to overturn their convictions.
In a report published this week, MPs from the Business and Trade Committee called on the Government to quash Capture-related convictions, as happened with the 900 Horizon convictions.
But the Government has so far resisted such calls and the first Capture case involving Patricia Owen, a sub-postmistress convicted of theft in 1998, has now reached the Court of Appeal.
She died in 2003 but her family have continued the fight to clear her name.
In January, The i Paper revealed how the Post Office has left campaigners incensed by opposing Mrs Owen’s application.
The move came just weeks after Chairman Nigel Railton told MPs he would support mass exoneration for those with Capture convictions.
Post Office claims Capture not ‘essential’ to convictions
Now The i Paper has obtained a copy of the Post Office’s ‘Respondent’s Notice’ lodged with the court, which sets out the reasons for its challenge to Mrs Owen’s appeal.
A central claim is that “the reliability of Capture” was not “essential” to the prosecution, even though the Post Office admits it has been unable to locate the “full” prosecution file.
The Capture software was rolled out to Post Office branches starting in 1992Mrs Owen was prosecuted with five counts of theft relating to Pension and Allowance (P&A) books and stood trial in 1998.
At the time, customers would use a specified Post Office to claim their benefits each week. The sub-postmaster would tear off a voucher and pay out the cash and then send off a list to both the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Post Office to claim it back.
Like many others, Mrs Owen carried out the process manually using written ledgers for years before the Post Office introduced their first computer system, Capture.
The Post Office’s case was that Mrs Owen submitted the correct forms using Capture, but then went back into the system to deliberately inflate the value of P&A vouchers to pay out more cash to herself.
In the first instance in June 1995, the Post Office claimed Mrs Owen did this to steal just £70.63. The five alleged thefts totalled £1,878.51.
Mrs Owen was adamant that faults with Capture were to blame and the Post Office has conceded that a member of its Capture team gave evidence in her trial and admitted the software was faulty.
A summary of his evidence states there were “various faults; some 200 or so had been identified within the program”.
Despite this evidence, the Post Office has told the Court of Appeal that: “The reliability of Capture does not appear to have been essential to the prosecution and conviction.”
The Post Office has acknowledged Mrs Owen’s case could be the first of many Capture cases to come to the Court of Appeal, and has told the court its position is likely to be the same for any others.
Even if Capture evidence was “essential” to a prosecution, the Post Office argues it was open about its flaws to sub-postmasters and therefore they could still have received a “fair trial”.
We’re so angry
Mrs Owen’s daughter Juliet Shardlow told The i Paper she is still in shock at the Post Office’s response and has been unable to read it in full as she finds it too upsetting.
She has not shown the content to her father, who is in his 80s.
“I can’t read it to my dad, it would be mortifying,” Mrs Shardlow said. “He’s very upset anyway, he’s just so angry.
“He’s lost his wife and he’s still having to fight… for something that was incorrect in the first place.
“You feel like you are just the little people and we don’t really matter, they can walk all over you.”
Juliet Shardlow is fighting to clear her mother’s name following Mrs Owen’s death in 2003Mrs Shardlow also hit out at the government, the sole shareholder of the Post Office, for failing to intervene.
“They are wasting money and no one is stepping in. The Government has agreed the Capture system was corrupt.
“People who didn’t get taken to court are getting compensation. But the people like mum who stood up for themselves are the ones who are still waiting.”
Kevan Jones, the Labour peer and long-time supporter of Post Office victims, criticised the Post Office for opposing Mrs Owen’s application while publicly claiming to be supporting Capture victims in overturning their convictions.
“It’s more doublespeak, which we’ve come to expect from the Post Office,” he said.
“I find it astonishing that they’re now prepared to spend more public money defending the indefensible and continue the agony for these victims.”
MPs from the Business and Trade Committee wrote in their report that the Post Office “must learn from past mistakes and think carefully before opposing appeals against pre-Horizon convictions.”
Mrs Owen’s legal team, led by solicitor Neil Hudgell, has called for the Post Office to come clean about who is leading their strategy.
Hudgell said: “I find it extraordinary that Post Office can have filed an aggressively assertive document opposing this appeal, but didn’t have the backbone to say so at the time.
“Instead, they issued a statement saying that they are assisting the court to set guidance for future appeals to follow.
“After so long it is lamentable that Post Office still cannot be straight with victims and the general public.”
A Post Office spokesperson said: “We fully recognise that this is a difficult time for the Owen family, but we have carefully considered the grounds put forward.
“Our Respondents Notice addresses both the facts of this case and wider considerations in respect of the use of the Capture software in prosecutions.”
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