Wrongly convicted Post Office workers want ex-bosses jailed

Former Post Office workers who were among those wrongfully convicted for theft, fraud and false accounting have called for the company’s former management to go to jail for their part in the long-running scandal.

- Joanna Partridge

More than 700 Post Office operators were prosecuted between 2000 and 2014, based on evidence from the Horizon IT system, which was installed and maintained by Fujitsu.

Damian Owen, who managed a Post Office branch in Bangor, north Wales, was jailed for eight months after being accused of stealing £25,000 as a result of computer errors. His conviction was quashed in 2021.

Owen was at times lost for words as he told the inquiry into the scandal about his time in prison. “I lost an awful lot of weight,” he told the inquiry. “I did what I could to pass the time as quickly as I could.”

Owen said the £25,000 hole in his branch accounts appeared shortly after the Horizon system was installed, and he knew the figures didn’t add up. “We never held that amount of money there. It was a small branch,” Owen said. “As far as I was aware, the most held there was £13,000.” Owen was giving evidence on the second day of the inquiry into the human impact of the failings of the company’s software. The inquiry is part of an investigation into one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

Some of the convicted workers were sent to prison, others lost their livelihoods and their homes. Many went bankrupt, and some died before their names were cleared.