Post Office Led Campaign Of Intimidation To Derail BBC’s 2015 Horizon Exposé

BBC Headquarters (Press Association via AP Images)

The BBC said that the Post Office threatened and lied to the broadcaster in an effort to obstruct a 2015 exposé on the Post Office scandal for its investigative Panorama show.

The scandal saw numerous postmasters face wrongful accusations of theft and fraud due to faulty IT accounting software called Horizon. The BBC investigation featured Horizon whistleblower.

The public broadcaster now alleges that the Post Office lawyers dispatched intimidating letters to experts interviewed for the show, as well as to the BBC itself, warning of potential lawsuits.

Adding to the BBC’s allegations, senior Post Office managers were accused of falsely assuring the broadcaster that neither staff nor Fujitsu, the developer of the Horizon system, could access post office operators’ accounts. This claim was made despite warnings four years earlier that such access was indeed possible.

Despite these alleged attempts at suppression, the BBC persisted, although the broadcast of Trouble at the Post Office was delayed. The Post Office, currently under public inquiry, has declined to comment on these allegations.

The faulty software led to more than 7000 false criminal convictions, with the accused facing bankruptcy, imprisonment, shattered families, ostracisation, with some individuals even taking their own lives.

On Wednesday Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged emergency legislation to reverse the wrongful convictions.

Critics, however, have suggested that the Tory party’s recent engagement with the issue is not born out of a sense of justice but rather as a political manoeuvre in an election year and increased public pressure following an ITV drama about the scandal.