Post Office denied IT system was defective under oath despite knowing of ‘faults’
The Post Office denied its Capture IT system, linked to alleged wrongful convictions that predate the Horizon scandal, was faulty under oath.
On 19 March, 2003, former sub-postmistress June Tooby arrived at Newcastle’s law courts in a wheelchair and requiring the assistance of an oxygen tank.
She was only 54, but struggled with health problems including COPD and severe arthritis.
The day began badly because her case had been moved to another court a 15-minute drive away without her knowledge.
Her carer had to put her in a taxi and they made it with only a few minutes to spare before the hearing began.
Just a few hours later, Ms Tooby found she had been successfully sued by the Post Office for more than £55,000 plus interest in a case which dated back almost a decade to 1994.
She had repeatedly been accused of stealing money from her branch, but when Post Office investigators were advised there was not enough evidence to secure criminal charges, they chose to pursue her in the civil courts instead.
The hearing – originally supposed to last three to four days but over in little more than one afternoon – was a complete mismatch.
Ms Tooby, having already been sacked, couldn’t afford a lawyer, and the judge, Mr Moorhouse, allowed her to represent herself, despite her obvious disability.
The Post Office instructed an experienced barrister, named in the documents as Mr Faulks, who gave her claims of innocence short shrift.
Given that she was already penniless and had a long list of creditors, Ms Tooby couldn’t understand why the Post Office was choosing to sue her. She wouldn’t be able to pay up.
“Perhaps the Post Office wants to make an example of you,” Judge Moorhouse replied.
Ms Tooby died in 2020 aged 71. She kept much of her battle with the Post Office from widow Ken because he was also in poor health.
But since ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office put the spotlight back on the injustice suffered by sub-postmasters because of the Horizon scandal, Ken Tooby and his family has been sifting through the countless boxes of paperwork his wife left behind.
Several documents show that Ms Tooby repeatedly raised the prospect that faults with Capture, a piece of accounting software rolled out by the Post Office in the 1990s, could have explained the alleged shortfalls at her branch.
The Post Office, which has said it is now investigating claims relating to Capture, said it is in contact with Ms Tooby’s family, and her case is helping in their investigation.
Though she never knew it while she was alive, a number of other sub-postmasters also believed that Capture was behind shortfalls that had been identified at their branches.
More alleged Capture victims have been coming forward ever since Steve Marston, a former sub-postmaster in Heap Bridge, Greater Manchester, first revealed his story to i last month.
The 68-year-old was prosecuted by the Post Office for theft and false accounting charges in 1998 despite insisting that he had never stolen “a penny”.
When Mr Marston said he did not believe more than £79,000 was missing from his accounts, he was allegedly told: “Capture doesn’t make mistakes”
However documents shared with i by Ms Tooby’s family show that the Post Office, which developed the Capture software itself at its IT department in Farnborough, Hampshire, was well aware it was prone to bugs and glitches.
Staff bulletins, manuals and letters sent out to Ms Tooby between 1992 and 1997 reveal numerous examples of the Post Office acknowledging that Capture could suffer faults.
Yet at the court hearing in 2003, the Post Office dismissed the idea that this could explain allegedly missing money.
A court transcript shared with i reveals how a Post Office investigator, who was the only witness called to give evidence, said he had “no reason to believe the computer was faulty”.
Despite her vulnerability and inexperience, Ms Tooby carried out a robust cross-examination of the investigator, questioning why she had not been allowed to see details of the Post Office audit showing the alleged shortfall, and raising the possibility that the Capture IT system was to blame.
“Is it not in the best interests of the Post Office to get a clear view of what’s going on? To either find out if there’s dishonesty or find out it it’s a genuine mistake?” she asked.
The investigator replied: “I did a lot of work checking the accounts, so did the auditors, so did other people and there has been no errors or mistakes discovered whatsoever in those accounts.”
Ms Tooby asked: “It could be, one of the reasons could be the computer?”
The investigator said: “I have no reason to believe the computer was faulty.”
Ms Tooby went on to describe her experience of Capture errors and set out a scenario in which the system failed to show the correct figures when calculating pension book allowances.
When the investigator admitted this could be described as a “mistake”, the Post Office’s barrister Mr Faulks stepped in to dismiss the theory.
“Well, with respect to Mrs Tooby, the issue of whether the computer system was faulty or not has been addressed,” he said.
“In the face of the fact that the defendant has no evidence with regard to the computer system then that has to be accepted…”
Judge Moorhouse accepted the Post Office’s evidence that its computer system could not be faulty without any further interrogation.
Ruling in the Post Office’s favour, he stated: “On the balance of probabilities, I am satisfied that the audit will have been carried out properly by the Post Office.”
It appears Ms Tooby did not offer the documents outlining Capture faults as evidence during 2003 and may have only realised their significance at a later date.
But her family say the Post Office has questions to answer.
“Surely the Post Office investigators knew about faults with Capture at that time?” Ken Tooby told i. “The Post Office had all the paperwork. Somebody senior should have known.
“Neither the Post Office nor the judge was interested to find out if she really owed that £36,000, they just thought the computer says it was missing, so it must be missing.
“June didn’t have a lawyer, she was out of her depth in that court hearing. The Post Office took everything away from her.”
Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who has been campaigning for Horizon victims for years, backed the family’s calls for answers.
“There is clear documentary evidence that the Post Office knew about bugs in Capture. Did its investigators know about this? If they didn’t, why not? If they did, why did they prosecute sub-postmasters like June?” he told i.
In a statement she produced for an appeal hearing, Ms Tooby left a heartbreaking appeal for the truth to one day be uncovered.
“My case is a classic of how facts can be tainted and the truth distorted to hide the real truth, the real facts,” she wrote.
“With the greatest respect to The Honourable Judge, or any other person reading this, please use my case as an example to ensure no other innocent victim is ever subjected to three years of what I can only described as a living hell.”
A Post Office spokesperson said: “The details of Mrs Tooby’s experiences are very distressing and we are determined to do all we can to provide her family with answers about the Capture system.
“We are in contact with her family and thank them for sharing details of her experiences.
“This is helping us build a picture of Capture and we will keep her family informed as to our findings.”
What is Capture? Second ‘flawed’ IT system that may have led to Post Office convictions
Capture was simple piece of computer software first rolled out by the Post Office in 1992 to replace paper ledgers.
Bosses promised sub-postmasters it would make the process of doing their weekly accounts much faster.
The software was developed in-house by the Post Office’s IT department in Farnborough, Hampshire, and sold as part of a package with computer hardware for £1,250 plus VAT.
Newspaper reports from the early 90s suggest thousands of sub-postmasters signed up to use it.
But a growing number have come forward to say they suffered unexplained shortfalls while using Capture and were held responsible for the alleged missing money by the Post Office.
Unlike it successor Horizon, Capture was not “networked”, meaning engineers were able to alter figures remotely.
However, documents sent out by the Post Office Capture team acknowledged that it was prone to bugs and glitches which could produce faulty data.
