Pressure on Post Office to ‘come clean’ over claims of second flawed IT system
Pressure is mounting on the Post Office to “come clean” over claims of a second flawed IT system – including who supplied it.
i revealed this week how former sub-postmasters say Capture, a piece of accounting software rolled out in the 90s, was prone to errors and glitches before the Horizon scandal began.
Steve Marston, 67, claims he was wrongly convicted of theft and false accounting charges as a result of problems with the Capture system.
He called for the Post Office to confirm whether it knew of problems with Capture and who supplied it.
It remains unclear who developed Capture, and the Post Office has not yet commented on questions about its implementation.
“I find it rather strange they are not being more forthcoming,” Mr Marston told i.
“Why is it such a big secret? If it was such a good system why are they keeping so quiet? What have they got to hide?”
Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who has supported Horizon victims for years, believes he has now been in contact with around 10 victims who pre-date the Horizon scandal.
He called on the Post Office to “come clean” about everything it knows about these prosecutions.
“It just makes me angry,” Mr Jones, who sits on the Horizon Advisory Board, told i.
“The Post Office have got to come clean about what systems they had in place before Horizon and how many people were prosecuted.
“And people need to explain, with all the publicity around Horizon, why they didn’t see fit to mention it before.
“The Post Office must have records, surely someone can say ‘this is when we brought in Capture, this is who it was provided by, this is how many prosecutions were involved’?”
It comes after i revealed that the Government has ordered the Post Office to look into Mr Marston’s case and establish “if there are issues with any other systems currently or previously used by Post Office”.
The Post Office has promised to “assist” anyone who believes they were the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
A spokesperson said: “We take very seriously the concerns that are being raised about cases from before the Horizon system was first rolled out in 1999, and we will of course assist in looking into such cases brought to our attention.”
