Computer bug wrongly blames thousands of postal workers

According to government figures released Monday, more than £1 billion (1.11 billion Swiss francs) in compensation has been paid to thousands of post office managers who were victims of a resounding scandal in the United Kingdom: between 1999 and 2015, nearly 1,000 branch managers of the Post Office, a state-owned company, were accused of theft and prosecuted on the basis of erroneous information from Fujitsu's accounting software, called Horizon.

Postal workers were forced to repay the falsely created accounting shortfalls, leading to ruin for many. Some were imprisoned. Thousands more suffered software errors. In January 2024, a series on ITV, focusing on the legal battle of one of the postal workers, Alan Bates, brought the case back into the spotlight.

Several convictions have since been overturned by the courts, and a commission of inquiry has looked into the scandal, described by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as "one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the history of the UK." According to figures released Monday by the Department for Trade and Enterprise, "as of June 2, 2025, approximately £1.04 billion has been paid out (by the government and the Post Office) to more than 7,300 people," out of more than 11,000 claims.

For example, £167 million (186 million Swiss francs) was paid to 416 former post office managers, such as Alan Bates, who successfully challenged the company's prosecution. £245 million was paid to 463 others who were wrongly convicted before being cleared last year under a special law, and £68 million was paid to 71 people who were convicted and then cleared by the courts.

Post Office chief executive Neil Brocklehurst welcomed the payments, adding that "every week, more and more people are receiving their final settlement and can begin to look beyond this painful chapter of their lives." Alan Bates, who was knighted by the King in January, criticized the compensation scheme last month, saying he had been offered an amount that did not even cover half of what he was claiming. A parliamentary committee also denounced the slowness and complexity of the scheme in a report in early January.