The Post Office’s Horizon scandal is the largest miscarriage of justice in modern English history. The scandal saw hundreds of sub-postmasters prosecuted and convicted for crimes they did not commit, and many others wrongfully pursued by the Post Office.
While it was a faulty computer system that wrongly pointed the finger of blame at sub-postmasters, failures by lawyers, executives and the criminal justice system also played a critical role.
The Post Office Project is a research team funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) led by Professor Richard Moorhead at the University of Exeter. The team is investigating and documenting what went wrong and why, the impact on victims and their families, and what lessons can be learned by the legal system.
The ongoing research has already directly influenced the public inquiry into the scandal, ensuring that the conduct of the lawyers involved is properly scrutinised. The team’s evidence on the devastating mental health impacts this injustice has on sub-postmasters and their families is influencing ongoing compensation decisions. The evidence also contributed to the government’s historic decision to quash convictions through an Act of Parliament.
Beyond the Post Office scandal, the team’s research is helping to reshape legal ethics and informing driving regulatory reform, reducing the likelihood of similar miscarriages of justice in the future.
About the project
The Post Office scandal may have started as a computer problem, but it was enabled by failings in lawyering, the broader justice system, corporate governance and government oversight. Investigating the complex causes, impact on victims and what could be done to address those issues requires a multidisciplinary approach.
As part of the three-year Post Office Project, Professor Moorhead is leading a team of researchers with expertise in professional ethics, miscarriages of justice, criminology, and behavioural approaches to decision-making. The researchers are:
- Dr Karen Nokes, University College London
- Professor Rebecca Helm, University of Exeter
- Dr Sally Day from University of Exeter
- lawyer Paul Gilbert
The team’s initial work involved analysis of documentary and testimony before the Post Office inquiry, as well as interviews with sub-postmasters about their experiences of the justice system and the lawyers representing and opposing them.
Professor Moorhead explains:
It became clear lawyers had helped the Post Office use information from the Horizon system in aggressive and improper ways, and protected the organisation from scrutiny through the courts and parliament.
Surveys of sub-postmasters revealed the enormous impact of the injustice on their mental health, with false accusations causing as much stress, anxiety and depression as convictions.
The team also explored professional and ethical factors that led to innocent people pleading guilty, says Professor Moorhead:
We looked at problems with the criminal justice system, including the pressures on sub-postmasters to confess or plead guilty to crimes they hadn’t committed.
We also wanted to understand what drove lawyers, who are bound by regulations and an ethical code, to behave in these unethical or improper ways. Our research suggested this was not just a case of a few ‘bad apples’, but an endemic problem in sections of the legal profession. Future work by the team aims to shed light on the causes, such as bias towards a client’s interests.
Impact of the project
The Post Office Project team has brought to the fore:
- the systemic and widespread professional failings and misconduct of lawyers and Post Office executives
- the profound impact upon the lives of the many victims of the Horizon scandal
Quashing convictions and securing appropriate compensation
Based on the impact of the project, Professor Moorhead was invited to join the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. The team’s research into why innocent people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit formed part of the board’s arguments for convictions to be quashed. This laid the ground for the UK Prime Minister to issue a blanket exoneration for all convicted sub-postmasters in January 2024.
Research into the mental health impacts of false accusations contributed to progressing claims for the victims of the scandal and improved compensation. Chair of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, Professor Christopher Hodges, explains the role it played in the board’s deliberations and recommendations:
The research has been very important to our assessment of compensation needs, clearly demonstrating truly horrific levels of mental health in the sub-postmaster population…[The research] led to the announcement [by the Prime Minister] that legislation would be brought forward to ensure that all unjust convictions would be rapidly quashed.
Highlighting the role of lawyers in the scandal
The team’s research has shifted the narrative of the scandal away from being solely about a faulty computer system and persuaded the public inquiry to consider how lawyers working within the Post Office and in private practice facilitated and enabled the miscarriage of justice. Chair of the International Legal Aid Group, Professor Alan Paterson, explains:
Particularly noteworthy was the project’s submissions as to the importance of the inquiry scrutinising the role of the lawyers whether for the Post Office or in some cases for the sub-postmasters. Until now, much of the focus in the scandal has understandably been on the sufferings of the sub-postmasters and the miscarriages of justice that have occurred.
However, as Professor Moorhead’s research into the ethics of in-house lawyers and that of the lawyers in the Post Office legal team have shown, we are potentially on the brink of one of the largest set of systemic professional failings in UK legal history.
Challenging the ethics of the legal system
The team led a public and professional debate about lawyers’ ethics in the media, through blogs and at many legal conferences and workshops, both nationally and internationally. Professor Moorhead contributed to the development of a strategy on professional ethics by the Legal Services Board leading to better regulation.
Lawyer and founder of Lawtech UK, Jenifer Swallow, says:
It would not be an overstatement to say [the Post Office Project team’s] work has changed the course of the legal profession. It has informed the practice of law and individual attitudes and decision-making around it at increasing scale, as well as the governance structures, ethical frameworks and policy interventions that are needed for the future.
Video credit: ESRC
Video transcript and on-screen captions are available by watching on YouTube.
Find out more
Read more about the Post Office Project.
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