Six Lessons Government Should Learn From The Post Office Scandal

13th January 2024

The handling of the Post Office scandal has wider lessons for government.

The Post Office scandal has been reported on for years, but only now has it gripped the attention of the public - and politicians. IfG experts set out how the failure of the Horizon IT programme and the subsequent fallout has raised plenty of questions for government.

There have been almost 1,000 convictions in connection with the faulty Horizon IT programme provided by Fujitsu to the Post Office, with many more people affected. The scandal has been a very slow burn, but the recent ITV dramatisation of the experiences of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses accused of theft and false accounting, and their battle to prove that Horizon was at fault, has captured the public imagination and prompted the government to accelerate compensation.

A public inquiry has been ongoing since 2020. Clarifying what happened in this specific case is important, but there are also much wider lessons for government about how large contracts in public bodies are managed and overseen, and about the importance of clear accountability between ministers, civil servants, regulators and public body leaders.

Read the full article at Institute for Government

Listen To The Podcast - The Post Office scandal - trouble on the Horizon
The Post Office scandal has been described by Rishi Sunak as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history - so who is responsible and is the government's response the right one? Adam Boulton, the former political editor of Sky News, joins the podcast to discuss how the faulty Horizon software led to hundreds of postmasters wrongly prosecuted for theft.