Post Office scandal: Police consider corporate manslaughter charges

Police Weigh Corporate Manslaughter Charges as Post Office Scandal Probe Reaches “Persons of Interest”

Police investigating Britain’s worst miscarriage of justice are now considering corporate manslaughter charges. The National Police Chiefs’ Council confirmed that fifty-three persons of interest are now under examination, with eight individuals remaining formal suspects in Operation Olympos, the sprawling criminal investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal.

This is not merely a story of faulty software. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongfully convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office itself. At least thirteen people are believed to have taken their own lives due to the scandal’s devastating consequences. Thirteen suicides. Hundreds of lives destroyed. Thousands of families torn apart.

The police have requested further funding from the Home Office, warning that without this, they could face delay. Meanwhile, the volume of documents being reviewed by the police has now reached 7.5 million. Any potential criminal trials are not expected until 2028 or 2029.

The investigation focuses on Post Office investigators, lawyers, and management across both the Post Office and Fujitsu, the company that created the Horizon system. Commander Stephen Clayman, who is leading the investigation, said police will “go where the evidence takes” them, with no person or crime out of the scope. Civil servants could be questioned. From 2027, the police will be expanding the investigation to look at the role Post Office and Fujitsu executives played in the scandal.

But here is the question that matters: how far up does this investigation reach? The Post Office is wholly owned by the government. Multiple ministers held the Post Office brief during the two decades this scandal unfolded. Ed Davey held the brief during the coalition and refused to meet Alan Bates, the campaigning postmaster, and a number of Conservatives who held the Post Office portfolio after the Coalition now face press scrutiny.

Yet there is no indication that Westminster itself falls within the scope of Operation Olympos. Ministers come and go. Civil servants remain. The pattern is familiar: accountability stops somewhere below the ministerial level, lost in the machinery of arms-length bodies and plausible deniability.

As one Whitehall source observed, it’s often “those who made the decisions in the first place charged with righting the wrongs”. The Post Office prosecuted sub-postmasters as recently as 2015. Parliament passed emergency legislation to overturn convictions only after an ITV drama forced the issue onto the public agenda in 2024.

Thirteen people took their own lives. Hundreds went to prison for crimes they did not commit. The investigation will cost taxpayers more than £50 million. And we are still waiting to see if anyone in power will face consequences for the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history.

The Ultimate Question: Will it Reach Westminster?

While we welcome the police investigation, the question on everyone’s lips remains: How high does this go?

We know the rot exists in the boardrooms of Fujitsu and the Post Office. But does it extend to Whitehall? Will the political masters who presided over this disaster, who ignored the warnings and sided with the corporate giants over the working people, face accountability?

The Post Office is wholly owned by the government. Ministers were briefed for years. Civil servants were warned. Select committees raised alarms as early as 2013. Yet successive governments… Labour, Tory, and Coalition all waved it all away.

The police are digging through the evidence. The establishment is watching nervously. We must demand that this investigation follows the evidence wherever it leads, even if it leads straight to the heart of government.

Justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done.

Paul Knaggs

Editor & founder of Labour Heartlands. 𝙁𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙧𝙣 𝙀𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙍𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩. Citizen journalist and veteran writing from the working-class coalface challenging the corruption, liberal elitism, and political complacency that dominate Britain today. Dyslexic but driven… I write because silence serves the powerful. Defender of free speech, civil liberties, and real democracy. Committed to an open, accountable democracy, not the manufactured version handed down from party machines, think tanks, or the Westminster bubble.