“Whatever charges were brought against an individual appellant, and whatever pleas may ultimately have been accepted, the whole basis of each prosecution was that money was missing from the branch account: there was an actual shortfall, which had been caused by theft on the part of the SPM, or at best had been covered up by false accounting or fraud on the part of the SPM. But in the “Horizon cases”, there was no evidence of a shortfall other than the Horizon data. If the Horizon data was not reliable, there was no basis for the prosecution. The failures of investigation and disclosure prevented the appellants from challenging, or challenging effectively, the reliability of the data. In short, POL as prosecutor brought serious criminal charges against the SPMs on the basis of Horizon data, and by its failures to discharge its clear duties it prevented them from having a fair trial on the issue of whether that data was reliable.”
“By representing Horizon as reliable, and refusing to countenance any suggestion to the contrary, POL effectively sought to reverse the burden of proof: it treated what was no more than a shortfall shown by an unreliable accounting system as an incontrovertible loss, and proceeded as if it were for the accused to prove that no such loss had occurred. Denied any disclosure of material capable of undermining the prosecution case, defendants were inevitably unable to discharge that improper burden. As each prosecution proceeded to its successful conclusion the asserted reliability of Horizon was, on the face of it, reinforced. Defendants were prosecuted, convicted and sentenced on the basis that the Horizon data must be correct, and cash must therefore be missing, when in fact there could be no confidence as to that foundation.”
“we are not satisfied…that the Prosecution’s case about discrepancies in the balances are indeed accurate and there are, as we understand it, concerns nationwide with regard to the reliability of [Horizon]…”
“I found the Horizon system had some flaws, I would find that [with] the weekly accounting balance was often over or there was a short fall, anything between£200 -£500 a week. After advice I was told that this was normal and that it usually corrected itself the following week.”
“… having considered the available information, the CCRC has concluded that there is a real possibility that Mr Allen’s conviction would be overturned by the Court of Appeal. On the information which is before the CCRC, it appears that unexplained balancing problems when using the Horizon system were an important part of the context to Mr Allen’s guilty plea to theft. Although Mr Allen has referred to prosecution evidence regarding unsigned pension dockets, the CCRC does not consider that anything in Mr Allen’s recent correspondence contradicts his assertion that balancing problems in the branch accounts were the result of flaws in the Horizon system. In the view of the CCRC there is a plausible scenario in which the losses in this case were indeed Horizon-related, if Horizon errors resulted in the recording of pension payments that had not in fact been made and so were not supported by signed pension dockets.”
“The element of Horizon dealing with the activation and use of Pension and Allowance. Order Books is known as the Order Book Control Service or ‘OBCS’. This is an automated system for checking bar-coded order books against an electronic stop list. Normally, order books would be scanned using the Horizon bar-code scanner, but if the scanner was not working, or if Horizon was off-line, order books could be checked against a printed copy of the stop list generated by the Horizon system.”
“There is substantial evidence that throughout the period 2000 to 2004, barcode scanning of order books was an integral part of the Horizon computer system and not a stand-alone system.”