Tysoe sub-postmaster Jacqueline Franklin says her mum died while subsidising faulty system – as Horizon problems continue

“It’s still happening,” she told the Herald. “The other day it churned out three receipts then turned itself off while a clerk was serving. And that’s happened three times now recently.”

She continued: “You’re trying to serve and the screen turns itself off; you go ‘what’s happened?’ You don’t know whether a transaction has actually gone through.

“On one occasion we found there was no record of a transaction. So that was looked at by the Post Office IT help desk and they couldn’t see anything either.”

Jacqueline said that although in the wake of the scandal the help desk “are slightly more helpful”, they are too hasty to mark issues as sorted.

“I get e-mails saying the problem has been resolved and they’ve closed the case when in fact it still needs looking at,” she explained. “The other day I rang them about something because they closed it down and it clearly wasn’t right.”

Jacqueline took over running Tysoe Post Office from her mother Lilian Hopkins, who clocked up 40 years as a sub-postmaster. Sadly Lilian died of motor neurone disease in 2019 aged 76.

Like so many sub-postmasters, her later life was tarnished by being blamed for errors caused by the faulty Horizon system.

“The Post Office said it was human error, so mum spent hours getting out paperwork and double checking it,” explained Jacqueline. “Mum went through everything because she had been convinced they had done something wrong.”

Around 900 sub-postmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting during the scandal and hundreds of others were intimidated into making up shortfalls from their own money. Lilian was among them, and Jacqueline says she too has had to balance the books from her own pocket.

“It worried mum and so she put money back in – she subsidised the Post Office with her wages and lived on her pension,” said Jacqueline.

Even though Lilian was aware of the Bates/group litigation court case challenging the Post Office, she didn’t want to go down that route herself.

“At her age she didn’t quite comprehend it wouldn’t be her that was up in court, and that she would have a representative, so she declined,” said Jacqueline. “At the time she was ill with MND and going back and forth to doctors. She kept it hidden. People congratulated her on losing weight – but she just carried on because that was her belief. She was scared of closing, even in snow she thought you have to open.”

Sharing her final thoughts about the scandal, Jacqueline said: “It changed mum’s life so much that she thought she had to continue just living off a pension until the end of her life, it was horrific to watch. The day she died I took over, and with the mindset of the Post Office was I was expected to just carry on – I’ve had no time off to grieve or anything.

“The relationship between sub-postmasters and the Post Office needs resetting. And we need more money for what we are doing, we are just not being paid enough to live.”

Meanwhile the Post Office justifies its continued use of the Horizon by pointing to changes made to the system.

A spokesperson said: “The current version of the system, introduced from 2017, was found in the group litigation to be robust, relative to comparable systems. But we are not complacent about that and are continuing to work, together with our postmasters, to make improvements.”

Nick Wallace, a journalist and authority on the scandal, says Jacqueline is far from alone in finding Horizon still error-prone.

He said: “Experts point out that Horizon still can’t tell the difference between an IT error and fraud, and that postmasters are in a difficult position because even though contractually they are responsible for their accounts, they are not in control of them.

“Postmasters need to report problems and push back against the Post Office and say ‘look, according to the 2019 judgement you now have to prove that these errors are my responsibility’. And if the Post Office can’t do that it should be writing them off. The problem is the Post Office has all the power, including legal and debt-recovery departments. Sub-postmasters are on their own. Leaning on them to make up losses is wrong.”