Post Mortem

by Richard Brooks

The Post Office Horizon IT Scandal

The first forensic account of how the Post Office, the British government and a global IT company ruined the lives of thousands of innocent people. Private Eye tells the story of the political, institutional, professional and personal failures, written in the hope that the lessons of the Post Office scandal will guard against such abuses in future. With a foreword by Sir Alan Bates.

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 27, 2025

About the author

Former tax-inspector Richard Brooks reports for Private Eye on a range of subjects and has contributed to the Guardian, the BBC, and many other media outlets. With David Craig he was co-author of the bestselling Plundering the Public Sector. In 2008 he was awarded the Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism. He lives in Reading.

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The UK Post Office Scandal, told through a post-Inquiry lens, providing great insights into the duplicitous world that the UK Post Office governers, leaders and management created and maintained.

The Pluto-sized snowball of lies, deceitful and conceited is rebuilt chapter by chapter as the story is retold with splices of reality (drawn from 2.2 million pages of inquiry evidence and other trusted sources) inserted as a companion to the non-reality that was Post's "truth".

This is a great sequel to Nick Wallis' book, The Great Post Office Scandal. There are aspects of Post Mortem that feel rushed to market (perhaps to be the first post-Inquiry summation), with some turn of phrases a little difficult to get your head around (perhaps a non-UK reader's challenge) and a "maximise" when he means "minimise", which throws you. But as a journo who has followed this quite despicable plot from the early days, Brook does a brilliant job in laying out the facts and calling out the perps.

Accountability. That's how he wraps up. And that's where the next story starts. Handing back an OBE (boo hoo). Appearing as a fool in historical emails and realtime inquiry interviews (ha ha). But none of that holds the perps to their accountabilities as lawyers, leaders, faux Union Reps, responsible officers, vendors, investigators, prosecutors, judges and public servants.

Accountability for the injustices (and sub-postmaster) is now due.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Larry McDonald’s gripping and informative book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, which tells the story of how the Lehman Brothers investment bank collapsed in 2008, this was a non-fiction work that had me rushing back home to read it. In fact, I had to hold myself back from reading it too fast!

In clear, brisk prose, Richard Brooks recounts how the Horizon accounting software, developed by Fujitsu and implemented by the UK Post Office in thousands of sub-post offices across the country, was known to have serious bugs and other issues before it was even rolled out. Too much money and too many reputations were at stake, however, for those in the know to acknowledge the truth, so they blamed the sub-postmasters instead for incompetence and dishonesty, as Sam Stein KC, counsel for one of the victims’ groups, so memorably put it at the public inquiry.

The result was ruined lives and a number of suicides, a price the Post Office and Fujitsu apparently thought was well worth paying so long as their own lives and profits were intact. By the account written here, the politicians who should have been keeping an eye on things were either in over their heads or just not interested. It took ordinary MPs, such as the splendid Conservative MP James Arbuthnot (now Lord Arbuthnot), to pin them and the truth down. Alongside that came great investigative work from Private Eye and Computer Weekly, all rounded off in the sobering ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, telling the story of one of the victims Alan Bates (now Sir Alan Bates) and his indefatigable fight to get to the truth.

The whole story really resonated with me as my parents ran a sub-post office, though, luckily, they retired long before Horizon came into the picture. As I read, I felt a wide range of emotions. Amusement, sometimes, at the naked cynicism of the offenders and their stupidity (for example, emails and other documents written by them were riddled with grammar and spelling errors, even wrong terminology) but, more often, sadness and absolute fury that something like this could have happened at all and been allowed to go on for so long.

Sir Wyn Williams, the senior judge who chaired the public inquiry, has yet to publish the second, decisive part of his report. I hope that it sees justice done for the victims.

Read this. The story is hard to stomach, but you won’t regret it.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

four and a half stars
An excellent if relatively brief synopsis of the still unfinished Post office scandal. Kudos to Private Eye and Richard Brooks

I live in a village where two post masters were affected and not far from a 3rd. The campaigning MP was my local MP. I worked for Fujitsu briefly (not on the Post office Horizon system) and my office base was the ICL building in Bracknall. The scandal has always felt personal

I watched a lot of the formal inquiry where the final report should be published this year. However real justice is continually delayed. Perjury and other charges are being investigated but incredibly slowly meanwhile some compensation claims remain unpaid. Another 2 years the book claimes before those cases might get to court

The book covers all of this and more. As with other UK national scandals (Hillsborough, Contaminated Blood, Nuclear Veterans) which briefly get mentioned it uncovers a damning indictment of most of the politicians and civil servants - would have liked a little more on links to that. The failure of public servants in and around the Posts Office is in itself a scandal. Throw in the legal teams, investigators and the courts who convicted so many or passed civil judgements. It's not just the post office executives who need to be held to account. Unfortunately they won't be.

If you know nothing or a lot about the scandal well worth a read.

[Amie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Post Mortem by Richard Brooks continues the story established in the previous book, examining the consequences of extraordinary events and the systems surrounding them. It balances personal stories with wider questions about responsibility and accountability.

I thought this was a really strong follow-up. What struck me most was how effectively the author explored the fallout from earlier events and highlighted both the successes and failures of those involved.