Liz Roberts, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease, passed away in a care home before seeing her conviction overturned
An alleged victim of a wrongful Post Office prosecution linked to a second faulty IT system has died before seeing her name cleared.
Liz Roberts, 73, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, passed away at her care home in Wirral, Merseyside, last week.
Her son Chris Roberts had recently told i of his determination to overturn her 1999 conviction for theft at the hands of the Post Office. She served 13 months in prison before she was released.
The family believe Ms Roberts, who kept the books for her sub-postmaster husband Bill, suffered unexplained shortfalls of around £46,000 because of a piece of software called Capture.
Introduced by the Post Office in the early 90s, it was intended to be the first step away from paper ledgers towards the computerisation of balancing accounts.
But documents shared with i show the Post Office, which developed the software in-house, knew Capture was prone to bugs and faults from an early stage.
The Post Office has now admitted it is “concerned” by claims that it wrongly prosecuted former sub-postmasters because of the second faulty IT system.
It follows weeks of reporting by i highlighting claims surrounding Capture – cases which pre-date the Horizon scandal which began in 1999.
Mr Roberts, who has instructed Hudgells solicitors to fight his mother’s case, said he is upset that she will not be around to see her name cleared but remains determined to carry on the process.
“In my head, I was going to get a piece of paper saying she’s exonerated and I thought I would get a picture of her holding it,” he told i.
“That’s not to be, sadly. But if anything, I’m even more determined than before to clear her name.
“We’ve run out of time for mum, but it’s not just about us. There’s going to be other people who might have a little bit more time, who could see a bit of justice 25 or 30 years after the fact.
“I think it’s important that anybody who can put their shoulder to the wheel, does that.”
Multiple former sub-postmasters have come forward to i to claim they were pursued by the Post Office for allegedly missing money and sacked, taken to court and criminally prosecuted.
Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who has campaigned for Horizon victims for years, has described the claims linked to Capture as a “second scandal”. He has called on the Post Office to “come clean” on what it knows about prosecutions linked to the pre-Horizon system.
Government ministers and officials at the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) are in talks with the Post Office and are open to updating the current inquiry into the Horizon scandal to include Capture as well.
Ms Roberts was prosecuted over alleged shortfalls totalling more than £46,000 despite no evidence of where the money had gone.
She resisted repeated attempts by Post Office investigators to pressure her into pleading guilty to lesser charges, telling her son: “I can’t admit to something I haven’t done.”
She stood trial at Liverpool Crown Court but was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.
According to a report in the Wirral Globe from the time, a key strand of Ms Roberts’ defence was that a new computer system introduced by the Post Office had left her in a “most dreadful mess”.
The case pre-dates the now infamous Horizon accounting system which saw at least 900 Post Office staff wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015.
The verdict left Ms Roberts’ family and friends devastated. She went to prison four days after her son’s seventeenth birthday.
The family campaigned for several years for the conviction to be overturned but Ms Roberts decided to draw a line under the matter after she suffered a stroke in 2007.
Chris Roberts watched his mum go to prison for Post Office shortfalls four days after his 17th birthday (Photo: Supplied)
Ms Roberts, who also worked for many years as a nurse, will be remembered as a “kind” woman who never stopped looking after others, her son said.
“Even in the care home, she would wander round the other rooms giving other residents a blanket or something to drink,” he added.
“Her default mode was caring and she didn’t lose that, to me that’s so impressive, that’s the woman I was lucky to have as a mother.”
The Post Office has said it is “concerned” by claims that its Capture software was faulty and may have led to further wrongful convictions.
In the latest statement, a spokesperson said: “We take very seriously any concerns raised about cases from before the Horizon system was first rolled out in 1999. Our current understanding is that Capture does not appear to have been ‘networked’, but the software was used by some postmasters, alongside manual processes, for simplifying accounts before they were manually submitted.
“We are particularly concerned about allegations of prosecutions, and we are looking into this along with all available facts about Capture, including whether shortfalls could have been caused by faults in this software, and the potential impacts if so.
“Given the passage of time, around 30 years ago, and changes to data storage systems since the split from Royal Mail, we do not yet have a complete picture of Capture but are looking into the issue given the concerns raised.”