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The Post Office has apologised for utilizing racist terms to explain postmasters wrongly investigated as a part of the Horizon IT scandal.
An inside doc reveals fraud investigators have been requested to group suspects based mostly on racial options.
More than 700 sub-postmasters have been prosecuted for false accounting based mostly on data from a flawed system.
The scandal has been described as “the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history”.
- Warning: This story accommodates language which readers might discover offensive.
The guidance, which was reportedly revealed between 2008 and 2011, required investigators to offer sub-postmasters below suspicion a quantity, based on their racial background.
The numbered classes on the doc embrace ‘Chinese/Japanese varieties’, ‘Dark Skinned European Types’ and ‘Negroid Types’ – an archaic and offensive time period from the colonial period of the 1800s that refers to folks of African descent.
A Post Office spokesperson described it as a “historic document” however stated the organisation didn’t tolerate racism “in any shape or form” and condemned the “abhorrent” language.
“We fully support investigations into Post Office’s past wrong doings and believe the Horizon IT Inquiry will help ensure today’s Post Office has the confidence of its Postmasters and the communities it supports,” the spokesperson added.
The doc was found as a part of a freedom of knowledge request from a campaigner supporting the greater than 700 department managers who have been prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 on theft, fraud and false accounting fees.
The fees have been based mostly on data from the lately put in pc system, Horizon, which was later discovered to have flaws.
Horizon was launched into the Post Office community from 1999. The system, developed by the Japanese firm Fujitsu, was used for duties similar to transactions, accounting and stocktaking.
Sub-postmasters complained about bugs in the system after it reported shortfalls, a few of which amounted to many hundreds of kilos.
Some went to jail following convictions for false accounting and theft, whereas others have been financially ruined.
Dozens of convictions have since been overturned and lots of sub-postmasters are in line for compensation.
