The Horizon scandal must be a turning point for a digital government
Protestors outside the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry at the International Dispute Resolution Centre, London, 2022 (Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo)
4 min read
The publication of the Horizon inquiry’s first volume report this week lays bare one of the most shameful chapters in British public life.
It confirms what campaigners and victims have said for years: that hundreds of innocent subpostmasters were dragged through the criminal justice system because the state placed blind faith in a faulty computer system.
But the report does more than recount past failings – it forces us to confront a deeper truth. The Horizon scandal is not an isolated failure but a mirror held up to the way the British state understands, governs and uses technology. Those who suffered deserve full and fair compensation, of course. This moment also demands a fundamental rethink of how digital power is used and governed in public life.
Unless we radically change how the state approaches technology, we will see the same pattern of harm play out again
For years, subpostmasters were accused of theft, fraud and false accounting, not because they had done anything wrong but because a computer system had said so. They were prosecuted, imprisoned and left with their lives in ruins. The impact on their families and communities is profound, and in many cases beyond comprehension.
This didn’t happen in the distant past: it unfolded over the course of multiple governments. And it wasn’t just one faulty system that failed but an entire chain of responsibility around it. Horizon wasn’t some malevolent machine from a sci-fi film – it was a flawed product, shielded by institutions and individuals that failed to ask hard questions and allowed it to operate without proper checks, scrutiny, or understanding.
We’ve already seen how poorly designed digital systems can reinforce inequality, from biased algorithms in recruitment softwares to scheduling failures in the NHS. Horizon may be the most devastating example, but it’s far from the only one.
We’ve reached a point where digital systems are deeply embedded in every part of government: managing our borders, supporting our policing, shaping our healthcare. But the oversight and understanding that surround these crucial systems have not kept up.
Far too often, the state has outsourced not just the technology but the responsibility for it. Ministers of previous governments have signed off on digital tools they don’t fully grasp. Contracts were awarded to tech giants with little transparency and fewer consequences for failure to deliver. When things went wrong, scapegoats were sought, but rarely did we ask whether the system itself was fit for purpose.
That’s why we’ve changed course. We could not build a fairer Britain on top of systems that are flawed, opaque and unaccountable. The public deserves more than just efficiency – they deserve justice, transparency and the right to challenge decisions made about them by the state.
As a Labour government, we’re committed to modernising the state in a way that puts people first. That doesn’t mean blindly embracing technology, nor blindly rejecting it. It means governing it with purpose, ethics and care. We are investing in digital literacy and technical capability across government, treating public-sector technology as infrastructure, not as a shortcut to cuts, and designing digital services around rights, dignity, and fairness, not just data and delivery targets.
We’re also working to shift the political culture that allowed Horizon to happen in the first place; one that treated technology as neutral, or purely administrative, rather than as an expression of power. Horizon showed us what happens when systems are trusted more than people. That wasn’t justice. It was a failure of duty. And it there are many of us both in government, and on the backbenches, working to make sure it is not repeated on our watch.
There are still victims of Horizon still waiting for full and fair compensation, including in my own constituency of Weston-super-Mare, and they must not wait any longer. But justice also means learning the right lessons, and acting on them with urgency, and that work will take all of us, not just Parliament. It means we must engage with professional membership bodies like BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, industry groups like TechUK, and civil society organisations like the Open Data Institute, which have a crucial role in raising standards and embedding accountability across the tech sector.
The next Horizon scandal won’t look the same. It may come from a machine learning model that no one understands, a predictive policing tool that embeds bias, or a benefits algorithm that silently locks people out of support. But unless we radically change how the state approaches technology, we will see the same pattern of harm play out again, just with a different user interface.
The government’s mission is to restore trust not just in politics but in the systems of government that shape people’s lives. That means taking digital governance seriously. Because justice demands accountability, not rushed automation – and the role of technology in public life must always support, not replace, human responsibility.
Dan Aldridge is Labour MP for Weston-super-Mare
