LAW FIRM THAT DESTROYED TRACY MCFADDEN'S CASE ALSO PAID ED DAVEY 60,000 POUNDS A YEAR Tracy McFadden ran a shop and post office in Sandiacre Derbyshire for 14 years. She put 250k pounds of her own money into building it in 2002. Business was going so well she was planning to expand. Then the Horizon system flagged a discrepancy and her life fell apart. Tracy McFadden did the responsible thing. She called the Horizon helpline for help. The debt magically doubled to 2,000 pounds overnight. Then it kept climbing. 4,000. Then 16,000. Tracy had no way to check the system herself because she was never given proper access to it. She was told to accept the debt or lose the right to trade. So she accepted a debt that never existed just to keep her doors open. She only escaped a criminal prosecution because witnesses vouched for her, including the wife of a regional Post Office manager. Her contract was terminated in 2014. The business was gone. The reputation was gone. Tracy McFadden went from running a thriving shop to what she describes as begging for benefits. Now here is the SHOCKING part. This was never just a broken piece of software. It was a chain of people who knew and chose their careers over the truth. Post Office executives signed off on prosecutions built on a system riddled with bugs. Fujitsu built that system and stayed quiet for years while it destroyed lives. Ed Davey was postal affairs minister from 2010 to 2012 while all of this was unfolding. When campaigner Alan Bates asked him to meet about serious concerns with Horizon, Ed Davey told him a meeting would not serve any purpose. Years later Ed Davey took a paid consultancy with Herbert Smith Freehills, the very law firm hired by the Post Office to fight the sub postmasters in court, earning 275k pounds for his time there. His brother Henry Davey was a corporate partner at the same firm. What a coincidence. Tracy McFadden was one of 555 claimants in the group litigation against the Post Office. They won. Technically. Legal costs swallowed most of the settlement before the victims ever saw a penny of it. A computer did not do this to Tracy McFadden. People did. People who had every chance to stop it and chose their fees and their careers instead. SOURCES @BBCNews @itvnews @ComputerWeekly @nickwallis