Post Office, Fujitsu bosses and government face MPs over Horizon scandal – live
Business committee question executives on what more can be done to deliver full and fast compensation for victims of the scandal
Fujitsu’s Europe chief has admitted it is “shameful and appalling” that courts hearing cases against post office operators over missing funds were not told of 29 bugs identified as early as 1999 in the accounting system it built.
Evidence was heard on Friday at a public inquiry into the scandal of a reluctance at the Japanese software company to make the Post Office aware of a “known error log” chronicling all the Horizon system’s defects.
When bugs were acknowledged, witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to be heard in court were then edited by the Post Office as it sought to maintain the line that the system was working well as it pursued innocent people through the courts.
Paul Patterson agreed that both organisations had failed those accused. “I am surprised that that detail was not included in the witness statements given by Fujitsu staff to the Post Office and I have seen some evidence of editing witness statements by others,” he said.
Asked by the lead counsel of the public inquiry, Jason Beer KC, whether he agreed that this was shameful, Patterson, who has worked at the company for 14 years, said: “That would be one word I would use. Shameful and appalling. My understanding of how our laws work in this country, is that all of the evidence should have been put in front of the subpostmasters that the Post Office was relying on to prosecute them.”
Patterson said Fujitsu had “let society down” and that the company would contribute to a fund to compensate “victims of this crime”, although he admitted to not having met a single post office operator as he had not believed it appropriate.
There has been slow progress in compensating victims of the scandal. On Friday, it was reported that Ben Tidswell, a former lawyer with the international law firm Ashurst who became a director of the Post Office in July 2021, had quit a board overseeing payments to operators just a year into a three-year term.
About 900 post office operators were convicted between 1999 and 2015 on the basis of shortages falsely recorded on the Horizon IT system, which was said repeatedly by the organisation inside and out of court to be unimpeachable.
The Post Office has also been asked by government to examine whether its previous accounting system, known as Capture, also led to false convictions after earlier potential miscarriages of justice came to light.
The public inquiry, led by the retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams, heard that 29 bugs and defects in the Horizon system were identified from as early as November 1999 and they led to false records being posted.
Patterson said there was “evidence” that Fujitsu employees had a “don’t share with the Post Office” approach to a document chronicling the known errors in the system.
He said the “vast majority” of bugs, errors and defects (BEDs) in the Horizon system were shared with the Post Office contemporaneously.
But post office operators were neither informed about known errors nor provided with the accessible raw data. Patterson admitted that Fujitsu’s witness statements in support of Post Office cases in the criminal and civil courts had been misleading.
Fujitsu has admitted to a failure to provide the level of information it should have in a range of cases including that of Lee Castleton, who was made bankrupt after being ordered to pay a £25,000 shortfall that did not exist and £321,000 in legal costs in 2007 when the high court ruled in the Post Office’s favour.
Investigation will dig into potential perjury offences and perverting the course of justice by senior leaders and Fujitsu
Police are planning to deploy 80 detectives for their criminal inquiry into the Post Office scandal, the Guardian has learned, but victims will face a long wait to discover if charges will follow.
The investigation will examine potential offences of perjury, and perverting the course of justice by Post Office senior leaders as well as the tech company Fujitsu.
Police have already started discussions with prosecutors about the investigation and potential criminal charges, which stem from the possibility that post office operators were wrongly prosecuted for stealing when bosses allegedly knew their computer accounting system could be flawed.
The police operation will be national and split into four regional hubs. The staffing and resources will be similar to a major murder or terrorism investigation. Police have asked government for a special grant of at least £6.75m to fund the operation.
The investigation will examine potential offences of perjury, and perverting the course of justice by Post Office senior leaders as well as the tech company Fujitsu.
