We told Post Office about system problems, says Fujitsu • The Register

Fujitsu has said it continually told the Post Office about problems with Horizon, the computer system at the center of one of the UK’s widest miscarriages of justice, as its client prosecuted branch managers for accounting discrepancies.

Speaking at the closing statements of the statutory inquiry into the complex computer scandal, Richard Whittam KC, the lawyer representing Fujitsu, said the Japanese tech services group and Horizon IT platform provider had told the Post Office about bugs, errors and defects (Beds) and their impact on Post Office branch accounting over a 25-year period.

Horizon is an EPOS and back-end finance system for thousands of Post Office branches around the UK, first implemented by ICL, a UK technology company later bought by Fujitsu. From 1999 until 2015, around 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were wrongfully convicted of fraud when errors in the system were to blame. It destroyed the lives of many involved, leaving some bankrupt and others feeling suicidal, with several succeeding in ending their lives. While a number of convictions have been quashed in the courts, 60 people died before just seeing any sort of justice served. A statutory inquiry into the mass miscarriage of justice launched in 2021 is ongoing.

Whittam told that inquiry yesterday: “In general, Fujitsu routinely and continually shared information concerning the existence of the impact of Beds with Post Office. [It] therefore follows the contemporary, contemporaneous knowledge of [Beds] within Post Office went well beyond acknowledgement of the mere theoretical possibility of [Beds]. Post Office has been aware for at least 25 years of the potential for and the existence of [Beds] in Horizon, as well as the potential for those which are unknown and unresolved to exist. Post Office was also aware in 1999 of the potential for [Beds] to impact upon the integrity of branch accounts.”

The lawyer for the Post Office denied senior figures knew of these problems, while the lawyer for former CEO Paula Vennells denied she knew of problems with Horizon.

However, during the Inquiry’s hearing for closing statements of core participants, Whittam said: “Fujitsu has identified at least 70 individuals within Post Office and Royal Mail, in relation to whom the inquiry has received unequivocal evidence of their knowledge of [Beds]. This includes members of the Post Office board, senior executives, in-house lawyers, as well as individuals working in Post Offices security and investigations teams. That knowledge spans the entire entirety of the period being examined by the Inquiry.”

He went on to say that in its closing submissions, the Post Office “sought to obfuscate” its share of responsibility for the scandal and wrongly tried to “deflect blame to Fujitsu and other third parties”.

“[The] Post Office has sought to characterize itself as the subordinate partner in the relationship with Fujitsu and as operationally and technically dependent on Fujitsu,” he said.

However, these submissions were “unsupported by any reference to the evidence before this inquiry”.

“That’s unsurprising, because the submissions bear no resemblance to that evidence,” Whittam said.

Nicola Greaney KC, speaking for the Post Office, said the public sector organization regretted its reliance on Fujitsu and its belief in the reliability of Horizon which “emerged in those early days, was allowed to take root within post office in the decades that followed.”

She said a “mindset” took hold in Post Office founded on the assumption that there were no Beds in Horizon.

“Such problems as did arise in Horizon were due to user error or dishonesty, [due to] a strong resistance to countenancing the existence of any flaws in Horizon, a mindset that saw it as an advantage not to keep postmasters informed about systems issues that were identified, a mindset that positively discouraged more widespread dissemination of information, a mindset that focused on protecting the Post Office brand and the commercial interests of the company. This mindset was compounded by an organizational hierarchy, which meant that junior employees did not feel able to escalate issues upwards,” she said.

Greaney added that senior figures failed to take a sufficient overview of Horizon. “Important senior roles were occupied by individuals who regrettably lacked sufficient understanding of the obligations and responsibilities attached to those roles. They either did not have sufficient personal experience of Horizon technology, or were not sufficiently senior within the overall organization to carry out those roles,” she said.

She put this phenomenon down to “a series of governance failings in the organization.”

“Key information about Horizon and prosecutions based on Horizon was not shared effectively, either horizontally or vertically within the Post Office,” she said.

Samantha Leek KC, speaking on behalf of former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells, said senior ex-colleagues in the Post Office, including former business improvement director and people and change director Angela van den Bogerd, had failed to pass important information about the operation of Horizon to the board or to Vennells.

The lawyer said Vennells was “devastated by the fact that information was not shared with her.”

“She has no desire to point the finger at others nor to speculate as to why information was not shared,” Leek said.

The Inquiry will continue to look at evidence but is not set to hold further hearings. ®