“We were involved from the very start. We did have bugs and errors in the system. And we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters. For that we are truly sorry.” As admissions go, this one from Paul Patterson, the head of Fujitsu Europe, was uncharacteristically candid. For almost two decades, the Post Office, supported by Fujitsu, falsely prosecuted nearly a thousand sub-postmasters rather than admit the Horizon system was flawed. It took years of litigation, campaigning and an ITV drama to force Fujitsu to admit the truth so publicly. Ministers are now talking tough about consequences. In reality, the company is far too influential to be held truly accountable.
Fujitsu’s role in the Post Office scandal has provoked understandable outrage. From the earliest trials in 1999, internal reports show Horizon (which Fujitsu designed and maintained) caused “severe difficulties” for users. The system repeatedly and erroneously showed money missing from branch accounts. Rather than fix the problems, the Post Office and Fujitsu rolled Horizon out nationally. When discrepancies inevitably occurred, they prosecuted the sub-postmasters. Fujitsu provided expert evidence asserting the reliability of Horizon and explaining how it had “caught” the sub-postmasters. Two Fujitsu witnesses are now themselves under police investigation. Fujitsu denied, until recently, that sub-postmasters’ Horizon terminals could be accessed remotely. But the company knew (or should have known) that this was not true as early as 2001.
