Post Office: ‘appalling’ that courts not told of bugs, Fujitsu boss admits

Fujitsu’s Europe chief, Paul Patterson, giving evidence at the Post Office scandal inquiry at Aldwych House, central London. Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry/PA

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.