The inquiry into the scandal of hundreds of post office operators being pursued through the courts due to the faulty Horizon accounting system built by Fujitsu began hearing evidence in January 2021. The ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office catapulted the latest hearings into focus. Here are four main points from the most recent hearings, which started in January, covering policy, audits and investigations.
The inquiry, led by the retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams, will reopen in central London in the spring, with evidence from the former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells and the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, who was postal affairs minister between 2010 and 2012.
Fujitsu knew about Horizon bugs back in 1999
Fujitsu’s Europe chief, Paul Patterson, told the inquiry he found it “shameful and appalling” that courts hearing cases against post office operators over missing funds were not told of 29 bugs in the system it built, some of which had been identified as early as 1999.
When bugs were acknowledged, the Post Office edited witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to be heard in court as it sought to maintain the line that the system was working well.
Patterson agreed that both organisations had failed those accused. “I am surprised that that detail [that bugs had been identified] 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. The prosecution of post office operators based on unreliable evidence only ended in 2014.
The Post Office has failed to disclose evidence
The Post Office has admitted failing to properly disclose thousands of relevant documents and thousands of emails but its lawyers informed the inquiry that it was no longer realistic to ask them to work evenings and weekends searching for relevant evidence.
“The principle of reasonableness in relation to disclosure to the inquiry – even if operating at the more stringent end of the spectrum – does not, and cannot, require POL [the Post Office] to leave every [sic] stone unturned,” wrote the Post Office’s lead legal representative, Chris Jackson, a partner at the law firm Burges Salmon LLP. “Such a standard is impossible for POL to realistically comply with.”
The organisation’s past and present leadership has also not provided the inquiry with any WhatsApp messages on the basis that senior figures within the organisation claimed it was not used for “substantive” discussions. “It may be a surprise to a member of the public that no one in the Post Office used WhatsApp to discuss issues of substance relating to the Horizon system,” said Jason Beer, the lead counsel to the inquiry.
Unrepentant prosecutors
Raymond Grant, a Post Office investigator, told the inquiry that he still believed that the man he helped prosecute, William Quarm, was guilty. Quarm, a father of five, died in 2012 not knowing he would eventually have his conviction for embezzlement overturned 11 years later.
Grant was legally forced to give testimony at the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal. He provided the barest bones of a witness statement, at just over two pages, criticising the inquiry for not giving him enough time to do more because it clashed with his Christmas plans.
Grant said he glanced at 78 documents the inquiry asked him to review as he was too busy at his job at the Salvation Army organising activities such as carol singing, making Christmas dinners and walking his dog. He later apologised for his role in the scandal and accused the Post Office of deceiving him. However, he was not the only former investigator who appeared to believe that some post office operators who have now been cleared were nevertheless up to no good.
Frederick Thorpe, a former Post Office investigator involved in the criminal investigation of Alan McLaughlin and Maureen McKelvey, had to be reminded by the counsel at the inquiry that both of them were innocent. During his testimony he said McLaughlin had “manipulated the cash account” and that “what he was doing was still wrong”.
Stephen Bradshaw, an investigator who denied claims he and his colleagues had acted like “mafia gangsters”, disputed an account of him calling one female suspect a “bitch” but admitted to accusing another of telling a “pack of lies” during what he conceded were “not nice” interviews. He insisted he had acted professionally.
Fujitsu has a £2.4bn contract – but would not fix defects
The Horizon contract was extended last year to run until at least 2025, and is estimated to be worth £2.4bn. However, the inquiry heard from Gerald Barnes, a software developer at Fujitsu since 1998 who repeatedly raised the issue of bugs in the Horizon IT system, that the company did not fix the problem because it would have been too expensive and time-consuming.
“Error handling wasn’t as good as it could have been if designed properly from the start,” he told the inquiry. “The better thing to do is to make sure the [Horizon Online] software works. It would have just been too expensive to do a thorough job at that stage. It would have been uneconomic. To comprehensively rewrite the error handling would be a massive job. It would be extremely expensive.”
It also emerged that data from the Horizon IT system, which was responsible for the wrongful prosecution of more than 900 post office operators, is still used in continuing legal cases.
