Latest query: Post office still relies on discredited Horizon data, Fujitsu warns via email

IT system contractor Horizon had to warn the Post Office this year about its reliability for investigations, the public inquiry into the scandal has heard.

On Friday, the inquiry received an email from Fujitsu European director Paul Patterson, dated May 17 and sent to Post Office chief executive Nick Read, which suggested the Post Office could still pursue postmasters for lack of accounts based on Horizon data.

By that stage the system had been discredited as providing the basis for hundreds of unsafe convictions of deputy postmasters.

Patterson wrote: “We would have expected the Post Office to have changed its behavior in light of the criticism and been appropriately circumspect about any enforcement action. It should not have relied on the Horizon data as a basis for to the application of this deficit”.

Patterson said the Post Office investigation team appeared to maintain a “victim” approach to the organization, and asked Fujitsu to provide a witness statement on the reliability of Horizon’s data.

For the investigative team to act like this, he added, “seems to ignore the serious criticisms raised in multiple court rulings and, in fact, shows a lack of respect for the ongoing investigation.”

The email was shown to Post Office general counsel Ben Foat during his evidence session on Friday. Foat said he had been on long-term leave when the email was written, but his interim replacement had indicated there was a problem between the Post Office and Fujitsu.

“Obviously the Post Office is paying for a system and the Post Office hopes it is fit for purpose,” said Foat, who confirmed an outside lawyer was helping the legal team investigate the matter.

Former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton told the inquest last month that in January 2023 Foat instructed the Post Office’s investigative team to investigate a postmaster who ran branches in London and Hertfordshire and who was a non-executive member of the board. This followed an apparent deficit in the Horizon system that had appeared (and was later found to be a fraction of the amount that had been identified). Staunton said the situation was “totally inconceivable”. Another memo from Staunton had said that Foat and other senior members of the organization still believed the postmasters were guilty until proven innocent.

Speaking to the inquest, Foat vehemently denied this was true. He said: “I have maintained throughout my tenure at the Post Office that we must adhere to the common-issues judgment and the Hamilton judgment (which concluded) that people are innocent until proven guilty. culpability. You don’t have to be a senior lawyer to know that and I’m saying due process has to be done.”