The contractor behind the Horizon IT system 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 saw an email from Fujitsu’s European director Paul Patterson, dated 17 May and sent to Post Office chief executive Nick Read, which suggested that Post Office might still be pursuing postmasters for account shortfalls based on Horizon data.
The system by that stage had been discredited for providing the basis of hundreds of unsafe convictions of subpostmasters.
Patterson wrote: ‘We would have expected that the Post Office has changed its behaviour in light of the criticisms and is appropriately circumspect with respect to any enforcement actions. It should not be relying on Horizon data as the basis for such shortfall enforcement.’
Patterson said the Post Office investigation team appeared to maintain an approach of the organisation as ‘victim’, asking Fujitsu to provide a witness statement as to the reliability of Horizon data.
For the investigations team to act like this, he added, ‘seems to disregard the serious criticism raised in multiple judicial findings and indeed, exhibits a lack of respect to the ongoing inquiry.’
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 flagged up there was an issue between Post Office and Fujitsu.
‘Obviously Post Office is paying for a system and Post Office expects that it’s fit for purpose,’ said Foat, who confirmed that an external lawyer was helping the legal team look into the matter.
Former Post Office chair Henry Staunton told the inquiry last month that in January 2023 Foat commissioned the Post Office’s investigation team to investigate a postmaster who ran branches in London and Hertfordshire and was a non-executive member of the board. This followed an apparent shortfall on the Horizon system which had appeared (and which later was found to be a fraction of the amount which had been identified). Staunton said the situation was ‘utterly unconscionable’. Another memo from Staunton had said that Foat and other senior members of the organisation still believed postmasters were guilty until proved innocent.
Speaking to the inquiry, Foat vehemently denied this was true. He said: ‘I have maintained throughout my entire tenure at the Post Office that we need to adhere to the common Issues judgment and Hamilton judgment [which concluded] people are innocent until proved guilty. One need not be a senior lawyer to know that and I am on record saying due process needs to be done.’
