Fujitsu has begun forcing the Post Office to disclose whether Horizon data requests will be used to investigate a branch owner-operator for “any impropriety”, prompting objections from the state-owned body’s executives.
The development emerged in documents shown to the public inquiry into how hundreds of branch owner-operators were wrongfully pursued through the courts based on evidence from Horizon that was later found to be unreliable.
The documents show that Fujitsu – which developed the IT system, still runs it for the Post Office and controls access to all transactional records from branches – added two new questions to its data request form in May.
The inquiry heard last week that Fujitsu made it a mandatory, non-negotiable requirement for the Post Office to provide the additional information when making a request for audit record query (ARQ) data.
The first question, at the start of the form, asked whether the use of the data would be “related to the investigation of, or action taken or intended to be taken, by the Post Office against a postmaster or post office worker in connection with potential fraud, theft, breach of contract or any other impropriety which is suspected to have occurred at relevant post office branches”.
The second question asked whether the data would be used to help a branch owner-operator or post office worker achieve financial redress through one of the compensation schemes being run by Post Office and the government.
The counsel for the inquiry asked Simon Oldnall, the branch technology director responsible for the IT systems at the Post Office, about the Post Office’s opposition to the new questions.
“Fujitsu effectively unilaterally imposed these questions on the Post Office,” Oldnall said. “We felt particularly the first question was very, very broad. The second question, Fujitsu were well aware of why we were requesting lots and lots of data for [financial] redress. Overall we didn’t think the mandatory changes were necessary.”
Asked by counsel what the Post Office found so objectionable about the questions, Oldnall said: “The Post Office doesn’t take action against postmasters, so it doesn’t really stand even as a question. It felt very broadly worded and not relevant to how Post Office operates today.”
The enforced change instituted by Fujitsu came at the same time as a spat between the Post Office and the software company over the use of IT data to support a criminal case against a post office owner.
The issue was rapidly escalated to Paul Patterson, the chief executive of Fujitsu Europe, who wrote directly to the Post Office chief executive, Nick Read. Patterson wrote in May this year that he had “serious concerns” about the Post Office continuing to pursue enforcement against branch operators “and expects Fujitsu to support such actions”.
Read responded that there had been a “fundamental misunderstanding” and that the contact had been to prompt Fujitsu to cooperate with a police investigation.
Patterson said that the nature of how the request had been made by the investigations team had been “entirely inappropriate”, and said the Post Office continued to have “significant cultural issues”.
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It has also emerged that the Post Office is exploring an eventual resumption of the practice of taking branch owner-operators to court for the civil recovery of losses.
On Tuesday last week, the inquiry was shown another document, titled Loss Recovery Update, from this summer. Under the “options and recommendations” section, the Post Office highlighted the “significant financial risk” of continuing to write off shortfalls in branches instead of pursuing them.
It also said that the current practice of not pursuing a shortfall unless a post office operator is in agreement could lead to “an environment likely to embed improper financial behaviours/practices in the network of postmasters, if there is no sanction or consequence for failing to follow the proper policies or procedures”.
Horizon data would be required to pursue financial shortfalls from post office operators.
Oldnall, who said he was aware of the document and of the “activity” around a change in loss recovery strategy, said that in order for data to be used for such purposes he would have to “commission a piece of work” internally.
The inquiry will break this week and next, but will continue hearing evidence from Monday 4 November.