The Post Office attempted to use Horizon IT data to support a criminal case against a post office owner earlier this year, despite hundreds of post office operators being wrongfully prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting because of bugs in the system.
A chain of email correspondence between the Post Office and the Horizon developer, Fujitsu, relating to a police investigation into a potential criminal case involving a “large sum of money” against a sub-post office operator was shown at the public inquiry into the scandal on Tuesday.
An email was sent by John Bartlett, the head of investigations at the Post Office, to Fujitsu describing the Post Office as the “potential victim” and asking for the software company to provide a witness statement to the police or the case would not be able to progress.
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.
“I am writing to you directly in order to raise serious concerns that have come to my attention which indicate the Post Office continues to pursue enforcement against postmasters and expects Fujitsu to support such actions,” he said in an email in May.
“We are concerned by the behaviour of the Post Office investigation team on this matter. That team maintains the approach of the Post Office as a ‘victim’ and requires Fujitsu to provide a witness statement as to the reliability of Horizon data stating that without such statement the case will not progress. For the investigations team to act in this manner seems to disregard the serious criticism raised in multiple judicial findings and indeed exhibits a lack of respect to the ongoing inquiry.”
Read responded by saying that there had been a “fundamental misunderstanding” at Fujitsu about the “Post Office’s current day culture and activities”.
He said that the Post Office was not continuing its pursuit of post office operators in private prosecutions – “including providing supporting data from the Horizon system” for cases – and that it was to help a potential police investigation.
Patterson responded saying that he considered the request to be “entirely inappropriate”, adding that the Post Office is “well aware there have been and there continue to be bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system”.
“It seems clear that the Post Office continues to have significant cultural issues,” he said. “[It] sees itself as a ‘victim’ with the enforcement and prosecution of postmasters considered as a business as usual activity. Fujitsu finds the language and the suggested behaviour unacceptable from Post Office investigators.”
Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office relentlessly pursued and wrongfully prosecuted more than 700 operators using faulty Horizon IT data.
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The email request to Fujitsu came after ITV aired Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which brought the plight of the post office operators and use of the flawed data in legal actions to national attention.
In 2019, Alan Bates won a landmark court victory for 555 post office operators that proved they were right that the software system was faulty.
Earlier this year, the government pushed through unprecedented legislation allowing more than 900 operators to have their convictions overturned after being wrongfully prosecuted.