Fujitsu does not trust Post Office in use of Horizon data in future third-party prosecutions

Fujitsu's Europe boss has told a public inquiry into the Post Office scandal — one of the widest miscarriages of justice in UK history — that the company does not trust the UK public body in its use of Horizon system data to support future police prosecutions.

Speaking at the inquiry this week, Paul Patterson, director of Fujitsu Services Ltd, described his unease about the Post Office continuing to pursue local branch shortfalls based solely on data from Horizon — the aging system at the centre of the scandal.

In a letter to Post Office boss Nick Read, dated May this year, Patterson wrote of his "serious concerns" over the continuing pursuit of enforcement actions against postmasters, referring to a City of London police investigation into a Post Office branch and a resulting call on Fujitsu to provide evidence.

Horizon is an EPOS and back-end finance system for thousands of Post Office branches around the UK, first implemented by ICL, a UK technology company later bought by Fujitsu. From 1999 until 2015, around 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were wrongfully convicted of fraud when errors in the system were to blame. It destroyed the lives of many involved, leaving some bankrupt and others feeling suicidal, with several succeeding in ending their lives. While a number of convictions have been quashed in the courts, 60 people died before just seeing any sort of justice served. A statutory inquiry into the mass miscarriage of justice launched in 2021 is ongoing.

In the letter from May, Patterson said Fujitsu "would have expected that the Post Office has changed its behavior 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."

Speaking before the Inquiry yesterday, Patterson said the Post Office should not rely "solely" on Horizon data to support a prosecution.

He said it is "the complete supply chain that provides information to Horizon and actually to sub-postmasters themselves. You cannot rely solely… on one data source.

"I would like to be satisfied that they are using more than just one data source, and I've not seen anything which tells me that they're using more than one data source," he said.

"On this particular topic, I absolutely don't trust the Post Office," he added.

In its response to Patterson’s May letter, the Post Office said it had "invested significant time and resource effecting cultural and procedural change across the business," the inquiry heard in October.

"I can reassure you that the Post Office is not now – and will not be in the future – undertaking any prosecutions against postmasters or any third parties as the prosecuting body," Read said.

However, it said it would use Horizon data when requested to support criminal investigations or prosecutions pursued by independent third parties, such as the police or Crown Prosecution Service.

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Older equipment still running

In his evidence this week, Patterson also said Fujitsu had not turned off some Horizon equipment because it was too old.

"In my experience of 35 years in this industry, if you do not do disaster recovery, if you do not turn things off, if you don't keep them upgraded, I cannot determine what will or will not happen, which is part of our nervousness about any extension [to Horizons lifespan]."

The Horizons system has been at "end of life" for a number of years, and the Post Office is procuring a replacement, according to a notice published in May. In October, the Post Office began to look for further Horizon datacenter support in a set of contracts which could total £100 million ($129 million). ®