The blame game has well and truly started yesterday in the Post Office Horizon IT Scandal. In March the Business Select Committee summoned ex CEO Paula Vennells, current CEO Nick Read and Fujitsu Senior Vice President Rob Putland to give evidence. However due to Covid-19 this was cancelled. On the 2nd June 2020 new chair of the Committee Darren Jones MP wrote to all parties with very hard hitting questions, the responses were required by the 16th June. Yesterday those responses were published on the Select Committee website below :-
https://committees.parliament.uk/work/97/post-office-and-horizon/publications/3/correspondence/
Nick Read - https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1619/documents/15460/default/
Rob Putland - https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1620/documents/15461/default/
Paula Vennells - https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1621/documents/15462/default/
Paul Scully MP - BEIS Minister for Post Office - https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1622/documents/15463/default/
Each one of the replies passes the blame to someone else. Paula Vennells is blaming the information she received from the then CEO of Fujitsu. This is some of Ms Vennells response :-
'The message that the board and I were consistently given by Fujitsu, from the highest levels of the company, was that while, like any IT system, Horizon was not perfect and had a limited life span, it was fundamentally sound.'
'I believed that it was reasonable for the board to rely on these assurances: Fujitsu was a respected global IT company, it had many other governmental and high-profile customers, and from my experience of working with Fujitsu, it appeared to be well-led and professional.'
She said the board asked Fujitsu questions to help it understand the issues with Horizon. 'It now appears that the answers that came back to these questions were only partially correct.'
Paula Vennells consistently claimed Horizon to be 100% robust, not 99% or 99.5% but always 100% robust. Her response yesterday claims she KNEW that Horizon was not perfect and if you delve deeper into the reports Post Office had from Ernst & Young in 2011 they knew then in black and white Horizon was NOT fit for purpose. Paula Vennells chose to ignore all this evidence and continue with prosecutions and the High Court litigation. In the 2015 Select Committee hearing she said as CEO of the Post Office the buck stops with me, isn't it strange she seems to have forgotten about that statement!
She also wrote that ministers and directors at UKGI (UK Government & Investments) which runs the Post Office on behalf of BEIS attended the majority of board meetings with the Post Office and also offered full guidance and strategy throughout the litigation including extra funding. This completely rebuffs the responses over the years from ministers that Post Office Ltd is an 'Arms Length Body' and 'Commercial Entity' and government does not get involved in day to day decision making. These ministers have known exactly what is going on at the Post Office and chose to ignore it. Current minister Paul Scully MP mentioned they were not aware of the remote access or that Horizon was described as not fit for purpose until mid 2019 during the litigation. We now know this to be a complete outright lie.
Paula Vennells yesterday also stepped down from her role at the Ethical Investment Advisory Group :-
https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/06/paula-vennells-leaves-ethical.html
I highly suggest you read journalist Nick Wallis blog which takes apart in depth the responses of each of the above respondents and he also spells out the actual 'cover-up' for the very first time in black and white! Read it below :-
https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/06/paula-vennells-breaks-her-silence.html
Fujitsu Senior Vice President Rob Putland did the opposite of Ms Vennells and blamed the Post Office for their actions over the years and tried to deflect the negative comments made about Fujitsu and its employees during the litigation. Here are a few snippets of what he said :-
'Fujitsu was not a party to the Bates v Post Office Ltd litigation. All decisions relating to the prosecution of sub-postmasters and the conduct of the Bates litigation were made by the Post Office. Whilst Fujitsu employees gave evidence, it was the Post Office who determined all aspects of its case including the choice of witnesses, the nature of their evidence and the associated documents. Nonetheless, we take Mr Justice Fraser’s criticisms extremely seriously and we have now stopped the provision of any new witness evidence to the Post Office.'
'Fujitsu played no role in the decisions to investigate, prosecute, or otherwise seek to recover shortfalls from sub- postmasters or postal workers. The Post Office devised and implemented the strategy for the recovery of shortfalls, including conducting all investigations and prosecutions of its sub-postmasters and postal workers.'
'Horizon operates to the service standards contractually required by the Post Office. However, in our view, no complex IT system will ever be completely free of errors and bugs.'
'The incident management system captures incidents logged, and includes matters raised by a sub-postmaster as well as incidents raised by Fujitsu monitoring. The system has recorded thousands of incidents since the inception of Horizon, as would be expected of a system of this complexity and size. However, in respect of material incidents, Mr Justice Fraser highlights 29 bugs, errors and defects, some of which had the potential to impact a sub-postmaster local branch account.'
In that last response they mention the 29 bugs disclosed during the litigation but do not answer the actual question Darren Jones MP asked. This was the question......How many bugs, errors and discrepancies have been logged for each year since they began to be recorded? He mentions thousands of incidents but then refers only to the 29 mentioned during the litigation. The majority of bugs were not released to the courts, nor were they released to the independent IT experts who gave evidence as they had a very limited time frame to prepare. They only worked on what they were given access to. Fujitsu could easily find out the number of actual bugs and errors but they chose not to respond and again deflect blame away from themselves.
Rob Putland also went on to say that :-
'In many cases key employees and decision-makers are no longer working at Fujitsu. If it emerges that any current employee intentionally misled the court or otherwise failed to meet the standards expected from Fujitsu, then they will be dismissed.'
Read the full breakdown by Nick Wallis here :-
https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/06/fujitsu-tries-to-dodge-blame-bus.html
Finally Paul Scully MP, the minister at BEIS responsible for the Post Office finally accepted that this 'pathetic and pointless' review will NOT have the statutory powers to compel witnesses to give evidence or hand over important and privileged documents. Only a judge can make this happen and it is why nothing other than a Judge Led Inquiry is needed. This was his response to the Select Committee Inquiry yesterday :-
'While the terms of reference for the review chime with that of a statutory inquiry, a review – in other words, a non-statutory inquiry – will allow progress to be achieved in an accelerated timeframe due to the cooperation committed to by the Post Office.'
Despite Paul Scully’s claims, the terms of reference of the inquiry do not suggest it will have judge-like powers. So there we have it, it really is a pointless review that we have said all along. Today I will be writing to Boris Johnson Prime Minister stating the fact that at PMQ's back in February he responded to Kate Osborne MP that they would get to the bottom of the scandal in the way the honourable lady describes. She mentioned an Independent Inquiry NOT a review. This would be an inquiry under the 'Inquiries Act 2005'. I also have a telephone meeting with a senior QC about legally challenging this review compared to what Boris Johnson promised.
You can read the two latest press articles relating to this scandal published about the suicide of Martin Griffiths in 2013 and the outrage at Paula Vennells letter yesterday :-
Most importantly however we MUST take the complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman to pursue the avenue of 'maladministration' at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. They can lay down a special report in front of Parliament if the government rejects their findings. This has only been down 7 times since 1966 and in all but one occasion the government has accepted the findings and put remedy in place. Usually this means resetting victims to the position they were in prior to the maladministration and if this is not possible then a satisfactory financial remedy. We setup a Crowd Justice page to raise £98,000 incl VAT in order to submit our complaint with a specialist QC. To date we have received £56,315 which we are all enormously grateful for. The deadline to raise the final total has been extended until the 15th July after in depth discussions with the Crowd Justice page. This will not be allowed to be extended again and as before it is an all or nothing target. Should the final total not be reached your pledge will NOT be charged to your card.
If you believe in justice or understand this could easily have been you or could be you in the future needing this kind of support then please PLEDGE whatever you can afford to our cause below :-
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/post-office-victims/
We now need only 4,168 pledges of £10 to hit the final target. This petition has over 9,000 signatories so this is easily achievable even with £5 pledges. If you have already pledged then PLEASE just share this post and link above with as many people as possible and explain the difference they could all make to hundreds of innocent victims lives.
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Email chrishead1@icloud.com