Tech firm staff feared being ‘hauled over coals’ on data
FUJITSU staff feared being “hauled over the coals” after realising the Post Office was using “manipulated” audit data to criminally investigate sub-postmasters, the Horizon IT inquiry heard.
John Simpkins, a team leader within the Japanese firm’s software support centre (SSC) confirmed data on recorded transactions made in branches was passed on to the Post Office in a “filtered format” of what Fujitsu had.
Current and former employees from the multi-billion-pound firm are giving evidence to the inquiry into the scandal in which more than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted because of glitches in Fujitsu’s Horizon software.
On Tuesday, Fujitsu’s Europe chief executive told MPS he was “truly sorry” for the part his company had played in the miscarriage of justice and added that it had a “moral obligation” to contribute to compensation for victims.
Yesterday, in a hearing laden with technical language, Mr Simpkins explained that Audit Record Query data – which recorded transactions made by sub-postmasters – was in a “filtered format” when it was presented to the Post Office and missed “reference data” which included information about what a Post Office counter can sell, how much it would sell and the steps taken during transactions.
He told the inquiry yesterday that he suspected the decision was to “make [the data] more simple to understand”.
Jason Beer KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, asked Mr Simpkins: “So the data has been manipulated… into a filtered format? Was that something you were aware of at the time?”
Mr Simpkins replied: “Not really, because if we requested data for audit, which I believe we did, we got it back in the basic raw form.”
However, he said he did not know Horizon data were used for criminal prosecutions until 2006 when many sub-postmasters had already been accused of theft.
The inquiry was then told that at some point after January 2011, Mr Simpkins and the rest of his team “downed tools” when they realised the Post Office was using filtered data rather than all the available audit data.
He and other team leaders pushed their manager to agree with ceasing the filtering process, the inquiry heard.
Mr Simpkins said: “The SSC decided we’re not happy doing this filtration if it’s going to be used in court cases and we stopped.”
He first gave evidence to the inquiry in November 2022, when he said his colleague Anne Chambers was “very unhappy” after being asked to be an expert witness in a prosecution against a sub-postmaster.