Post Office is ‘still using flawed Horizon system’ across Scotland
A Scottish sub-postmaster says the Post Office is still using the “flawed” Horizon system and there are “still glitches” which result in her being hundreds of pounds out of pocket.
Marlene Wood, who runs Comrie Post Office in Perthshire, said sub-postmasters are still faced with regular discrepancies when balancing their books as they are still using the Fujitsu-run Horizon accounting system.
She said last month she had to pay more than £400 of her own money to the Post Office because there was a discrepancy in her books.
This comes after Fujitsu’s European manager described the editing of witness statements to defend the Horizon IT system that were used in the prosecutions as “shameful”.
Paul Patterson told the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry he was “surprised” that details of bugs, errors and defects (BEDS) in the scandal-hit software were not included in witness statements for criminal proceedings against sub-postmasters.
He admitted BEDS had existed in the system for “nearly two decades” and said the “vast majority” had been shared with the Post Office contemporaneously.
It was confirmed on Thursoffice day that victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal in Scotland may face a “slower route” to justice than those in England and Wales. First Minister Humza Yousaf said the “easiest and quickest route” would be for legislation being brought forward by the UK Government to clear the names of those who suffered a miscarriage of justice to apply in Scotland as well.
However, a UK Government source poured cold water on this idea, saying “we need to avoid unrealistic expectations that Westminster will simply legislate on Holyrood’s behalf”.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters across the UK say they were wrongly convicted of theft and false accounting after prosecutors used inaccurate evidence from the Horizon accounting system used in the Post Office. The scandal has been catapulted into the spotlight after the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, leading to calls to exonerate all those wrongly convicted.
Ms Wood told the BBC: “There are still glitches in the system because it is still Horizon we are using, albeit we’ve been reassured it’s more robust. But any rhetoric that comes from the Post Office is to be taken with a pinch of salt, I would not trust it.
“Last month I had to pay £414 of my own money back to the Post Office. It is still happening and Horizon is still a flawed system.” Ms Wood said while the Post Office is “not quite as hard” on getting postmasters to pay this money, she still disputes these large discrepancies in her books.
She said she was in a “difficult position” because she loves her job and her Post Office, but stressed the retail side of her shop was paying for the Post
side to operate.
“If you speak to any postmaster and ask them what kind of day a Wednesday is, they’ll tell you exactly the impact,” she said. “Wednesday is the big balancing day and when you press the button to see the final balance It very, very, very rarely comes up saying there are no variants in the system.”