Post Office ‘strung MPs along over bugs in Horizon’
A TORY peer yesterday accused Post Office bosses of “stringing along” MPs in a “behind-the-scenes deception” to cover up the Horizon IT scandal.
Lord Arbuthnot told the public inquiry into Britain’s most widespread miscarriage of justice that Post Office chiefs knew there were bugs in the computer system that made it seem money was missing at branches.
He said he told then-Post Office boss Paula Vennells to halt prosecutions of subpostmasters while independent firm Second Sight investigated Fujitsu’s Horizon system.
Deception
He added of the Post Office: “They knew there was a large number of bugs in the system that they hadn’t told MPs about.
“They were operating some sort of behind-the-scenes deception process, which suggests to me now that they were stringing
MPs along in order to preserve the robustness of Horizon, the existence of Horizon and possibly the existence of the Post Office.”
An email from Second Sight forensic accountant Ron Warmington to Lord Arbuthnot said the Post Office was “incredibly defensive” and nobody was “ready to give an inch” on the true level of errors. It added: “They probably fear it will be career death to concede any failings whatsoever.” More than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted from 1999 to 2015. Ex-judge Sir Anthony Hooper, who chaired the mediation scheme for accused staff, told the London probe the evidence suggested “the management over many years deliberately failed...to investigate the cause of the losses”. He added: “That failure ruined the lives of countless sub-postmasters and must never be forgotten or forgiven.”