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Post Office has disrupted Horizon inquiry schedule by means of late disclosure of ‘significant’ evidence as key IT witness evidence is postponed
By
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Karl Flinders,
Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA
Published: 06 Jul 2023 12:00
An evidence listening to for a key witness within the Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry has been postponed, after “significant” evidence included in 1000’s of paperwork was disclosed simply hours earlier than he was set to be questioned by inquiry attorneys for the primary time.
Gareth Jenkins, former chief architect at Fujitsu, was because of give evidence on the statutory public inquiry over the following two days (Thursday 6 and Friday 7 July), as a part of section three of the inquiry, which resulted in May. His evidence was postponed and rescheduled for this week.
The statutory public inquiry was set as much as confirm how and why subpostmasters have been wrongly blamed and punished for accounting discrepancies of their branches.
After the introduction of software program from Fujitsu in 2000 to automate primarily handbook practices in Post Office branches, subpostmasters started to see unexplained shortfalls of their accounts. They have been subsequently blamed for these shortfalls, which didn’t really exist, and made to repay them. More than 700 have been prosecuted for monetary crimes, with many serving jail sentences. Thousands extra suffered life-changing hardship because of failed companies and repaying unexplained shortfalls.
Jenkins is a key witness within the inquiry, who gave evidence defending the robustness of the Horizon laptop system in trials of subpostmasters being prosecuted for monetary crimes. He is at the moment below police investigation for presumably committing perjury in the course of the trials of subpostmasters prosecuted primarily based on evidence from the Horizon laptop system, which later proved to comprise errors that precipitated unexplained accounting shortfalls.
Inquiry barrister Jason Beer KC revealed that 4767 paperwork together with some “significant” to Jenkins’ evidence have been solely obtained from the Post Office at 10:32pm final night time (5 July), permitting no time for attorneys to analyse them. Jenkins will now give evidence for phases 3 and 4 of the inquiry, in all probability over 4 days, after the summer season break.
Former subpostmaster Lee Castleton, who’s a sufferer of the scandal and a core inquiry participant, mentioned: “For me it is more delay. The Post Office is playing a game. Each time, they failed to comply with disclosure rules.”
Poor angle
Following the postponement of Jenkins’ evidence, Jo Hamilton, who was wrongly convicted of false accounting after unexplained losses appeared within the Post Office department in Hampshire, mentioned: “Nothing ever changes with the Post Office’s attitude, and I don’t think it ever will.”
Alan Bates, the previous subpostmaster who based a marketing campaign group to combat for justice and took the Post Office to courtroom in a Group Litigation Order (GLO) which proved laptop errors precipitated unexplained losses, has had years of expertise of what he described as “the Post Office’s incapability of disclosing information, whether it be intentional or unintentional”.
“This is typical of the Post Office,” he mentioned. “It failed to do it at the GLO, and someone needs to take control of it.”
In 2009, a Computer Weekly investigation first revealed that subpostmasters have been being blamed for unexplained accounting shortfalls, which they believed to be attributable to software program errors (see timeline of Computer Weekly articles beneath).
It has grow to be a nationwide scandal involving the federal government, the Post Office and IT provider Fujitsu. Three phases of a statutory public inquiry into the scandal have been accomplished.
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…. to be continued
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Copyright for syndicated content material belongs to the linked Source : Computer Weekly – https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366543715/Former-Fujitsu-IT-chief-evidence-postponed-after-late-Post-Office-disclosure