The Post Office Horizon Scandal

Fujitsu seemingly built a flawed computer system - they aren't the first and they wont be the last. But it was the Post Office that signed it off for use in live, and the Post Office that decided to prosecute and bankrupt their own sub postmasters rather than face up to its flaws​

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Fujitsu bosses knew about Post Office Horizon IT flaws, says insider​

A former senior developer who worked for Fujitsu on the Post Office IT system that led to subpostmasters being falsely accused of fraud, has claimed bosses knew of fundamental flaws before going live​

The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.


“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”

The senior developer said he was contracted to work on the Horizon project between 1998 and 2000, at one point holding the job title Horizon Epos [electronic point of sale] development manager. He has asked to remain anonymous, but is prepared to give sworn witness statements to solicitors acting for subpostmasters in their ongoing appeals against past convictions.

The developer has also asked Computer Weekly to pass his contact details to the government’s Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, chaired by former High Court judge Wyn Williams.

Senior managers were aware​

The most serious allegation raised by the developer is that senior managers at Fujitsu were aware that an important element of the Horizon system did not function correctly and could not be fixed.

For the first 10 years of Horizon’s existence, transaction and account data was stored on terminals in each branch before being uploaded to a central database via ISDN. Our source says this part of the system simply did not work.

“The cash account was a piece of software that sat on the counter NT box, asleep all day,” he said. “At the end of the day, or a particular point in the day, it came to life, and it ran through the message store from the point it last finished. It started at a watermark from yesterday and combed through every transaction in the message store, up until the next watermark.

“A lot of the messages in there were nonsense, because there was no data dictionary, there was no API that enforced message integrity. The contents of the message were freehand, you could write whatever you wanted in the code, and everybody did it differently. And then, when you came back three weeks later, you could write it differently again.”

He gave an example of a message stored previously when a customer bought a stamp. It was feasible that a new message for buying a stamp weeks later could be slightly different.

“When the cash count came along, it found a message it was not expecting and either ignored it, tripped up, or added something it shouldn’t be adding,” he said.

In 2015, Computer Weekly reported another anonymous source who identified the cash writing program as a possible cause of serious problems. He told us the Post Office was warned about the risk of data corruption on the bespoke asynchronous communication system which sent messages between branches and the central Horizon set-up.

Speaking to Computer Weekly in 2015, the anonymous source told us: “The asynchronous system did not communicate in real time, but does so using a series of messages that are stored and forwarded, when the network connection is available. This means that messages to and from the centre may trip over each other. It is perfectly possible that, if not treated properly, messages from the centre may overwrite data held locally.”

Four years later, former Fujitsu engineer Richard Roll wrote in a witness statement to the High Court: “The issues with coding in the Horizon system were extensive. Furthermore, the coding issues impacted on transaction data and caused financial discrepancies on the Horizon system at branch level.”

Roll’s evidence, which was accepted by the judge, suggests that the problems with Horizon identified by our source had not been dealt with by the time the system went live.

Other experts familiar with Horizon that Computer Weekly approached have also supported the developer’s claims.

The developer said he made his superiors at Fujitsu aware of the extent of the Epos system problems, telling them explicitly that the cash account needed to be scrapped.

“I broke it down and said: you can keep these bits at a push if you have to,” he said. “But that bit in the middle, these bits of the engine, the gearbox, you need to throw them away and rebuild them. Starting with the cash account. You’ve got to throw the cash account away and you’ve got to rewrite it.”

Full article https://www.computerweekly.com/news...out-Post-Office-Horizon-IT-flaws-says-insider

So Fujitsu rolled out a system knowing it was flawed, so should the it department at the post office now be questioned under oath including the gong women who walked away with 5 million and all the top brass at Fujitsu, don't forget this is the biggest injustice in British legal history. nobody should be trying to defend this. hard working people losing their dignity all there hard earned money going to jail even suicide. but as much i would like to see these people who did this punished. it is now all about damage limitation and will go away like nothing happened, Sunak will use it to his advantage in this election year

Fujitsu have a history of supplying computer software that doesn't work - Bank of Ireland (which almost bankrupted BoI) and the NHS GP/patient notes system which has apparently been abandoned. It also supplied HMRC and DWP with software. HMRC systems aren't user friendly, different departments can't even talk to each other and can be described as clunky at best.
Fujitsu recently was awarded a contract by the government for circa £19m which it immediately subcontracted to a company owned by Fishy Rishi's father in law.

I have edited post #21 to add this ​

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Senior managers were aware​

The most serious allegation raised by the developer is that senior managers at Fujitsu were aware that an important element of the Horizon system did not function correctly and could not be fixed.

For the first 10 years of Horizon’s existence, transaction and account data was stored on terminals in each branch before being uploaded to a central database via ISDN. Our source says this part of the system simply did not work.

“The cash account was a piece of software that sat on the counter NT box, asleep all day,” he said. “At the end of the day, or a particular point in the day, it came to life, and it ran through the message store from the point it last finished. It started at a watermark from yesterday and combed through every transaction in the message store, up until the next watermark.

“A lot of the messages in there were nonsense, because there was no data dictionary, there was no API that enforced message integrity. The contents of the message were freehand, you could write whatever you wanted in the code, and everybody did it differently. And then, when you came back three weeks later, you could write it differently again.”

He gave an example of a message stored previously when a customer bought a stamp. It was feasible that a new message for buying a stamp weeks later could be slightly different.

“When the cash count came along, it found a message it was not expecting and either ignored it, tripped up, or added something it shouldn’t be adding,” he said.

In 2015, Computer Weekly reported another anonymous source who identified the cash writing program as a possible cause of serious problems. He told us the Post Office was warned about the risk of data corruption on the bespoke asynchronous communication system which sent messages between branches and the central Horizon set-up.

Speaking to Computer Weekly in 2015, the anonymous source told us: “The asynchronous system did not communicate in real time, but does so using a series of messages that are stored and forwarded, when the network connection is available. This means that messages to and from the centre may trip over each other. It is perfectly possible that, if not treated properly, messages from the centre may overwrite data held locally.”

Four years later, former Fujitsu engineer Richard Roll wrote in a witness statement to the High Court: “The issues with coding in the Horizon system were extensive. Furthermore, the coding issues impacted on transaction data and caused financial discrepancies on the Horizon system at branch level.”

Roll’s evidence, which was accepted by the judge, suggests that the problems with Horizon identified by our source had not been dealt with by the time the system went live.

Other experts familiar with Horizon that Computer Weekly approached have also supported the developer’s claims.

The developer said he made his superiors at Fujitsu aware of the extent of the Epos system problems, telling them explicitly that the cash account needed to be scrapped.

“I broke it down and said: you can keep these bits at a push if you have to,” he said. “But that bit in the middle, these bits of the engine, the gearbox, you need to throw them away and rebuild them. Starting with the cash account. You’ve got to throw the cash account away and you’ve got to rewrite it.”

It seems Fujitsu are not fit for purpose,are the people who wrote this code going to be held accountable

And what about Starboy he had the power to stop private prosercutions He was head of the dpp and could have stopped the post office

Rodcx500z said:

And what about Starboy he had the power to stop private prosercutions He was head of the dpp and could have stopped the post office

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I think the numbers were against him - the CPS handled more than 4 million cases in Starmer’s time. I’ve seen a suggestion that only 11 were related to Horizon, but not sure how true that is.

He wasn't with the cps he was with the dpp and had the power to stop the post office from by passing the cps

Generally speaking in 1996 ICL was awarded the contract to supply the Horizon Software to the Post Office and the Benefits Agency, In 1999 Fujitsu bought out ICL and in 2001 the then Benefits Agency pulled out the rest is as they say history however Fujitsu is equally Liable in British Law for the Miscarriages of Justice we have seen.

Andrew Booth said:

Generally speaking in 1996 ICL was awarded the contract to supply the Horizon Software to the Post Office and the Benefits Agency, In 1999 Fujitsu bought out ICL and in 2001 the then Benefits Agency pulled out the rest is as they say history however Fujitsu is equally Liable in British Law for the Miscarriages of Justice we have seen.

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Andrew - thanks for posting - I am intrigued on what basis you say Fujitsu is equally liable for the wrongful prosecutions - all the coverage I have read suggests that the post office and its owners (ie the UK state) are liable for this. Your phrase "in British law" suggests you know some specific reason why Fujitsu could be on the hook..... can you expand ? thanks in advance.

The Post Office threatened and lied to the BBC in a failed effort to suppress key evidence that helped clear postmasters in the Horizon scandal.
Senior managers tried to smear postmasters before Panorama broadcast an interview in 2015 with a Fujitsu whistleblower.
Former insider Richard Roll revealed accounts on the Horizon computer system could be secretly altered.
The Post Office declined to comment while the public inquiry is ongoing.
Mr Roll would go on to play a crucial part in a 2019 High Court case which ruled that bugs could cause errors in the Post Office computer system intended to keep track of transactions in local branches.
Between 1999 and 2015, 700 sub-postmasters and postmistresses - self-employed people who run Post Office branches - were prosecuted for offences such as theft, fraud and false accounting, with some going to prison and others even taking their own lives.

The BBC can reveal that in the period leading up to the broadcast of Trouble at the Post Office, the 2015 Panorama programme featuring the whistleblower testimony:

• Experts interviewed by the BBC were sent intimidating letters by Post Office lawyers about their participation in the programme
• Senior Post Office managers briefed the BBC that neither their staff nor Fujitsu - the company which built and maintained the Horizon system - could remotely access sub-postmasters' accounts, even though Post Office directors had been warned four years earlier that such remote access was possible
• Lawyers for the Post Office sent letters threatening to sue Panorama and the company's public relations boss Mark Davies escalated complaints to ever more senior BBC managers

The Post Office's false claims did not stop the programme, but they did cause the BBC to delay the broadcast by several weeks.

Full article Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Horizon whistleblower

So if you supplied a payment system (What Technically Horizon is) and it turns out that the whole architecture of the software i.e. the back bone was faulty then looking at cause and effect i.e. Post Office goes on to then carry out multiple miscarriages of Justice then Fujitsu (ICL) are equally Liable certainly there should be some compensation paid by Fujitsu they ore the originators of the software if the Post Office had not stuck their collective head in the sand this issue would never have happened.

Andrew Booth said:

So if you supplied a payment system (What Technically Horizon is) and it turns out that the whole architecture of the software i.e. the back bone was faulty then looking at cause and effect i.e. Post Office goes on to then carry out multiple miscarriages of Justice then Fujitsu (ICL) are equally Liable certainly there should be some compensation paid by Fujitsu they ore the originators of the software if the Post Office had not stuck their collective head in the sand this issue would never have happened.

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thanks. I might put it slightly differently - the PO and Fujitsu (presumably) had a contract that sets out liability in the event of bugs. So whatever penalties that allows for can (and maybe have) be/been pursued by the PO. But the decision to prosecute sub postmasters, rather than investigate the system, seems to be a decision that PO alone took, and my sense is they are therefore liable for the prosecutions. Particularly as they are one of relatively few institutions that has the right to bring prosecutions without involving the police or CPS. I think therefore in the absence of evidence to the contrary the PO are on the hook for this.

As to the "whole architecture of the software" being wrong I suppose the PO could true and sue Fujitsu on this basis, but the obvious Fujitsu defence would be to ask why the PO continued to operate the system for 20+ years. Most contracts like this contain some degree of user acceptance of the system to protect the IT vendor from liabilities such as this. If some Fujitsu bombshell emerges - eg that they were remotely amending data without the knowledge of the PO - then I think that might lead to some extra liability. But I dont think we have seen evidence to this effect yet. Of course, broad political pressure might also lead them to pony up some money, not least as they will want to protect future government revenues.

We might all wish that Fujitsu were liable (as a taxpayer I certainly do) but evidence will be required to demonstrate this.

Rodcx500z said:

He wasn't with the cps he was with the dpp and had the power to stop the post office from by passing the cps

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The Director of Public Prosecutions is the name of the head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

I don't disagree there's a failing in the legal system in this whole scandal - hundreds of people who were providing a public utility suddenly being prosecuted on the basis of 'our computer says so' should raise an eyebrow somewhere.

An Ankoù said:

Who should carry the can?
Whose image and likeness is on the stamps?

Yes, "River Pollution, The Musical", I'm looking forward to that one.

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Paul Whitehouse on the BBC did a two part series looking into the state of our rivers, its a very interesting watch.

Our Troubled Rivers

Perhaps this deserves its own thread?

Contaminated blood scandal. While I wouldn't want to minimise the suffering of one group by comparing it to another, cbs is on another level. Certainly in terms of deaths, numbers and payouts it will dwarf the po scandal. The gov has been kicking the can down the road for the best part of 50 years. The cynic in me would say that it would be in the conservatives interest to delay this beyond the next election as it is estimated the payout will be in the 10's of billions.

MattH1973 said:

If some Fujitsu bombshell emerges - eg that they were remotely amending data without the knowledge of the PO - then I think that might lead to some extra liability. But I dont think we have seen evidence to this effect yet.

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But isn't that exactly what Fujitsu were doing? The PO didn't have remote access to process/amend transactions, but Fujitsu apparently did, as the whistle blower has testified.

Nicky Campbell's phone-in on Wednesday on 5live covered the scandal - I think the programme is still accessible on i-player. At about 49 minutes in, a sub-postmaster rang in. He had a meeting at his PO branch with 2 people from the PO and 2 from Fujitsu. No one was logged into his Horizon terminal but the system actually processed a transaction while they were all talking! Right in front of them! He told them that that showed either the system was faulty or someone had remote access. Pandemonium ensued and the meeting cut short. Strangely, the transaction was deleted from his records 2 days later.

Pavros said:

But isn't that exactly what Fujitsu were doing? The PO didn't have remote access to process/amend transactions, but Fujitsu apparently did, as the whistle blower has testified.

Nicky Campbell's phone-in on Wednesday on 5live covered the scandal - I think the programme is still accessible on i-player. At about 49 minutes in, a sub-postmaster rang in. He had a meeting at his PO branch with 2 people from the PO and 2 from Fujitsu. No one was logged into his Horizon terminal but the system actually processed a transaction while they were all talking! Right in front of them! He told them that that showed either the system was faulty or someone had remote access. Pandemonium ensued and the meeting cut short. Strangely, the transaction was deleted from his records 2 days later.

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i think it is clear that the system was being remote accessed by Fujitsu, but the thrust of the ITV drama at least seems to be that the PO knew this (there was a scene where Angela van den Bogerd testified to this effect). Obviously thats just a drama but it seems to be pretty accurate in most areas. Clearly more will come out but if the govt / PO want to pursue FUjitsu for the full compensation amount then the burden of proof would be on them. I think the most likely outcome is that this gets settled and Fujitsu will pay many millions toward the compensation fund but I think the govt will be on the hook for more - and I think they should be as these terrible prosecutions (and the abuse of process around them - ie threatening to prosecute people for theft when they had no evidence) were PO decisions.

Andrew Booth said:

Fujitsu is equally Liable in British Law for the Miscarriages of Justice we have seen.

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Does that depend on the contract and software license?

@MattH1973 I'm not sure that the PO did know that Fujitsu had remote access for at least the first 5 years of Horizon operating. I think that they believed that Fujitsu was operating a help desk and support service. However, when they did find out (possibly as late as 2010), they did their best to cover it all up and proceed with prosecutions instead of putting things on hold. I'm not sure we will ever find out who actually knew what and when.

If I recall correctly, the PO said Horizon was brought in to make the systems more efficient and streamlined. But there was a belief in the higher echelons that there was a lot of undetected fraud in the PO. Horizon supposedly made it harder for sub-postmasters to 'hide' any fraudulent activity so when large numbers of fraud came to light, they just assumed the system was doing it's job and there was more fraudulent activity than they suspected. However the large amounts of shortages involved should have rung some alarm bells.