Fujitsu analyst gave witness statements when more qualified colleagues refused

Fujitsu employee provided witness statements to courts in cases against subpostmasters despite not understanding the evidence, after qualified IT experts refused

Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

Published: 16 Jul 2024 17:42

A former Fujitsu IT security analyst provided witness statements about the Horizon IT system to courts using information from more qualified colleagues in IT support who had refused to provide it directly, the Post Office public inquiry has been told.

Despite his lack of understanding of the IT evidence, Andy Dunks put what he was told by others into his witness statements, which were used in the prosecution of subpostmasters and led to wrongful convictions.

In the latest Post Office scandal inquiry hearing, Dunks - who still works at Fujitsu in a different role - admitted that his tech evidence was often based on what he was told by others, not his own understanding.

He said he would get the knowledge by speaking to people in the Fujitsu Service Support Centre (SSC), which provided IT support to subpostmasters. Jason Beer, KC to the inquiry, put to Dunks: “These are the experts that didn’t want to give evidence?” Dunks agreed.

In what is now known as the Post Office Horizon scandal, hundreds of subpostmasters who experienced unexplained accounting shortfalls were prosecuted and convicted based on IT evidence from the Horizon computer system they used in branches. The subpostmasters alleged that the system was flawed and proved this to be the case in the High Court in 2019.

Dunks provided witness statements on behalf of Fujitsu to support Post Office prosecutions, including in the case of Seema Misra, a former subpostmistress in West Byfleet, Surrey. Misra was wrongly convicted of false accounting based on evidence from Horizon and was sent to prison while pregnant. She had her wrongful conviction overturned in the Court of Appeal in 2021.

Earlier this year, the government passed legislation to overturn hundreds of convictions of subpostmasters that were based on data from the Horizon system,.

During the latest hearing, the inquiry was given examples of staff in Fujitsu’s SSC who were unwilling to provide witness statements, despite having the necessary tech knowledge.

In his statement to the inquiry, Dunks said he recalled that a former Fujitsu colleague, Rajbinder Bains, was the main person responsible for extracting data to support court cases, but that she did not want to be a witness in any court proceedings.

He told the inquiry: “I do not believe she prepared any witness statements. I got the impression she was nervous because it was something unknown to her and the idea of going to court and being questioned was a bit daunting.”

Beer asked Dunks whether he was “afflicted by the same concerns” that Bains had about giving witness statements, evidence and appearing in court. He replied that he would not say he didn’t have concerns, but that he “was probably a bit more confident at the time”.

Another Fujitsu colleague who worked in the SSC, Phil Budd, made clear in an email to Dunk that he was not happy about the implications of saying in a witness statement that the Horizon branch counters were in full working order when he hadn’t done the testing.

Budd told Dunks the reason for sharing his concerns: “I am just trying to reduce the stress I feel whenever this bobs back into my head,” he wrote in an email.

Fujitsu was aware of the stress that giving evidence to courts was causing to tech staff. Dunks said that SSC manager Mik Peach did not want his staff to go to court.

The public inquiry has previously heard from former Fujitsu SSC IT expert Anne Chambers and her concerns over giving evidence to courts. After she gave evidence in a civil dispute with subpostmaster Lee Castleton in 2006, she created a document, which she named Afterthoughts. This was to alert Fujitsu to the problems she had experienced during the trial. In the document, Chambers explained her reluctance to go to court after being given assurances by a solicitor for the Post Office that this would not be the case and that her evidence was just a formality.

She also expressed concerns that the evidence against Castleton had not been properly reviewed since an initial review two years before, and should in future be double-checked by Fujitsu staff. She reported that, once in court, she was treated as an expert witness and asked a wide range of questions, when “nominally” she was a witness of fact.

The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to accounting software. It is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history (see below for timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal, since 2009).

• Also read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal •

• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story •

Fujitsu analyst gave witness statements when more qualified colleagues refused

Fujitsu employee provided witness statements to courts in cases against subpostmasters despite not understanding the evidence, after qualified IT experts refused

Timeline: Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009

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