Horizon - The Fujitsu/Post Office Scandal

Maybe time to hand the title back? Clearly a resigning issue, Liberals are hot on people resigning.


Davey was knighted in the 2016 New Years Honours List for 'political and public service'.

I'm sure that Private Eye was writing about this scandal from the start.

This report from a couple of years ago contains interesting assertions about ICL. Apparently back in 1999 one sub- post office showed a loss of £1.08m.

www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf

That Private Eye blog post throws in an issue I knew nothing about. 

The Post Office remains the only body in the UK to run its own prosecutions and campaigners think that if it had to use the Crown Prosecution Service, many cases would not have made it to court. The last organisation with such powers, Customs & Excise, was stripped of them almost a decade ago when it was found to have over-stepped the mark in several high-profile cases.


Here we are

www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/the-post-office-trial-the-future-of-private-prosecutions


Post Office as a private prosecutor


The Post Office is in a perhaps unique position as a private prosecutor, and it is that unique position that gave the CCRC the greatest cause for concern upon its referral to the Court of Appeal. Historically, Royal Mail was a public authority but following the Postal Services Act 2011 a majority of shares were floated on the London Stock Exchange. The government sold its remaining shares in 2015 thereby ending 499 years of state ownership.



Royal Mail solicitors are believed to be the earliest known formal investigators and prosecutors in the world and their origins can be traced as far back as 1683. With the introduction of the Penny Black in 1840, the first postage revenue stamp, postal services became more accessible to members of the public and postal traffic volume rose. Inevitably so too did associated crime. The investigations undertaken were serious and varied, including a key role in the detection and capture of the Great Train Robbers.



Following full privatisation in 2015 the Royal Mail Group retained its investigative branch and its legal department and continued to prosecute about 150 cases per year as a private prosecutor. While being granted no investigative powers it has regularly undertaken joint investigations with the police and other investigative bodies that do have statutory investigative powers. It was granted access to the Police National Computer system for intelligence and prosecution purposes. It had financial investigators appointed by the National Crime Agency for the purposes of undertaking financial investigations for restraint and confiscation proceedings, and Royal Mail Group was included within the list of ‘Relevant Public Authorities’ under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 designated to grant authorisations for the carrying out of directed surveillance to investigate crime.

because the Post Office - not to be confused with the spun out Royal Mail - is a wholly state owned company. It just happens to be run at 'arms length'  so the likes of Ed Davey can claim that "it wasn't me wat done it". 

wot no Braverman

For what it is worth I don't think just taking back the honours is anyway near enough of a punishment for Davey and Vennels. It appears that even when it was quite clear that the Horizon project was a bummer both of them vehemently denied it was the cause of the problems and were happy to see the Postmasters take the can. Given that they were happy to see some of the Post Masters go to jail even though they knew they were not the cause I believe Davy and Vennels should face a similar punishment - jail.

Incidentally whilst I had nothing to do with Horizon Project itself I had previously been involved with a competitor to Fujitsu in evaluating the needs of the Post Office with a view to bidding for the contract and advised my employer to walk away and not to bid for the contract. Long before the project went live I learned from people involved with the project that it was " a total can of worms".

interestingly, a former colleague of mine recently posted up on FBook re. Horizon. He had engagement with ICL/Fujitsu on this project as a supplier (he was in IT Sales).  He stated he had written to the enquiry - and might be called - but said that more of his 'friends' had more valuable information and urged them to come forward. 

I'm reading between the lines that perhaps it was probably pretty dysfunctional/chaotic development, and given his particular line of specialisation perhaps the concept of thorough testing was not in their lexicon.