Horizon - The Fujitsu/Post Office Scandal

www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/post-office-horizon-trades-union-congress-bbc-panorama-b1166041.html

this is also interesting, one begins to wonder if he was on the payroll of POL

To be fair Mr Thompson seems to believe it was the reliance on the 'foolproof' Horizon system that led Post Office management to err in not questioning its accuracy i.e. it was not the fault of the Horizon system per se  but the attitude of a seemingly intractable management in not understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the technology over which they had charge.

is that what he says though ? It doesn't seem to be how it is reported, and I haven't listened to more than a 10 minutes or so of his testimony.

I thought he was not saying that: rather he was saying the "problem with Horizon" was that POL were not sufficiently robust in defending/trumpeting its robustness.

And from the little bit I did see, he seemed to me to be saying:

1. It was only a small number of the total transactions
2. Errors used to occur with the previous manual processes, partly due to SPM/staff errors
3. Fraud/theft used to occur with the previous manual processes
4. QED a) the system was robust b) the "problems" with Horizon were predominantly due to SPM/Staff errors or actual crimes

That is on the face of it a seriously flawed set of logic. For one, an EPOS system should significantly reduce the scope for human errors. Secondly, by providing an auditable transaction log, it should make root cause determination of discrepancies - human error or fraud - possible and reliable, and also be a significant detterent.

You can't stand in court and state that paper based "handrolic" systems are bomb proof and error free. That can't be used as proof to a charge of fraud/theft. If you are going to say that with respect to an automated/EPOS system, then QED the frequency of errors in the system must be orders of magnitude less than a manual system, AND that needs to be verifiable. At the very least, the latter was not possible at all due to the issue of remote access; was not a practical possibility for SPMs due to the complete absence of appropriate facilitating reporting capabilities; and indeed there were system errors that could generate the appearance of theft/fraud. 

So in no way could the Horizon "System" - meaning the total end to end system including support/back end services and training - be considered "foolproof". 

he could be up for a lot longer after the inquiry has finished

he was quoted the other week as saying "he will not attend, or give any evidence unless he is granted immunity from prosecution"

I imagine if he does appear Jason Beer KC will  question him as to why he made that statement

As I understand it he cannot refuse to attend, but he can refuse to answer questions if he is in danger of incriminating himself. I'm not certain who decides what is potentially incriminating and what happens if he just refuses to answer everything.

I believe that there is nor penalty in the UK for either refusing to appear or refusing to answer