Key events
Turning to Fujitsu, which manufactured the faulty accounting software used by the Post Office, Lord Arbuthnot said:
I hope that Fujitsu would accept that they have played a part in the devastation that has been visited upon the subpostmasters and they might also like to accept that they should play a part in the redress that the subpostmasters need now.
Neil Hudgell, executive chairman at Hudgell Solicitors, which represents up to 400 former post office operators in the scandal, including 77 who have been wrongly convicted, said between 28 and 30 have accepted the fixed £600,000 compensation and “most of the others have had some form of interim compensation but no final conclusion”. He said:
There are too many levels of bureaucracy.
We need to give the sub postmasters the benefit of the doubt on key matters
because some don’t have (all the) supporting documentation.
He urged the government to speed up the process, and said it will be a “matter of weeks”.
It’s essential for these people who are living hand to mouth, and some of them are bankrupt that there’s money to be paid as soon as possible. I hope it is a matter of weeks, rather than months. In some cases it will be a matter of months, but it must not be a matter of years, it mustn’t spill into next year.
Lord Arbuthnot says there needs to be a “mass solution” – overturning mass numbers of convictions. Of the 900-plus wrongful convictions of sub postmasters over the years, only 95 convictions have been overturned and “so all the rest were not able to get or claim any compensation”.
The committee hearing has just kicked off.
The business committee hearing is about to start. You can watch it live here.
First up are: Neil Hudgell, executive chairman at Hudgell Solicitors, which has represented former post office operators in the scandal, and Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, the Conservative peer and former MP who led the campaign in parliament on behalf of workers.
A Post Office whistleblower has claimed that branch accounts could be changed remotely without postmasters’ knowledge as early as 2001, the Times reported.
The former employee, who worked in a call centre in Yorkshire during the 2000s, said that their helpdesk team had the power to edit cash and stock on live terminals running the Horizon IT system, the newspaper said.
“You could go into their cash and adjust it, or wipe their cash off completely,” the source told the Times. “You could go into their stock declaration and add 500 stamps on, or take 500 off. We wouldn’t do it, but if somebody wanted to muck them around, you could do it.”
Data from the Horizon computer system was used to prosecute up to 983 postmasters between 1999 and 2015 on the basis that the accounts were secure.
Exc: Whistleblower claims Post Office staff could edit branch accounts remotely from early 2000s.
“You could wipe their cash completely, add 500 stamps on, or take 500 off,” a source claims. Post Office denied “remote access” until 2017.
Full details 👇https://t.co/AV46Q9yfXN
— Tom Witherow (@TomWitherow) January 16, 2024
The Post Office could be facing a £100m bill and insolvency after claiming tax relief for its compensation payments to post office operators, according to a tax expert.
Dan Neidle, the head of non-profit organisation Tax Policy Associates, said the Post Office claimed £934m tax relief for its compensation payments, and suggested it could be unlawful.
As first reported by the Financial Times, Neidle said the Post Office had treated the compensation it paid to post office operators as tax deductible, which is “not correct”, adding: “You only get a tax deduction for payments made ‘wholly and exclusively’ for the purposes of the trade.”
Other tax experts told the FT it was not clearcut, with one saying a business “can generally claim tax deductions for expenses incurred that are closely connected with its trade, even if it is a compensation payment”.
The Post Office said its disclosed information on taxation was “appropriate and accurate”.
It is the first time Fujitsu faces scrutiny from MPs. Here’s what they might be asked – my colleague Rob Davies has done this handy preview.
What did Fujitsu bosses know and when?
MPs at Tuesday’s select committee hearing will interrogate what Fujitsu and the Post Office knew about flaws in the Horizon system and how early they knew it.
The Post Office first became aware of Horizon’s deficiencies in 2010. However, the investigative journalist Nick Wallis, an expert on the scandal, has claimed that Fujitsu was aware of gremlins in the system before that.
Did Fujitsu contribute to wrongful prosecutions?
At the judge-led inquiry, Fujitsu staff are due to give evidence about the company’s role in the various legal battles between the Post Office and victims of the Horizon scandal.
Liam Byrne, who chairs the business and trade committee, told the Guardian:
It’s high time Fujitsu broke their vow of silence about whether they put profit before people and stayed silent about Horizon’s problems when their evidence was being used to send innocent people to prison.
Should Fujitsu pay compensation?
Calls have been growing for Fujitsu to contribute to compensation payments for Horizon victims, a bill that could reach £1bn, funded by taxpayers.
This is likely to be one of the key targets for MPs on the select committee, particularly given that Fujitsu has yet to face any consequences, financial or contractual, for its flawed work for the Post Office.
Should Fujitsu be winning government contracts?
Fujitsu has won nearly 200 public sector contracts worth £6.78bn, according to analysis by the procurement experts Tussell.
As government officials began to realise the full horror of the Horizon scandal, they sought in vain to exclude Fujitsu from tendering for public contracts under the dubiously titled “Project Sushi”, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
Introduction: Post Office, Fujitsu bosses and government to be quizzed by MPs over Horizon scandal
Good morning, and welcome to our coverage of this morning’s parliamentary committee hearing on the Post Office Horizon scandal.
MPs on the business and trade committee will question bosses from the Post Office and Fujitsu, the Japanese technology company that manufactured the Horizon computer system at the heart of the scandal.
MPs will quiz them and the government on what more can be done to deliver full, fair and fast compensation for victims of the scandal, which has been called the worst miscarriage of justice in British history.
Thousands of local branch operators were relentlessly pursued by the Post Office and wrongly accused of false accounting, theft and fraud, and more than 700 were handed criminal convictions, after the faulty Fujitsu software made it look as though money was missing at their branches. Several took their own lives.
Last week, after the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office aired, the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, announced that those wrongly prosecuted in England and Wales would have their convictions squashed by the end of the year under blanket legislation to be introduced within weeks.
This is the schedule for the committee hearing, which starts at 10am GMT:
10am GMT: Neil Hudgell, executive chairman at Hudgell Solicitors, which has represented former post office operators in the scandal, and Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, the Conservative peer and former MP who led the campaign in parliament on behalf of workers.
10.30am GMT: Alan Bates, founder of Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, who successfully fought a claim against the Post Office, and Jo Hamilton, a former post office operator.
11am GMT: Nick Read, the chief executive of the Post Office, and Paul Patterson, the chief executive for Europe at Fujitsu.
11.30am GMT: Kevin Hollinrake, the business minister, and Carl Creswell, the director of business resilience at the Department for Business and Trade.
