When it became clear that the firm’s prosecution practices were unfair, a former Post Office chief operating officer ( COO ) made no decision to interfere in wrongful prosecutions.
Mike Young, COO at the Post Office from 2008 to 2012, said he had concerns over the burden being on subpostmasters to provide evidence of their innocence as well as the reliance on Horizon’s supplier, Fujitsu, for professional evidence.
Young, who was giving evidence for phases 5 and 6 of the inquiry, admitted to doing nothing about this despite his past experience as a police officer while speaking at the most recent Post Office Horizon scandal open inquiry hearing.
When he discovered that the subpostmasters were being sued for unknown shortfalls, which they believed were the result of computer errors, he did not raise the alarm.
There was a discussion about how prosecuted subpostmasters had not provided hard evidence that their discrepancies were caused by Horizon errors in an interior Post Office email exchange that was shown during the investigation and which was copied to Young during his Post Office tenure.
Investigative barrister Catriona Hodge questioned Young about whether, with his “police hat on,” he thought it was appropriate to rely on subpostmasters to demonstrate that Horizon was at fault for these accounting contradictions.
He claimed he was n’t sure whether this was a source of concern at the time. ” I suspect it probably did”, he said, and admitted,” I do n’t think I did anything”.
Workload blamed
The original COO attributed his workload to skipping addressing a problem that would be visible to a previous police officer. It’s not an excuse, but when you receive three or four hundred emails per day and have the world before you in terms of what you’ve got to do, you ca n’t pick up on every nuance in an email.
Young even made no mention of the possibility of Fujitsu employees using the Horizon system’s suppliers as expert witnesses in cases where prosecution teams are using data from the software as evidence. In prosecutions of this nature, he said,” I would have anticipated to see an independent expert commenting on Horizon data and audit logs.” It resembled a gamekeeper turned poacher, and it did n’t fit with my previous job as a former police officer.
He told the inquiry that he could never recall whether he raised concerns, but added:” The likelihood is no. I was obviously told,’ Let the process be the process ‘”.
Young listened to former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells ‘ ear and had the opportunity to raise issues with Post Office bosses. Vennells named among others at an earlier hearing in Young’s case that she had been” too trusting” of and that she had accepted what he had told her.
Contemptuous attitude
In her witness statement, she wrote that when Computer Weekly investigated and reported on Horizon in 2009, revealing serious concerns, Young was contemptuous. She wrote,” I recall he said it was a trade magazine that did not know what it was talking about in relation to Horizon.” He assured me that the article was nonsense, or that words, and that there was nothing wrong with the system.
But Young said Vennells “misinterpreted” what he said. He testified during his testimony to the inquiry that he had received two calls from Computer Weekly in 2011 regarding claims made by subpostmasters against Horizon and the Post Office, which had caused him to doubt the integrity of Horizon.
He even asserted that he was the one who initiated the Forensic Accounting Firm Second Sight investigation into the Horizon system. Young claimed to have responded to the call by e-mailing Vennells and Duncan Tait, the head of Fujitsu UK at the time, to urge them to” thoroughly” investigate Horizon.
” Honestly, I got to the point, I had had enough”, he told the inquiry. However, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, a subpostmasters ‘ advocacy group led by Alan Bates, was preparing legal action against the Post Office at the time. As well as media attention, there was pressure from MPs representing subpostmasters.
Next Sight was contracted in 2012 and investigated the system, completing two reports. The Post Office prosecuted subpostmasters for unexpected losses before pursuing the cause, according to the interim report from 2013 that raised significant issues, including the existence of bugs, and the final report from 2015 that was damning. Almost instantly after Second Sight’s final report, the Criminal Cases Review Commission  , launched an investigation into possible wrongful prosecutions. In consequence, hundreds of subpostmasters who have been charged with crimes based on Horizon evidence have both had their convictions overturned or are currently in the process.
The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009 when the seven subpostmasters ‘ cases and the issues they encountered as a result of Horizon accounting software ( see below list of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009 ). This incident led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history ( see below list of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal ).
• Even read:  , What you need to know about the Horizon scandal , •
• Even watch:  , ITV’s documentary – , Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The true story , •
• Even read:  , Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence and incompetence means big taxpayers ‘ bill , •
