Data from the scandal-hit Horizon system is still used in court proceedings, a former member of Fujitsu’s anti-fraud team revealed yesterday.
Rajbinder Sangha said she raised concerns about a draft witness statement template handed to her in 2010, which said the software was operating properly “at all material times”.
The template, potentially used to assist Post Office prosecutions, was worrying as “obviously bugs were in the system”, she said.
Lawyer Sam Stein KC asked: “Is the Horizon system still being used to provide data that is used in court proceedings?”
Ms Sangha said: “Yes, I think it is.”
She was taken through a number of emails and fault logs telling of numerous problems with updated system version Horizon Online. Fujitsu software developer Gerald Barnes recorded concerns over “duplicate transactions” not being removed from Post Office electronic point-ofsale service machines – and the potential for it to affect “a number of high-profile court cases in the pipeline”.
In 2008, he called the lack of resilience to errors of the machines, run by the Horizon system, “endemic”.
In 2010, Mr Barnes said: “In the event that duplicates are retrieved and returned to [the Post Office] without our knowledge, the integrity of the data provided comes into question.”
He said if the problem was not fixed, “our spreadsheets presented in court are liable to be brought into doubt if duplicate transactions are spotted”.The issue was called “very significant” by a security analyst.
