Post Office cut support for sub- postmasters despite Horizon faults being reported

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The Post Office reduced support for its branch managers to save costs under a new contract with Fujitsu despite problems with the Horizon IT system already being reported.

The revised contract between the state-owned company and the Japanese technology provider resulted in changes to the Horizon helpdesk’s opening hours in 2003, documents seen by the Financial Times show.

An investment board paper about the Horizon contract amendment said: “Help Desk, Maintenance Services and Data Centre operations will be simplified and rationalised. This will result in some reductions in service levels”.

Hundreds of sub-postmasters, who managed branches for the Post Office across the UK were wrongfully convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on unreliable data from the Horizon IT system introduced in 1999.

The scandal is regarded as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history and this year led the previous Conservative government to announce unprecedented emergency legislation to quash the convictions en masse.

The investment board document acknowledged that a reduction in service levels would pose a risk.

The change would “impact postmasters, Head Office staff, and clients, who may see it as a deterioration in service”, it read.

However, a February 2003 issue of Operational Focus, an operational publication for Post Office branches at the time, told sub-postmasters the changes would have “little impact on branches”.

The amendment had “been agreed with Fujitsu as part of the new contract and will result in significant cost savings to Post Office Ltd”, the document said.

The revelations come ahead of the final phase of the inquiry beginning on September 23, which will examine the current practice and procedure at the Post Office as well as compensation.

The FT recently reported that the Post Office repeatedly wrote to branches about reported problems with Horizon in the first five years of its rollout, while starting to prosecute hundreds of sub-postmasters.

Under the revised contract terms, reports of hardware or software problems to the Horizon system help desk were to be dealt with on the next working day outside 8am to 6.30pm from Monday to Saturday, the issue of Operational Focus said.

It added the timing of visits by engineers to branches to work on Horizon equipment would be restricted to weekdays. Fuijitsu was responsible for providing the help desk service until July 2014, according to evidence at the public inquiry.

The Post Office would years later publicly deny there had been evidence of faults. Fujitsu in some witness statements for the purposes of prosecutions did not include details of bugs, errors and defects, a company executive acknowledged in the inquiry.

The documents also shed light on the relationship between the Post Office and Fujitsu.

A June 2002 Post Office presentation, titled “Fujitsu Services Renegotiation”, said there was a “joint view to move to open, trusting relationship” with the company and “commercial invectives required to encourage behaviours”.

“Can this leopard change its spots?” it also noted.

The investment board document said the Horizon service provided had “been good, though expensive to run, and slow and costly to change” and that spend on IT was “way above industry norms”.

The document recommended that the Horizon contract should be revised and extended to 2010.

It said a “clear governance structure will be set up, with a number of joint forums with clear accountability between the two companies”. It added there would be a “more collaborative style of working, based on trust and risk management [rather than avoidance]”.

Minutes of a meeting of the Post Office board of directors in September 2002 noted that a deal with Fujitsu should be concluded on the Horizon contract.

The Post Office said: “We are deeply sorry for the hurt and suffering that was caused to victims of the Horizon IT scandal and their loved ones”.

It added “the wrongs of the past must never be repeated and, where possible, we must put them right”.

It said it was “focused on supporting the ongoing public inquiry to establish the truth and paying redress to those impacted as quickly as possible”.

Fujitsu declined to comment.