Post Office and Fujitsu bosses quizzed about i report on Horizon glitches
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00:00 Mr. Patterson, can you tell me when specifically management in Fujitsu, ideally the month and
00:08 the year, knew about the Horizon system being faulty?
00:15 I can't answer a month and a year to your question.
00:19 Not even a year?
00:20 Because I'm assuming you said at the beginning to the chair that there were issues with the
00:24 system.
00:25 Is it that there were issues with the system from day one or is it something that was discovered
00:30 later on?
00:31 Because as reported in the Eye this month, near identical, I use a quote there, errors
00:37 were found in an earlier post office IT project supplied by a subsidiary of Fujitsu, ICL Pathway,
00:44 which was in 1999.
00:46 So I ask again, when were management aware?
00:50 And if you're unable to answer now, will you commit to asking executives to formally write
00:55 to the chair of the committee to provide that detail?
00:59 I'll say two things.
01:00 First of all, there were known bugs and errors in the system at a very early stage.
01:05 You asked me the month and year.
01:06 I can't give you the month and year, but from the very start, there were bugs and errors
01:11 in the system.
01:12 We have a...
01:14 Why did this earlier project fail?
01:16 Why was the trial of the system showed errors in ICL Pathway, which could have led to potentially
01:21 thousands of sub-postmasters being rejected?
01:24 Why was this earlier system, which is near identical to Horizon, why was that flashing
01:28 up errors?
01:29 So I don't know what was happening in 1995 to 1999.
01:34 What I do know is that there were bugs and errors in the system when it rolled out.
01:38 In any large IT project, there will always be some bugs and errors in any system, particularly
01:44 of this scale.
01:45 The important thing is, what do we do with that information?
01:49 Do we take that information and share it with the post office?
01:52 Yes, we did.
01:53 How the post office then chose to use that information in their prosecutions is entirely
01:57 on the post office's side.
01:59 So you accept there are faults with the system, Mr. Patterson, but...
02:03 And you say you pass it on to the post office and basically pass the buck from what I just
02:06 heard there.
02:07 But to quote your own marketing material, "The most advanced and secure electronic banking
02:13 and retail network in Europe," when describing the Horizon system.
02:16 So your own communications to sell your own product around the world, you were using Horizon
02:23 as a great example.
02:24 Yet you're saying here now that errors were known and...
02:28 So when was the first error, again, month and year, passed to the post office?
02:34 So I can't tell you month and year.
02:36 So will you commit to writing to this committee to tell us when?
02:39 So I know that Sarin, this is one of the phases of the investigation with Sarin, particularly
02:46 about when the system's rolled out, the training for the sub-postmasters, et cetera.
02:51 So I can commit to the chair that I will revert back into what we have already submitted to
02:57 the inquiry in this area.
03:00 It was an area that was discussed early on.
03:02 And quite remarkable, we don't know when.
03:04 Okay, but let's go to the point now about the Horizon system.
03:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]