Morning all!

I wasn’t in court yesterday, but I have been sent the transcript and witness statements of the one witness who was cross-examined in court yesterday, so I have got something of a feel for what happened. If you want to get a feel yourself, you can find all the relevant documents here.

Fujitsu’s Parkerman

The morning was taken up with the cross-examination of Steve Parker, Head of Post Office Application Support at Fujitsu. Mr Parker was effectively Richard Roll’s boss at Fujitsu. Mr Roll was the whistleblower who appeared in the 2015 Panorama programme and was a witness for the claimants during the first week of the Horizon trial what now seems like several months ago. You can read what Mr Roll said in court here.

Two of Mr Parker’s witness statements are mainly concerned with belittling Richard Roll’s expertise and involvement in dealing with Horizon errors. And it was Mr Parker’s witness statement which was used to such devastating effect by Mr de Garr Robinson QC against Richard Roll somewhere back in the mists of time.

Yesterday, acting for the claimants, Mr Patrick Green QC, went to work on Steve Parker, and the information he had used to belittle Mr Roll.

This largely came from Mr Parker’s own recollections and a spreadsheet of incidents which Mr Parker’s colleagues at Fujitsu had put together. This spreadsheet was used to show that of all the Horizon issues that came into Fujitsu’s Software Support Centre (SSC), only a tiny number were serious software errors and only a tiny number of those would have been worked on by Richard Roll, but not in any meaningful way.

Mr Green had a few questions about the arbitrary search terms applied by Mr Parker’s colleagues, and the arbitrary classifications Mr Parker used on the spreadsheet itself. He also pointed out that some of the classifications which Mr Parker had not used to tot up his final total of software errors contained descriptions of serious software errors. This is because the way that the errors were classified by Fujitsu technicians at the time was entirely arbitrary too.

As Mr Green described it “two layers of chaos”. Mr Parker agreed it was “very subjective, yes.”

Remaining Horizon trial dates

The rest of the day was spent trying to find dates to resume the Horizon trial.

It was finally resolved as follows:

4 – 7 June cross-examination of Jason Coyne, claimants’ independent IT expert

11 – 13 June cross-examination of Dr Worden, Post Office’s independent IT expert

1 and 2 July – closing argument

This suggests to me the judgment of the Horizon Issues trial will not be handed down before September.

Recusal appeal

The Post Office has confirmed that it met yesterday’s deadline to file documents at the Court of Appeal to seek permission to appeal the recusal judgment handed down on Tuesday, in which the Mr Justice Fraser rejected the application to recuse himself and refused permission to appeal.

It is almost certain that if permission is granted, the Court of Appeal will hear the appeal before the scheduled resumption of the Horizon trial. I will seek information from those who know far more about this sort of thing exactly how this process will take place and then let you know.

Due the extraordinary nature of this litigation, this email has a growing number of legally qualified recipients. If anyone feels able to take me through the process of appealing the recusal judgment, please just hit reply. I am happy to pass on what you tell me anonymously or with your name attached, if you give me permission to do so.

The NFSP

The Chief Executive of the National Federation for Subpostmasters (NFSP) has made further comments about J Fraser’s findings in the April 2019 edition of “The Subpostmaster”, kindly forwarded by a secret emailer.

J Fraser’s findings essentially tear the NFSP’s credibility to shreds. I wrote this piece about it at the time.

Calum Greenhow says the judge’s findings were a “surprise” and “inappropriate”, but interestingly, nowhere does he say they were incorrect.

He also uses a very carefully-worded sentence to say the Bates v Post Office cases “relate to losses incurred following the introduction of Horizon nearly 20 years ago”.

There is nothing inaccurate in that statement, but it is wholly disingenuous. The reader is invited to infer that this is a historical matter which has nothing to do with the Horizon of today. In fact, one of the Lead Claimants in the Common Issues trial, Liz Stockdale, was having problems with Horizon as late as 2016, and just yesterday I read on facebook the appeal of a Subpostmaster who wrote:

“I am… experiencing serious discrepancies over the last 6 months (I had the new system and equipment fitted in July. Absolutely no probs before this) I am in my 30th year of service and am completely devastated. Are there any more known current problems or do you know of anyone else experiencing current problems”

It is apparent from the comments below the facebook post the Postmaster was not aware of the Bates v Post Office court case, their rights in the light of the judgment or any organisation such as the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance or the CWU who might be able to help them.

The utter failure of the NFSP to even acknowledge problems with Horizon (despite the huge numbers of Subpostmasters who have first hand experience of this, and now the irrefutable evidence coming out in court) is damaging peoples’ lives. It has a direct line of communication with the majority of Subpostmasters and yet still refuses to inform them properly about this deadly serious issue. The NFSP is complicit in this scandal, culpable, and should be held responsible.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone for the emails, tweets and other messages over the past week. I am out of the country with my family, who have been very patient as I remotely responded to events in court. It does mean I have neglected my correspondence which I hope to catch up with on my return.

Please be assured I read everything! It is only the number of hours in the day which stop me from responding individually. I do value everything I get – comments, information, documentation or ideas for taking the story further.

I am particularly grateful to those who have put their hands into their pockets to continue to fund this project. We are in line for nine more days in court in the Horizon trial and now there are appeal court processes in motion which I would very much like to be able to afford to cover.

I will look at where the crowdfunding pot sits as soon as I can, but I am almost certain I will have to start another fundraising campaign in September if I am to continue attending court and reporting this story.

Kind regards

Nick