The Post Office public inquiry has heard that a former Fujitsu IT security analyst, Andy Dunks, provided witness statements about the Horizon IT system to courts. Dunks admitted that his lack of understanding of the IT evidence led him to rely on information from more knowledgeable colleagues in IT support, who had refused to provide the information directly. This resulted in wrongful convictions of subpostmasters based on inaccurate IT evidence.
Dunks, who still works at Fujitsu in a different role, acknowledged that his tech evidence was often based on what he was told by others rather than his own understanding. He would gather information by speaking to experts in the Fujitsu Service Support Centre (SSC), who provided IT support to subpostmasters.
In the Post Office Horizon scandal, hundreds of subpostmasters were prosecuted and convicted based on flawed evidence from the Horizon computer system. Dunks provided witness statements on behalf of Fujitsu to support these prosecutions, including in the case of Seema Misra, who was wrongfully convicted of false accounting but had her conviction overturned in 2021.
The inquiry also revealed that some staff in Fujitsu’s SSC were unwilling to provide witness statements, despite having the necessary tech knowledge. Concerns about giving evidence in court were raised by individuals like Rajbinder Bains and Phil Budd, who expressed reluctance and stress over the implications of their statements.
The public inquiry has shed light on the difficulties faced by tech staff in providing evidence to courts, including concerns raised by former Fujitsu SSC IT expert Anne Chambers. The Post Office scandal, first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, has been described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history.