The statutory public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal is in danger of falling apart. Last month's hearings were postponed as the chair was ill. Today the chair is considering postponing most of this month's hearings until after summer because... ... of the Post Office's failure to properly disclose documents to the inquiry, which might be of relevance to this month's witnesses. We've already seen the THIRD postponement of Gareth Jenkins' evidence (the Fujitsu engineer under criminal investigation). Today the inquiry...

During @KevanJonesMP (Lab) UQ in parliament today @chrisloder MP (Con) called Post Office CEO Nick Read "a liar" and Chris Pritchard, Post Office Head of Public Affairs "a liar" after meeting with them. V unusual. Reflects the strength of feeling in the House. Hard to see how... @KevanJonesMP @chrisloder ... how Nick Read gets out of this hole, entirely of his making.

He accepted a bonus for co-operating with a public inquiry, and then signed off a demonstrably false statement in the PO's annual report.

#PostOfficeScandal

Latest development in the Post Office's bonusgate. The Director General of the Business Department, David Bickerton has written to the Post Office demanding an apology for not informing the minister about the falsehood in its accounts and...

#PostOfficeScandal
#PostOfficeInquiry ... an explanation as to how the falsehood came to be in the annual report. I am reminded that the report is not just filed at Companies House, but (as a govt-owned company) laid before parliament. This means the signatories of the annual report - the Chairman and CEO...

Holy sh*t. The Post Office applied a senior executive bonus metric about its work on the Post Office Inquiry (without informing the inquiry). Then it used false information to say it had achieved the metric and awarded the executive bonuses, whilst implying... ... the Inquiry chair had confirmed the false information!!!

postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/news/chairs-st…

#PostOfficeScandal
#PostOfficeInquiry

Good morning. I am at the #PostOfficeInquiry in London to watch Fujitsu whistleblower Richard Roll give evidence. I first heard Richard's voice on Alan Bates' cassette recorder in the Dobbie's garden centre café just off the A5 near Shrewsbury. I first met Richard Roll in the Leathern Bottle pub just outside Wokingham in April 2015. What he told me was something the Post Office were explicitly denying - that Horizon errors could cause holes in Postmaster accounts, and that Fujitsu staff could go into those accounts...

Asian postmasters who rang helpline about flawed Horizon IT system labelled 'another Patel...'

Top work by @TomWitherow

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1… @TomWitherow Times write up:

Postmasters were victims of racist mockery at Horizon helpline:

thetimes.co.uk/article/postma…

Thanks to @TomWitherow for the heads up. Amandeep Singh giving evidence now:



This from Amandeep Singh's Witness Statement... @TomWitherow ... (he was a Horizon Helpline worker)

"The floor was quite a toxic place, and this manifested itself with colleagues openly mocking the role and complaining to management that the role was not
what they were initially hired for. Many were desperate to leave and as soon as...

Two (of many) notable elements sprung from Andrew Winn's car crash evidence session to the #PostOfficeInquiry on Friday. They were:

- Evidence which could have stopped Seema Misra going to prison was withheld by Winn's boss, Rod Ismay:

postofficescandal.uk/post/andrew-wi… - 2) The Post Office sued, bankrupted and ruined an innocent Postmaster at the High Court specifically to deter other Subpostmasters from attempting to take it to court over holes in their Horizon accounts.

postofficescandal.uk/post/post-offi…

#PostOfficeInquiry

and...

Hello from the cheap seats at Wembley Arena. Saw Duran Duran here when I was 10. Saw The Cure here when I was 16. Saw Duran Duran here when I was 30. Now about to watch The Cure here at the age of 49. I am only watching two bands at Wembley Arena. #lifeplans Random thoughts from watching The Cure tonight.
1. Bob was in an amazingly chatty mood to the extent of trying and failing to crack a few jokes. "It's why I sing" he said after his last one fell flat. We forgave him.

2. At Night is now a beast of a song. In fact all the early...

Welcome to a special compensation hearing at the #PostOfficeInquiry at the IDRC in central London. There was a small demo outside by former Subpostmasters and many of those holding the banner in the picture are now in the inquiry room. I will be live tweeting proceedings, but if you'd rather watch it online, the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry official youtube channel is here:

youtube.com/channel/UCgijU…

Holy shit - watching Colin Baker's evidence. The NFSP were hopelessly compromised. To call them complicit in this scandal is an understatement. NFSP refused to publicly criticise Horizon before rollout... ... despite knowing there were serious problems, failing even to inform a parliamentary select committee of the difficulties.

Baker is still giving evidence here;

Here are the Prosecution support pars in the agreement between ICL, PO and DSS re Horizon:

'4.1.8 The Contractor shall ensure that all relevant information produced by the POCL Service Infrastructure at the request of POCL shall be evidentially admissible... ..
and capable of certification in accordance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984, the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland)
Order 1989 and equivalent legislation covering Scotland...

Okay at the inquiry, listening to some very involved discussion about Tony Oppenheim's position within the managment structure of Fujitsu/ICL/Pathway (later Horizon)...

https://twitter.com/PostOffInquiry/status/1585192669541801985

Whilst listening to what is quite slow going atmo, one name which came up quite a bit yesterday in Keith Todd's evidence was that of Richard Christou, who Todd described as...

Good morning from the Salvation Army café near the International Dispute Resolution Centre where Day 2 of Week 3 of Phase 2 of the Post Office Horizon Inquiry is taking place.

1/ Yesterday we heard from Keith Todd, former CEO of ICL (the British company owned by Fujitsu which won the Horizon project as the ‘Pathway Consortium’)

2/

Good morning from the Salvation Army café in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. I am here to load up on caffeine before attending the final day of Phase 2 Week 2 of the Post Office Horizon inquiry at the IDRC. This photo was taken a little earlier today... ... this is the third day the inquiry has been sitting this week. Day 1 was on Tuesday during which the Inquiry's IT expert Charles Cipione started and finished the first part of his oral evidence during which he took the inquiry through the first part of his reporting into...

Just reading the witness statement of the former Royal Mail Group CEO 1995 - 2002, when Horizon was a hot issue, before diving into his oral evidence from today. First sentence to stick out from his WS: 'The Board were assured by the Horizon... ... Project Director in the meeting that the system was robust and fit for service. The only issue reported was that some subpostmasters were having trouble balancing their accounts which was seen at the time as a training issue, not a system issue."

NEW: Former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins, who is under investigation by Metropolitan Police over the Horizon scandal is seeking an undertaking from the Attorney General re his participation in the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. If granted...

1/ ... it would limit the way his evidence to the Inquiry can be used in any subsequent criminal prosecution.

2/

Welcome to Day 4 of Phase 2 of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry held at the IDRC- very close to St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Live-tweeting follows… Department for Business (BEIS) making its opening statement. Says the scandal is "grotesque". Apologies profusely to all those affected. Urges all "institutional" core participants to engage and generally reflect on how they all managed to mess up.

Good morning from the Salvation Army Cafe at the northern end of this bridge. I’m settled here ahead of Day 4 of Phase 2 of the inquiry, being held at the International Dispute Resolution Centre (IDRC), in Juxon House, near St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

#PostOfficeInquiry

1/ This is an epic tweet thread which I’ll turn into a blog post in due course…

2/

Been looking forward to this. Katrina Watt (sp.?) is addressing the Post Office Horizon Inquiry on behalf of the National Federation of Subpostmaster. Live-tweeting follows, but you can watch it here:



#PostOfficeInquiry KW calls the evidence at the Human Impact sessions "shocking".

NFSP urges PO and govt to make interim payments of compensation without delays. Hopes all that were wrongfully prosecuted and dismissed will have their...

In 2020 the BEIS Permanent Secretary reprimanded the Post Office chairman Tim Parker for failing to disclose Jonathan Swift's report to the Post Office Board on advice from the Post Office General Counsel Jane MacLeod. Sarah Munby says: "We understand that you were advised... ... at the time by the Post Office's General Counsel that for reasons of confidentiality and preserving legal privilege the circulation of the report should be strictly controlled....