At least 70 people within the Post Office and Royal Mail were aware of errors in the Horizon computer system, its manufacturer said on the final day of the public inquiry.
Hundreds of subpostmasters have been wrongly prosecuted based on accounting errors produced by the faulty Horizon system.
The final day of closing speeches was followed by an update from the inquiry’s chairman, Sir Wyn Williams, on the likely timetable for the publication of his report.
He ended almost three years of evidence by confirming his intention to publish his findings “as quickly as possible”, but added that the report would not be ready for “several months”.
The debates ended with applause from the public, including victims of the scandal, present.
Earlier today, the lawyer for manufacturer Horizon Fujitsu told the IT investigation and Post office breakdowns he had identified a list of people who knew of bugs, errors and defects in the computer program.
These individuals were senior members of the organization, including members of the Postal Service’s board of directors, senior executives, in-house counsel, and personnel from the security and investigative teams, Fujitsu’s lawyer said, Richard Whittam.
The investigation received “unequivocal evidence” of these people’s knowledge of Horizon’s flaws, he added.
It was these defects that generated imaginary financial deficits in Post Office branches, which were used by the organization to bring private lawsuits against more than 700 people for theft and false accounting between 1999 and 2015.
Others have gone bankrupt, lost their homes, been isolated and left their communities, suffered health problems and relationship breakdowns, and some committed suicide after having to repay money they owed. never had to.
The scandal has been described as one of worst miscarriages of justice in recent British legal history.
“It’s not the fault of technology”
Concluding Fujitsu’s testimony to the inquiry, Mr Whittam said the Post Office knew about the flaws 25 years ago and it was not fundamentally Horizon’s fault but the company’s wrongdoing. business.
“The evidence demonstrated that these miscarriages of justice were not caused exclusively or even primarily by technological failures, but rather were the product of serious human and organizational failures in conduct, ethics, governance and culture,” he declared.
Tuesday is last day of submission to the Post Office Horizon IT investigation, which has been going on for two and a half years.
Key participants such as victims, the Post Office, government ministries and Fujitsu presented their final conclusions.
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People are distancing themselves for “self-preservation”
The legal representative of Paula Vennells who was at the head of the Post Office in her lawsuit against the subpostmasters, she said she was “entitled to rely” on what she believed to be competent legal counsel and computer experts to provide accurate information to her , to the board of directors and to the management team.
“It is inevitable, given the very human desire for self-preservation, that witnesses will now seek to distance themselves from Ms Vennells,” her lawyer said.
Closing its evidence, the Post Office told the inquiry on Tuesday that it “must end this final statement as it began, with an apology”.
He reiterated his “determination to continue the process of learning lessons from this investigation”.
He added: “The Post Office remains firmly committed to ensuring that nothing like this can happen again, but recognizes that it will rightly be judged in the months and years to come on what it does, not on what she says she’s going to do. .”