How does this scandal keep getting worse and worse when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software?
At this point I'm starting to suspect some underlying malfeasance yet to be discovered.
Fujitsu still has some blame, but if their statements were being modified by the post office, who's responsibility is it to review that? If I gave a written statement to a police officer, is it my responsibility to follow up and make sure they didn't edit my statement? Of course... if I found out, it is my responsibility to raise a flag, but I should be able to trust agents of the courts to not alter evidence.
ie it's not a matter of trusting that "officers of the court" did this, because the prosecutor was not really an officer of the court, they were acting as a private citizen or (in this case) a representative of a private corporation. You are trusting that some rando working their 9-5 did not unduly "tweak" the words of the witnesses that are used as evidence to prosecute you.
From what I can tell from the inquiry testimony, the witness statements weren't exactly modified by the PO; they were effectively drafted by the PO's legal team. The lawyers produced pro-forma template statements, such that witnesses only had to fill in the blanks for names, dates and so on.
Some witnesses balked at some of the language used in the template, e.g. words to the effect of "I believe the Horizon system was working completely correctly". In response, the legal team amended the template.
The evidence produced to the inquiry can be viewed here:
https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/
The inquiry has a youtube channel, where videos of the public hearings can be found:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgijUpaux8X4Nvjx3TmrHhg
For what it's worth, I've never given a statement to police that was in my own words. In every case, the police interviewer led me through my testimony by asking a series of questions, and writing down my answer (in his own words).
But it can happen from:
* smaller-fry butt-covering (e.g., lower-level function trying to cover their own butt, putting larger org at risk of much higher cost to the org);
* arrogance (e.g., individual/org thinks they are in the right and justified in escalating countermeasures);
* bully-like confidence (e.g., individual/org thinks they are powerful enough to get away with escalating the offense, to escape cost from the original offense).
It's not unusual, especially on smaller scales (e.g., in companies without genuine cultures of trust and integrity, many people will try to internally suppress info about failures, committing worse and/or more harmful acts in the process).
They first injured Gary Hinman trying to get money from him- before the Tate murders. While he was injured they spent days first injuring him, and then debating how to keep him from going to the police for two days before he died.
The best example of this is the testimony of one Peter Sewell, who never met one of the victims but who, in an email, called him a “nasty chap” and that he was out to “rubbish the FJ name”.
You can see how he realises the enormity of his stupidity in testimony and tries to half heartedly defend himself (unsuccessfully):
Sounds like he was using a different sense of the term "integrity" than I was.
Figuratively, like integrity of a physical barrier, to the (claimed) attack of this other person.
This also applies to Parliament. They're renowned for it!
It is the rest of government (civil servants and agencies, as well as politicians) that is the real problem.
A massive contract for the entire postal service of which a number of government managers? On top of which Fujitsu provides software for a huge swath of other UK government agencies like NHS?
So not only are they protecting a huge contract, but they were also covering up the fact that they lied and people ended up going to jail, committing suicide, etc. Aside from the criminal and civil liabilities - that would generate substantial political outrage and is the sort of thing that would shed a lot of unwanted light on the contracts, how they were selected, etc. Light nobody wanted.
This literally caused deaths - people committed suicide because of the shame and debt and utter destruction of their careers.
I guess just like comedy and bad suspense movies, crimes always escalate.
during a school trip with overnight stays, 2 of the teenage girls went out in the evening, even though it was forbidden. It was noticed after a while, so the teacher went looking for them. Just as he went out, they were about to come back(not too late). But they saw the teacher coming out - and hid themself, to not get in trouble in this moment. And this is of course when the real trouble started, because now the search started for real, with informing police about missing female students, big search etc.
Coming out right at the beginning would have meant been giving a warning ... but the hiding because of fear for the trouble made the trouble very big and got them close to being expelled. And anger from the others, because from then, everything was less fun with the teachers ..
There are a lot of programmers who seem to think it would be a horrific miscarriage of justice for somebody to be held responsible for the behavior of their own computer programs.
How much longer will they drag this through the dirt, because the families of the deceased can finally have peace?
Paywalled: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-villain-at-the-heart-...
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/aaJyc
Summary: In the 1960s, the government merged a bunch of companies "at gunpoint", creating behemoths like British Leyland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland) and ICL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limite...) that were to compete with international giants.
ICL couldn't beat IBM, but the government were committed to "buying British". That left the government with shit computers and systems. It still didn't help ICL, so in 1981 they faced bankruptcy. Since the government was the biggest user of ICL systems, civil servants persuaded Thatcher that "if ICL went bust, the government would grind to a halt". So ICL was rescued, with the aid of trusted Japanese tech firm Fujitsu. ICL lost its monopoly status, but was deeply embedded in the British state. You know the phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"? Well in the British Government, replace "IBM" with "ICL".
In 1995 the British government decided to automate their social welfare system. "Project Pathway" was a disaster. It got dumped 4 years later, but the Post Office still went ahead and used it, this time calling it "Project Horizon". According to insiders, everybody knew it was a "bag of shit". By now, ICL was fully owned by Fujitsu, who told the Blair government that if they didn’t sign the deal, ICL would collapse. So the deal was signed. And what a mess for all involved.
This isn't an isolated case though. ICL/Fujitsu built another system for the Cabinet Office in No. 10, for highly classified material. It was absolute trash, taking half an our to boot, and Ministers refused to use it. They dumped the system, prompting Fujitsu to sue for breach of contract. But, even as the Cabinet Office was decommissioning it, another branch of government was buying it.
Why? Partly because of EU rules, departments couldn't share their experiences with a given supplier or system. If a department knew that ICL/Fujitsu sucked, it might influence future contracts "and everyone would be sued".
Instead we have suicides, lives and reputations ruined.
Citation needed.
I have no doubt that you could find some EU legislation from the '90s that could have been a tiny factor in this debacle, but it's fairly obvious that the biggest factor was panic that ICL would collapse if they didn't continue propping them up with fresh money, leaving many government IT systems out of support.