The Post Office has reportedly penned a £180million deal to keep the faulty Horizon system in place for another five years.
Japanese firm Fujitsu’s faulty software was behind more than 900 subpostmasters being wrongly prosecuted after shortfalls were incorrectly reported on their accounts.
The Post Office had been looking for a replacement system for next year, but it is now expected that Fujitsu will continue operating in branches for five more years.
The deal was reported by Computer Weekly and comes after the Japanese firm said it would not apply for any more government contracts.
Richard Trinder, who manages the campaign group Voice of the Postmaster – which supports victims of the Horizon scandal – said: ‘We want the new system to be the right one when it does come in, so we understand that there needs to be a new system.
‘However, it would have been nice to Fujitsu to do this work for free and donate the £180million to victims of the scandal.’
The faulty Horizon system is set to continue running in Post Office branches for another five years, it has emerged
More than 900 Post Office operators were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting between 1999 and 2015 due to faulty Horizon software
Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells leaving the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry on May 24
Fujitsu’s current contract was due to end by March 2025, the deadline which the Post Office had hoped to replace its IT system by.
But it was reported this week that the Post Office has pushed this deadline back to 2030. It also asked for £1billion of additional public money from the Treasury as it finds its difficult to create a sufficient in-house system.
It comes as the huge police inquiry into the Post Office scandal will use 80 detectives and be on the scale of a ‘major murder or terrorism investigation’, it was reported this week.
While over 20 potential suspects at both the Post Office and Fujitsu have already been identified, decisions on whether charges will be brought are unlikely before 2026, The Guardian first reported.
And while the police have already asked for extra funding from government to the tune of £6.75m to fund the huge operation, investigators are yet to be recruited to staff the probe, it added.
Perjury and perverting the course of justice have been been identified as possible offences in a scandal which resulted in more than 900 Post Office operators being prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting between 1999 and 2015 due to the faulty Horizon software wrongly making it look as though money was missing from their branches.
And while many had to wait decades to clear their name – or even died before they could see it happen – the further wait for any potential criminal trials is due to police having to take into account the full conclusions of the inquiry before finally handing over their files of evidence to prosecutors.
The inquiry says it plans to issue its report in 2025, and the police will need until the following year to complete their work, they say. Even if the CPS do bring charges, there will then be a further wait for any charges to reach trial.
This month, Ms Vennells told the hearing in London that there are ‘no words’ that will make the ‘sorrow and what people have gone through any better’
This month, former Post Office boss Paula Vennells wept while giving evidence at the Horizon inquiry after insisting that she ‘loved’ the company.
The shamed 65-year-old also told the hearing in London that there are ‘no words’ that will make the ‘sorrow and what people have gone through any better’.
Ms Vennells – who insisted she ‘worked as hard as I possibly could’ – broke down in tears, after doing the same on the first day of her evidence.
She became emotional as she told the inquiry: ‘I loved the Post Office, I gave it… I worked as hard as I possibly could to deliver the best Post Office for the UK.
‘What I failed to do was I failed to recognise … the imbalance of power between the institution and the individual. I let these people down – I am very aware of that.’
But Ms Vennells was accused of being in ‘la-la land’ and responsible for her own downfall during questioning by Edward Henry KC.
MPs also finally approved a Bill to quash the convictions of theft, fraud, false accounting and other offences against sub-postmasters, and scrub cautions from their records.
The Bill will apply in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, affecting those who were prosecuted by the Post Office, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) or Northern Ireland authorities in the years 1996 to 2018.
The Scottish Parliament will pass its own law to a similar effect north of the border, because of Scotland’s distinct legal system.
