The chief executives of Post Office and Fujitsu are set to be questioned by MPs over the Horizon scandal next week.
Parliament’s Business and Trade Committee will meet on Tuesday to examine what more can be done to deliver compensation for victims of what has been labelled the worst miscarriage of justice in British history.
Nick Read, chief executive of the Post Office, and Paul Patterson, head of Europe at Fujitsu, are both due to appear, it has been confirmed.
The Horizon scandal saw more than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses handed criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
Victims have since described being shunned by their communities, financially ruined and having their families destroyed.
Rishi Sunak on Wednesday announced that hundreds of the wrongly prosecuted in England and Wales could have their names cleared by the end of the year under blanket legislation to be introduced within weeks.
Pressure on Fujitsu has mounted in recent days, with the Justice Secretary suggesting the firm should repay the “fortune” spent on the scandal if it is found culpable.
Alex Chalk said the Government would want to secure “proper recompense on behalf of the taxpayer” if the “scale of incompetence is as we imagined.”
The firm has been awarded Government contracts worth billions in recent years and its continued involvement in major IT schemes has raised concerns at Westminster.
Ministers tried to prevent Fujitsu getting more official work but this proved “impossible” despite its “woeful” performance, a Tory peer revealed on Wednesday.
Lord Maude of Horsham, who served as Cabinet Office minister under David Cameron, said procurement rules thwarted the efforts.
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The public inquiry, which on Thursday saw Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw deny accusations he and others behaved like “Mafia gangsters” during their probe into the shortfalls, is set to keep the scandal in the spotlight.
The Horizon software started to be rolled out in Post Office branches across the UK in 1999 and over the subsequent years a series of subpostmasters were prosecuted over missing funds.
In 2019 the High Court ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.
