Secret papers reveal Post Office knew its court defence was false

The document reveals the Post Office was shown evidence by 2017 that losses could be due to errors in the Horizon IT system or remote tampering. But it kept arguing in the Bates v Post Office Ltd case that theft or mistakes by sub-postmasters must be to blame. The Post Office said it would be "inappropriate" to comment. Patrick Green KC, the lead barrister for the sub-postmasters in the Bates case, said the BBC's findings were "absolutely shocking". After reading the report, he added: "I don't think the case should have happened."Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted because of faults with Horizon, which was developed by the Japanese IT company Fujitsu. The landmark Bates v Post Office High Court case - portrayed in a recent ITV drama - ran from 2018 to 2019 and was brought by 555 sub-postmasters. They argued that the real cause of their missing cash was not theft but flaws with Horizon or failed attempts by Fujitsu to correct system errors remotely. The total cost to the Post Office in the legal action was £100m of public money.Throughout the draft report, Deloitte refers to having already discussed its findings with "Post Office management" and even the fact that some of these were shared with the Post Office's investigators for further analysis. Tim Parker, the Post Office's chairman at the time of the draft report, also told the BBC via his legal representative that Post Office lawyers liaised with Deloitte about Project Bramble and were responsible for handling, distributing and disclosing it. He added that the Post Office's lawyers were also involved in the "strategy and day to day management of the litigation". This raises questions as to whether Post Office lawyers met their responsibilities to not mislead the court.