Here is the transcript for day 8 of the Horizon trial, held at the High Court's Rolls Building on 21 March 2018. The trial was halted by an application for the judge to recuse himself on grounds of bias.
The application will be heard on Wednesday 3 April 2019.
The application will be heard on Wednesday 3 April 2019.
Thursday, 21 March 2019
(10.30 am)
MR TORSTEIN OLAV GODESETH (continued)
Cross-examination by MR GREEN (continued)
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, we are both standing up.
I wonder if your Lordship wishes to discuss housekeeping
matters or shall we leave it until after Mr Godeseth has
finished?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Absolutely. We will do it at the end.
MR GREEN: I'm grateful.
Mr Godeseth, just to clarify, yesterday -- and to
correct a point I put to you yesterday -- I suggested to
you that PEAK 0175821 at page {F/485} was
Horizon Online. It's clearly legacy.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Was this the one that because of the
dates could have been either?
MR GREEN: It could have been either. I will come back to
that but I just wanted Mr Godeseth not to be worried
that --
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, it was 2009, in fact, not
2010.
MR GREEN: I'm going to try and take this in a condensed
way, Mr Godeseth, if I can, and see what we can agree is
clear. Can we just -- what I'm proposing to do is take
you to the position under the legacy system separately
so there's no room for confusion by me or you and then
deal with Horizon Online after that and just briefly, if
we look first please at {F/323}. Now, this is
PEAK 0130275. Do you see that at the top?
A. I do.
Q. And the target date there is June 2006, but you can see
that from the progress narrative that it's initiated
in December 2005. Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And if you come down into the yellow box and you look
towards the bottom you will see 21/12/05 at 17.22.
A. I do.
Q. Can you see the figure of £18,000 there just below that?
It says:
"Contacted: contacted pm - pm states rolling over tp
with no items, 0 figures showing but allowed to rollover
and on the next rollover into bp there was a £18,000
discrepancy gain."
Do you see that?
A. I see that.
Q. So this is a problem that's caused a gain to the SPM?
A. Agreed.
Q. On the face of the Horizon system?
A. On the face of it, yes.
Q. And if we go over the page please to page 2 {F/323/2},
in the middle box you can see 22 December 2005 at
16.05.15 and if you come down to "Stock unit BB" halfway
down, do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. "Stock unit BB was rolled over in an effectively empty
state. The PM then declared the correct amount of cash,
and adjusted the stock levels up to the correct volumes.
This has resulted in a gain of approximately £18,000.
"We are unable to correct the system figures safely.
We can however provide accurate figures for what should
have been in the final balance for BB, to enable POL to
make the correction perhaps by using a Transaction
Correction."
Now, that's one of the ways of dealing with
a situation like this, isn't it?
A. It would be, yes.
Q. "POL need to make a decision on whether they are able to
correct the problem in this way, however we do not see
any other alternative. Corrective action should be
taken before 11 January when the branch is due to
rollover into TP10."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. So at that stage, what's been identified is that it is
really probably for POL to make the correction using
a transaction correction, and it needs to be done before
11 January because that's the next trading period
rollover, yes?
A. Okay, understood.
Q. And if we go over to page 3 please {F/323/3}, 3 January,
David Seddon, he says there:
"If we get to the problem before the office is
rolled we are able to change objects in the messagestore
to reset the stockunit back to the CAP (TP) rollover
trailer. The PM can then rollover. PM should get
a large shortage which cancels out the large gain.
"We don't want to be having to do this as making
manual changes to the messagestore is open to error and
each time we have to seek authorisation from [Post
Office Limited] to make the changes."
Now, pausing there, can we agree that it was
possible to change the objects in the messagestore in
the way described here?
A. I have -- yes, that would be possible.
Q. And that doing so would cause a large shortage which
would cancel out the large gain, as expressly stated
here?
A. Yes.
Q. And you would agree that making manual changes to the
messagestore is open to error?
A. It certainly is.
Q. And were you aware that each time it was done,
authorisation was sought from Post Office Limited to
make the changes, or was that not something you were
involved in?
A. At this stage I was working elsewhere, so -- 2006, early
2006 I would have been involved interfacing with Horizon
but certainly not at this operational level.
Q. So pausing there, just to get that very precise for
the court. Early 2006, which is the date of this
particular PEAK, you were interfacing with Fujitsu with
regard to Horizon in your job at Post Office?
A. I'm pretty sure I would have been because Impact was
going live in 2005, so I can't be -- but certainly
I wasn't involved in operational issues of this type.
Q. So you're not really the person to ask about those
authorities being sought?
A. Certainly not the -- Post Office would have given
authority through other parties. Certainly I --
I wouldn't have been involved in giving authority for
this sort of thing.
Q. Thank you. Then can we move forward then please to
{F/432}. Now, this is 10/12/2007 and it is PEAK number
0152014 and you will see that there's an OCP listed
there, OCP 17510 and an OCR listed there, 17532.
There's also an additional OCR listed below. Do you see
that?
A. I do.
Q. Now, just so you have a fair context to this question,
Mr Godeseth, it's accepted on behalf of the claimants
that we do see references behind some of these documents
to subpostmasters being made aware of changes being made
of this sort. So just so you're clear, it's not being
put to you that they were never made aware, but I want
you to look and see if you would agree with what this
PEAK shows.
Let's go over the page please {F/432/2}. If we look
at the top of the page, the yellow box, halfway down it,
do you see:
"Am currently retrieving the messagestore for this
branch [and] will then be inserting a new message on the
counter to remove the effects of this."
Do you see that sentence?
A. Yes, and I read this overnight.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Sorry, can you tell me where it is?
MR GREEN: I'm so sorry, in the yellow box at the top,
my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Oh, the yellow box at the top. I was
looking halfway down the page.
MR GREEN: Sorry, my mistake.
So this is one you have had the opportunity to look
at overnight and it clearly states there that Andy Keil,
who we see on the previous page, just to give you
context {F/432/1}, 10 December 2007, 12.36, Andy Keil --
or is it Andy Keil?
A. I don't remember him.
Q. Okay. So he is saying -- go over back again {F/432/2},
he is talking about a line written -- if we look at the
top of that yellow box -- he is talking about a problem
which is:
"... due to a single SC line written for $1,000
(£484) with no settlement in the middle of two RISP
transactions."
Can you tell the court what RISP transactions are?
A. I'm not -- RI is remit in; I can't remember what the SP
bit stands for.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And SC line?
A. Sorry? SC would be "serve customer", my Lord, so that's
a sale.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So it looks as if it they are selling
foreign currency?
A. This one is all related to selling foreign currency and
there's a bit of confusion as to whether it is American
or Canadian dollars.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: In the happy days when £484 sterling
bought 1,000 of either US or Canadian dollars.
A. And there was a change in exchange rates the last --
over the couple of days, yes.
MR GREEN: When we see halfway down that top yellow box:
"Am currently retrieving the messagestore for this
branch, we will then be inserting a new message on the
counter to remove the effects of this."
What's being considered there is making a change on
the counter messagestore, isn't it?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And halfway down you can see a double star, double
asterisk followed by:
"Again, this may also have caused a receipts and
payments error ..."
So they are trying to work out whether there's
a gain or a loss at the counter and the amount, yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And then if we go down to the bottom of this page,
12 December 2007, Andy Keil says:
"Worth noting that the branch did not have any
issues with the mismatched transactions because this was
fixed before they did the roll. The branch is not aware
of this and it's best that the branch is not advised."
Now, at that stage you would fairly accept, wouldn't
you, that although there are documents elsewhere that
show that sometimes SPMs were advised, this shows an
occasion when the SPM at this stage has not been
advised, doesn't it?
A. I don't know that it shows that, but it's a fair
inference from it. I think I would say that Post Office
were well aware of this and I would argue that it's
a Post Office decision whether or not to tell
a subpostmaster.
Q. So you are saying -- just clarify what you just said.
A. This was written by Andy Keil who is a Fujitsu employee
and I think he is recording things as he saw it, but in
the background to this there was a dialogue with
Post Office, from my reading of the PEAK.
Q. Yes, so Post Office would have been aware of what was
being done by Fujitsu in this respect?
A. Correct, my Lord.
Q. And then what seems to happen, if we go over the page to
{F/432/3}, in the big yellow box at the top:
"The counter problem which caused the first issue
has been corrected by inserting a message into the
messagestore, for equal but opposite values/quantities,
as agreed with POL ..."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And that refers there to an OCP, 17510. Do you see
that?
A. I do.
Q. And if we could just look at that for a moment please,
it's at {F/432.2}, "Write corrective bureau message for
FAD 183227."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Where are you reading?
MR GREEN: That's the heading of --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The bold heading.
MR GREEN: The bold heading, my Lord, yes. Then it says:
"A single SC message ... was written in error on
26th November ... selling 1,000 US dollars, with no
corresponding settlement line. To remove the effects of
this message at both the branch and on POLFS, we will
inset a new message to negate the effects of the
original message."
Yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. "Justification: If the change is not made in the counter
messagestore (before the stock unit is balanced on
Wednesday), the branch will have an unexpected gain of
£484 (or thereabouts - [depending] on exchange rate),
and a receipts and payments mismatch. This gain would
have to be resolved at the branch. There would also be
an inconsistency between the branch and POLFS to be
resolved. By correcting the problem locally, the branch
may not be aware of the problem, and there will be no
inconsistency between the branch and POLFS."
Yes?
A. Agreed, yes.
Q. So this is the reason for doing it, and it is planned
for 10 December 2007 at 5 o'clock with a duration of
ten minutes.
A. Yes.
Q. And then the extra detail provided says:
"The original message had Product [ID]: 5129,
[quantity 1], Sale value~... 484, [quantity]~...
1,000~..."
The new message will have quantity --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Quantity minus 1.
MR GREEN: Sorry:
"[Quantity]:-1, SaleValue:-484, PQty:-1,000 with,
other attributes (including exchange rate) as before."
So the OCP is the front-end fix, isn't it?
A. Yes, this is going into messagestore.
Q. This is going into the counter messagestore at the
branch?
A. Yes.
Q. And we can see that if we go over the page {F/432.2/2},
because at "Change at location" we see "Counter"?
A. Yes.
Q. And when the location at which the change is effected
for the back-end in an OCR, we tend to see location
BRA01 or one of the terminals within Bracknell or --
yes?
A. Understood.
Q. When we look at the relevant OCR, which is OCR17532
which is on page {F/434.1}, we can see there that the
change at location code is BRA01, as agreed already.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Where are you looking?
MR GREEN: In the middle of the page under "Other details".
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: And if we look under "Comments" we can see
Andy Keil wrote at 12/12, he is updating the POLFS feed
for the branch with a sale value of 1,014.73 and PQty of
2,080. Now, there's a difference between the updated
value that we saw on 432.2, which was a $1,000
transaction being inserted at the counter, and what we
see at {F/434.1} which is just over $2,000 being
inserted in the Post Office system, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. When we go back to the underlying PEAK at {F/432} --
hopefully you've got hard copies as well?
A. I believe I have.
Q. And if you want to look at those, please take your time.
If we look at page {F/432/3}, so the third page of that
PEAK, on 14 December 2007 Anne Chambers, in the large
yellow box at the top, towards the top of the page, she
writes, in the second paragraph there:
"The counter problem which caused the first issue
has been corrected by inserting a message into the
messagestore, for equal but opposite values/quantities,
as agreed with POL."
Which we have already looked at and there's the
reference to the OCP:
"As a result of this corrective action, the net
effect on POLFS is zero, and POLFS figures are in line
with the branch. POLMIS received both the original
message and the corrective message.
"Once the problem was corrected, there should have
been no impact on the branch. However, it has been
noted that the stock unit BDC had a loss of $1,000,
which was generated after the correction was made."
Now, that's of roughly the same amount as the
difference between what was entered in the front-end and
the back-end, wasn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. "We have already notified Gary Blackburn at POL ... this
appears to be a genuine loss at the branch, not
a consequence of the problem or correction."
Would you accept that it's a fair possibility that
the additional loss was in fact a result of the
difference in the two corrections made by the OCP and
OCR?
A. Having read this PEAK in more detail overnight then yes,
clearly that is what appears to have been the case.
Q. Can we move forward now to the 2009 PEAK at {F/485}.
This is PEAK 0175821 and this has a target date of
22 February 2009, and you can see that if we come down
to 19 February you can see there's an OCR reference
there, OCR 21847. And if we go down, just to give you
context -- hopefully you have had a chance to look at
this. At the bottom of the page, 19 February 2009 -- we
touched on this -- at 17.39.40, Catherine Obeng:
"There are two sides to the problem relating to
these transactions. The first is where all five SC
[transactions] missing core data as described in the
above-mentioned KEL. Second is absence of equal but
opposite (ie settlement) lines. See [another PEAK]
PC0152014 for a similar problem and how problem was
resolved.
"For the first problem, I have used the TRT ..."
That's the transaction repair tool?
A. Correct.
Q. "... to insert the missing data ie Region, Margin,
Margin Product and EffectiveEXRate."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, when we look over the page, please, at page 2
{F/485/2}, it is reasonably complicated to follow but
just to trying to take out a few simple points from it.
If we look at the second light blue box,
20 February 2009, Garrett Simpson, this is -- he says:
Following the investigation shown in another related
PEAK he has analysed the:
"~... TPS_POL_FS_Summaries_Incomp where article ~...
='USD'."
This is another one where there seems to be an
exchange rate issue, is that fair?
A. Certainly dealing with bureau is complicated by the fact
that there are exchange rates, there are margins, there
are quite a few components to the transaction.
Q. Indeed. And we can see the difference between the two
figures that have been recorded is 378.42 but the total
non-zero value for the branch is £989.96. So he says:
"So I have not found the proper exception".
What does "I have not found the proper exception"
mean?
A. I think this may well be the one where there was -- it
appeared to me to be confusion as to whether people were
talking about American dollars or Canadian dollars.
Q. Yes.
A. And I think further on in the PEAK, he identifies that
he has found the correct element to look at.
Q. Yes. If we go -- well, can I ask you this shortly: it
seems that there are two attempts to remedy this, is
that fair?
A. I think that was the previous one. Sorry, I think there
were two components to fixing this, in that there was
a change using the TIP repair tool to get the feed into
POLFS correct and then there was a change to the
messagestore to get the branch aligned.
Q. Yes. There are two aspects to it, the first using the
TIP repair tool and the second is the change to the
branch messagestore?
A. And I would see that as a way of keeping the branch and
POLFS aligned. The repair had to go two ways.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Can you just remind me which
three-letter abbreviation are we using for TIP repair
tool?
A. That is probably TRT -- no, sorry --
MR GREEN: It is TRT.
A. TRT on OCR17532, it says "Change type TRT" which I take
to mean TIP repair tool.
MR GREEN: And your Lordship will also find a reference to
it at {F/485} on the first page.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I saw the reference, it is just we had
been using TRT, although I know you mentioned yesterday
that's what you called the TIP repair tool, I think.
A. I have forgotten, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, don't worry.
MR GREEN: And just for completeness, if we look very kindly
at {F/485.2}, we can see that this is the OCP, 21918,
this is the change to branch messagestore OCP and if we
go over the page --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Can we just go back a second.
MR GREEN: Sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Under "Extra detail", Mr Godeseth, is
that just an explanation in prose of what you said were
the two components to remedying it?
A. I'm reading that as saying that we tested what we were
about to do on the live system. We tested in a test
system what we were about to do on a live system to
ensure that this was going to work.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, but in other words, that includes
the two components, does it? In other words, are your
two components together, as far as you can tell --
A. I can't tell from this I'm afraid, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: You can't, okay, that's fine.
MR GREEN: My Lord, I think I can help Mr Godeseth with
that, if that assists.
If we look -- the OCP is normally for the front-end,
the branch messagestore, and the OCR is normally the
back-end and if we look at {F/485.1} we have 21847. We
can see the deletion of transactions and updating of
transactions, extracts from some of the scripts used
there, can't we?
A. Yes.
Q. So the OCR relates to the POLFS system records?
A. Correct.
Q. And that's 485.1, and then the {F/485.2} is the OCP for
the branch messagestore?
A. Yes.
Q. And we can see there -- it's actually at the second half
of this page, we can see Gaby Reynolds of Post Office
Limited wrote --
A. Gaby Reynolds was Fujitsu.
Q. POL -- okay. So it says "POL" is that she is on the
Post Office account or ...?
A. Certainly the Gaby Reynolds I knew worked for Fujitsu
and never worked for Post Office.
Q. Okay, very good. So it seems to be between
Gaby Reynolds of Fujitsu -- sorry, received by
Gaby Reynolds of Fujitsu, from julie.edgeley@postoffice,
on behalf of duty_manager@royalmail.com,
27 February 2009 to Anne Chambers, who we see a lot in
in these.
A. Yes.
Q. And it says:
"~... malformed currency transactions ~...
"As discussed, POL are happy for you to make the
necessary system adjustments. From speaking to Wendy,
the manager in the branch, first thing on Tuesday
morning (between 9am and 10am) is the quietest time for
them.
"I have advised Wendy that you will call her as you
are about to start and as you finish.
"Thank you."
We can see over the page that that's then forwarded
on {F/485.2/2}. Or you've got a separate one from
Nicola Watson, Post Office, saying that:
"POL approve this change."
A. Yes.
Q. So effectively the agreement has come from two people at
Post Office and we have also seen from this particular
one that the SPM must have been made aware of it?
A. Yes.
Q. Because they're doing it at a time convenient for the
SPM. So that subpostmaster would have known that
changes could be effected at the branch messagestore, or
maybe not in those words, but certainly at the counter?
A. Certainly changes made to the messagestore. I don't
know whether we are discussing whether it was injected
at the counter or in the correspondence server here,
I can't remember the detail of this.
Q. Okay. Let's move forward, if we may --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, before we do I would like to go
back to {F/485.2/1} because Mr Green said he was going
to help you with something and I'm not necessarily sure
he did.
MR GREEN: My Lord, sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, that's all right.
As I understand it, OCP deals with the front-end, is
that right?
A. It appears so, certainly, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: As far as you know?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And OCR deals at the back-end?
A. That seems consistent, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. So when you were saying there are
two components to this correction, did you mean one
component was the OCP and one component was the OCR?
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: But that will be the case in all
corrections, won't it? There will always have to be
a correction at the front-end and the back-end.
A. No, not necessarily. The TIP repair tool was used quite
a lot to repair stuff which had gone through from the
branches -- or from the counters fine but it was missing
some attribute which POLFS or something else further up
the line needed and so therefore it would fail
validation at the point when it was hitting TIP and it
would be parked until it was repaired.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I see. So your two components were one
of them was the OCP and one of them was the OCR?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right.
A. For this particular problem we needed to change in two
places -- or they chose to change in two places.
Possibly it could have been done in a different way.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Understood. And when you look under
"Extra detail", the last sentence -- and I understand
this relates to foreign currency which is why it is
said:
"The gain may not be precisely the same as the
original loss ..."
Would there have been another component as well to
correct that, so far as you know, or do you not know?
A. It is tied up in exchange rates and margins, so there is
a mechanism in place to account for changes in currency
rates which would have to be replicated through this, so
that it would be taken into account.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And would that be another OCP then?
A. I don't imagine so. I think it would all be dealt with
in one go.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: In the same OCP?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Mr Green, over to you.
MR GREEN: Can we move forward now to 2010 and we've got
PC0195561 which is 7 March 2010.
Now, we have seen this before?
A. Sorry, I'm not seeing it yet, my Lord.
Q. Sorry, {F/590}. Have you not seen this one before?
A. Sorry, it was --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, it wasn't on the screen, Mr Green.
MR GREEN: I'm so sorry.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: It wasn't given last night either.
MR GREEN: This is the one that Mr Godeseth himself refers
to at paragraph 58.8 as the balancing transaction that
he is aware of.
If we look in the yellow box below the second line
of equals signs:
"~... pm was trying to transfer out 4,000 pds. The
system crashed. Pm was issued with 2 x 4,000pds
receipts."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So this is one you are familiar with?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we go to page 3 {F/590/3}, 10 March 2010 at
8.51.33, almost the top yellow box:
"After discussion with Gareth Jenkins, the suggested
correction is to negate the duplicate transfer out by
writing 2 lines to the BRDB_RX_REP_SESSION and
BRDB_RX_EPOSS_ TRANSACTIONS tables ..."
Yes?
A. Sorry, I missed -- sorry, could I just confirm that this
does relate to the one use of BT?
Q. This is -- if we have a look at your witness
statement --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Do you have your hard copy witness
statement?
A. I do. Which?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think it might be the one you are
being asked about at {E2/1/16}, but if that's an
incorrect reference, Mr Green will tell you.
MR GREEN: If we look at paragraph 58.8 {E2/1/17}, you say:
"The PEAK incident ticket raised in relation to the
BT ..."
A. Is 1955 ~... yes.
Q. Yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. So who have you got this information from about this?
A. I will have got this information -- this information
will have come from the guys who knew about the PEAK,
knew about the balancing transaction, the occurrence of
it.
Q. So who were the guys?
A. I can't remember, but I got a lot of information about
this it from Steve Parker.
Q. From Steve Parker?
A. So I imagine it came from -- via his team.
Q. So you got the information from Steve Parker and you
imagine it came from his team?
A. Yes.
Q. And let's go back to the PEAK, if we can, {F/590/1}. We
have seen that it is basically doubling the £4,000 of
receipts and we have moved on to page 3 {F/590/3} and
we've got the discussion with Gareth Jenkins at the top
suggesting writing two lines to the transaction tables,
yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And those tables are tables which record transaction
data, aren't they?
A. Yes.
Q. And there it says:
"An OCP approved by POL will be needed."
It says:
"[It] should be done using the Transaction
Correction Tool. An OCP approved by POL will be
needed."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know of any reason why the £4,000 difference
couldn't have been corrected by a transaction correction
being issued?
A. Yes, because this was a double entry -- this is on the
new system. This is not messagestore, so the only way
to actually change the branch database so that I had two
entries was to insert a record using the branch
transaction tool, or the balancing transaction tool.
Sorry, that is the only -- that is the chosen way to do
it, it was a way that we had anticipated dealing with
this type of problem.
Q. That's the way that had been planned for?
A. We obviously planned never to do it, but this was the
contingency should a problem arise in the branch
database which left us with an unbalanced transaction,
ie one side had been written but the other side had not.
Q. If we can go please for {F/590/9}, so page 9 of the same
PEAK, 22 April 2010 at 15.35.[54]. You are reasonably
familiar with this PEAK, I think?
A. Yes.
Q. What we see in this box if I can just summarise it, is
there had been two transactions with the same JSN number
and the second transaction should have been rejected as
a duplicate, but in fact, the data from the second entry
had in fact been committed to the database when it
shouldn't have been, and that was a bit puzzling. Is
that a fair summary?
A. I can agree it's all puzzling. I'm not sure that this
would be a totally accurate reflection of what happened.
This is an interpretation put together by a developer
who is investigating the problems and the --
Q. Well, if -- sorry.
A. The log files will still exist.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, let's go on what's on the face of
the page. As I understand it, your answer is that
you're not sure that what's on the screen is totally
accurate, is that right?
A. Correct, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Let's now work on the hypothesis that it
is, and Mr Green, continue.
MR GREEN: On that basis, what this shows is that there were
two entries with the same JSN number presented. The
second one should have been rejected because the
database should not accept data from duplicate JSN
numbers --
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. -- but in fact what's being said here is the data had
nonetheless been committed to the database when it
should not have been?
A. That's what I cannot understand, because the Oracle
database -- since the JSN is part of the primary key
into the message table, I cannot see how an Oracle
database would allow that to happen.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Because the fact it has accepted one
means it wouldn't accept the other?
A. Correct, that's the whole --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: That's how it is supposed to work.
A. The primary key in the Oracle database is there to say
"this is the one and only record" and trying to
overwrite that would be rejected by the branch database.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: But if this is right -- and this is
obviously something I will decide in due course after
hearing the experts, but if this is right, that doesn't
appear to have happened.
A. That would have to be a bug in Oracle, and it was
certainly not the bug that I was looking -- it was not
the bug that I was looking at for the red alert.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, all right.
MR GREEN: This is a different one?
A. If this in fact happened as written down here then it
would have had to have been a bug in Oracle and
I certainly don't remember any such bug.
Q. Let's move forward if I may --
A. Sorry, could I just bring your attention to the line
which says:
"I have requested for the journal table dump, to
check whether duplicate JSN entries exists in the table.
But from the DB dump, I couldn't find any duplicates."
I see that as highly significant.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Can you just tell me where that is?
A. Sorry, it is just above 2010-03-05 -- sorry, 15.05.
15.05.18, it is the two lines just above that.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm struggling, I'm afraid.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, it is halfway down the big
yellow box.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I was going to say, let's start with
a colour.
A. Sorry, I'm just seeing all of this in green.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Okay.
A. So if we go down to the line --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Which box? The big box at the bottom?
A. It is the big box which starts on -- 15.35.54.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Got that.
A. If we carry on down, the next line with a date on it is
2010/03/02, two chunks up from that it says:
"I have requested for the journal table dump, to
check whether duplicate JSN entries exists in the table.
But from the DB dump, I couldn't find any duplicates."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then "Even I have requested ..." is
that "OSR logs"?
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And OSR stands for?
A. It is online service routing, it is part of the BAL. It
is effectively a synonym for the BAL.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then does it say:
"I didn't get any clue on the request ... I could
only able to see the following in the osr.log file."
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And do I take it that the code -- or the
language that follows after that is what the OSR log
file would say?
A. The OSR log is saying that there was a basket settlement
transaction, it has timed out but is executing, so there
was an attempt to write a message to the BRDB, but it
has timed out.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And am I right that everything on those
two and a half lines that starts with 2010-03-02 appears
to be an extract from the OSR log?
A. That -- yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: From the use of the words "The
following", in the preceding --
A. Yes, that's a fair summary, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Thank you very much. Mr Green.
MR GREEN: Could we just go over the page to follow that
through to give you context {F/590/10}. You can see
that what's being looked at is -- you see the words
"I suspect" at the top:
"I suspect there must be something gone wrong with
this request ..."
Identifying the request:
"~... unfortunately no clue on this. I am not sure
why this might have happened. Normally, since this is
a retried one it should have failed at the Journal
filter stage."
So there's a retried transaction which should have
failed at the journal filter stage.
A. I think we're getting into fairly complicated territory
here, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think the whole case is fairly
complicated territory.
A. Sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: But I think I can follow it.
A. Fine. It is quite a normal situation -- or it will
happen that you will get the same message come from the
counter to the BAL, because something has gone wrong if
the counter is retrying whether it's a manual
button-press to say please retry this, or it is an
automated press, the same message will come up to the
BAL, the BAL will say: I have had this message before,
the answer last time was this, it will send the same
response back down and that should take care of
situations where you are having to retry because
something has simply failed on the comms channel.
In this situation the symptoms, as I'm reading them,
are that because there was a bug in Horizon and this is
in the new system, it was pretty early days of the
Horizon Online, because there was a problem, we had
something coming through which got through the journal
filter but then failed at the branch database and so
therefore, as far as the branch database is concerned,
it has not happened.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I understand that. I think what
Mr Green is putting to you is that this shouldn't have
got past the journal filter.
A. It's a bug, so certainly the way that the system should
have worked, a JSN -- the same JSN coming up would be
just a simple repeat of the message for -- because there
was some sort of glitch.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. Over to you, Mr Green.
MR GREEN: And just to clarify a small point on that: is it
fair that this box read as a whole shows that the person
looking into it was surprised that the second lot of
data had got into the BRDB, but there appeared to be no
duplicate JSN entry found in the JSN dump?
A. My Lord, you couldn't have two records in the Oracle
database with two JSNs unless there is an Oracle bug.
Q. So that's what they were looking for because the
duplicate -- there were two lots of data had been
entered in, so they looked to see if there had been
a duplicate JSN entry to try and find that out?
A. Somebody may have been trying to look for a duplicate
JSN entry. I can't really comment on what the guy was
doing at the time who was trying to investigate. I am
simply asserting that barring an Oracle bug, which would
have been huge, you cannot have two entries with the
same JSN.
Q. Let's move forward please now. You will be pleased to
know I think we only have two more PEAKs to go just by
way of illustration. {F/611} please.
So this is just moving forward in time, we are now
in April 2010, so this is a month after the acknowledged
balancing transaction that you have referred to in your
statement, yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And we can see the problem there in the summary is FAD
code "314642 unable to rollover".
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And this is PEAK 0197592 and if we look just below the
second equals sign in the box you will see:
"When rolling over and doing branch trading
statements site gets message - unable to connect to data
centre."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And then there is a discussion that we see at 11.42 at
the foot of {F/611/2}. This is Anne Chambers and if we
go on to the next page {F/611/3}, you can see the third
paragraph she says:
"The bal osr log shows an exception while executing
statement insertOpeningBalanceForRollover ...
"I suspect this may be because there is already
a single entry in BRDB_SU [stock unit] _OPENING_BALANCE
for DEF TP 12 BP 1 [trading period 12, balancing period
1] inserted during migration. The entry is for cash,
zero value.
"I'm wondering if this branch could be sorted out by
changing the TP in BRDB_BRANCH_INFO (this would have to
be done by OCP by development/ISD). The PM already has
several printed copies of the TP1 11 BTS. From the logs,
I can see that suspense and cash/currencies awaiting
collection are all zero -- so no office opening figures
are required for TP 12??
"This needs looking at urgently for a workaround for
this branch, and longer term to see if this can be
avoided at other migrating branches."
So that's the context, isn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. If we look at 14 April 2010 at 1 o'clock and 9 seconds,
you see Gareth Jenkins again:
"I've had a look at this PEAK and agree that we need
an OCP to tidy up BRDB to ?un-stick? this Branch. Note
that what I am proposing here is slightly different from
what Anne has suggested above.
"What we need to do is the following:
(I know the SQL is wrong, but BRDB Host team can
correct it and fill in the gaps)."
So just pausing there, he doesn't seem to be going
to use the template SQL code that had already been
prepared at this stage, because he is going off piste
a bit in some sense here, isn't he?
A. He is -- the balancing transaction tool is designed, or
is intended to introduce the balancing part of a double
entry item. This is not, in my mind, a double entry
item. This is the opening balance for a trading period,
or for a period --
Q. Yes.
A. -- and there is no second entry to it, there is nothing
to balance that against. The only thing you could
balance it against would be the closing balance of the
previous thing. The way the system is designed, this is
a number in a table which represents the opening balance
of a particular period.
Q. Yes. So he is using SQL code to set that correctly so
that the problem we have seen above can be overcome at
rollover?
A. Technically what is about to happen is an item is going
to be deleted under careful -- so an entry in the branch
database is about to be deleted.
Q. Yes, the --
A. It is not transaction data.
Q. Yes, I think there are two things that are happening,
just to be absolutely precise. One is an update to
a stock unit entry, yes, which we see at the fourth
paragraph at the top of the page? There's there are
a single entry inserted during migration, this is for
cash zero value, so it looks like there's a stock unit
entry being updated in number 1 and then a deletion to
that opening figure of cash, is that right?
A. That's what that's saying, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And the second one is in respect of
trading period 12, I think.
A. The second one is to remove an item which is saying it's
the cash position in trading period 12, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The first one is in respect of trading
period -- is setting it to trading period 11?
A. Yes, I must admit I hadn't sort of picked up on that
nuance, but that would be saying that this is
effectively a flag to say, or an indication as to
which -- where you're at with that particular stock
unit.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm not making any findings or anything,
but it's not exactly a nuance, is it, if they're two
different trading periods?
A. Oh, sorry, no. I must admit I had missed in my sort of
reading through this that there was a problem with
a stock unit being flagged as being in period 12.
MR GREEN: Can we move on now please to {F/594}. This
is October 2010. It is PEAK number 0195962.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I wonder if we could keep the murmuring
backstage down a little bit please. Carry on, Mr Green.
MR GREEN: Thank you very much, my Lord.
This is later on in 2010, and if we look halfway
down underneath Gareth Seemungal's name we can see that
it appears to be created -- or the Impact statement is
set at August 2010 and we can see underneath from the
progress narrative that the actual PEAK is opened
in March 2010. Do you see those two dates?
A. I do.
Q. So this spans across the period we have been looking at,
yes? And what's said there is:
"The proposed fix would correct and update the BRDB
transaction correction tool templates, making it less
likely that mistakes will occur when SSC are trying to
resolve problems with transactions in BRDB."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we go down to Cheryl Card, 12 March 2.04.46:
"The Transaction Correction tool has now been used
in live. The templates for use with this tool need to
be updated to correct some details. Gareth Seemungal is
aware of the corrections needed."
A. Yes.
Q. Were you aware when you moved to Fujitsu what changes
were being made to the templates for this tool or not?
A. No.
Q. If we look at the bottom box, "Fix impact", if you look
at "Impact on user", well, let's look at "Impact on
test", first:
"Regression test ... with the new templates would be
required and necessary as this tool directly inserts
individual records into the branch database transaction
tables ..."
Yes?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: What type of file is a .sh file?
A. Sorry, which line are we at?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The one which says "Regression test
of ..."?
A. Sh -- I think it is a shell script.
MR GREEN: "Impact on user:
"Benefit of making the fix."
If you go over {F/594/2}:
"Corrects and updates the [transaction] correction
tool templates, makes it less likely that mistakes will
occur when fixing/resolving problems with transactions
in BRDB."
And then "Impact on operations":
"Benefit of fix that may not be visible to end user.
"SSC will be able to fix BRDB transactions quicker
and with more confidence."
Under "Risks":
"SSC will have to make a note of the shortcomings of
the existing templates and alter accordingly.
"What are the risks of this fix having unexpected
interactions with other areas?
"Possible, if the templates are incorrect then
branch totals, [transactions] ~... would be
incorrect - hence the required regression testing."
So that's the reason the regression testing is being
undertaken, to try to avoid unintended consequences of
the use of this tool. That's right, isn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. What this shows us is that the continued use of the tool
was at least anticipated at this time otherwise there's
no point in updating the templates.
A. Agreed, yes.
Q. Can we look at {F/768} please. This is PEAK number
0208119 and you can see this is in 2012 and if we go --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, the target date is 2012.
MR GREEN: Sorry, your Lordship is quite right. The target
date is 2012. If we look at the progress narrative, it
is created in February 2011, so again, spanning across
the period that we have been looking at.
Now, can we go down please just to get some context,
can we go please to page 4 {F/768/4} and if we look at
the second box, do you see the second paragraph there:
"The SSC role has execute permissions to the
Host-Dev delivered packages mentioned in the PEAK and
resource, monitor (and hence connect and select any
table) and select any dictionary."
Now, pausing there, a select permission is not the
same as an insert, delete or update permission, is it?
A. That's correct.
Q. Now, if we go up please to page {F/768/3} and look at
the bottom of this, this is 30 September 2011:
"As per the previous PEAK comments, the role
'APPSUP' is extremely powerful and should only be used
under extreme circumstances and under MSC supervision.
As such the Branch Database design was that 3rd line
support users should be given the 'SSC' role which is
effectively read access ..."
That's the select table and catalogue, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. "SSC team members should only have to ..."
It looks as if it is access but it has got
a little --
A. Yes.
Q. "... [access] BRSS for normal support investigations,
unless the information has not replicated in time. SSC
should only given the optional 'APPSUP' temporarily ...
if required to make emergency data amendments in BRDB
live."
A. Correct.
Q. So pausing there, what was meant to happen was that SSC
should only be given the optional APPSUP role
temporarily, yes?
A. That's right, yes.
Q. And if we go up, please, to page 2 {F/768/2}, you can
see Anne Chambers, halfway down the page -- do you see
Anne Chambers?
A. I do.
Q. You know she has been involved in a lot of these PEAKs,
hasn't she?
A. She has, certainly.
Q. And she is writing to Andrew Gibson; who is he?
A. Andrew Gibson is the guy in Ireland -- I can't remember
his exact title, but he is certainly a key person in the
operations area.
Q. And what she says is:
"Unfortunately development write their scripts
explicitly to use SSC. So I think we're stuck with it
unless they deliver new scripts (which would not be
a popular or quick option).
"When we go off piste we use appsup. Can we have
both??"
Do you know from your knowledge what she meant by
going off piste in that context?
A. It would be having to fix a problem that is not catered
for by a script that is available to these people.
Q. Do you know that, or are you speculating?
A. I'm very confident in that.
Q. Finally in relation to these matters, you are aware that
Ernst & Young in 2011 expressed concern about
permissions -- privileged access permissions?
A. I am.
Q. And that was at the end of -- the Opus date on that
document is 9 December 2011, yes? And just pausing
there, that is a very proper point for someone auditing
these sorts of issues to be concerned about, isn't it?
A. Absolutely.
Q. I won't take you to it, but that letter is at {F/869}.
If we now turn please to {H/196/9}, this is a part
of a letter of 11 February 2019 and is from Wombles to
Freeths and this user IDs point is being dealt with at
paragraph 8.2 onwards:
"We have taken further instructions from Fujitsu in
it respect of additional USERIDs in your schedule and
set out descriptions of each user below ... there are
some usernames that: 1) do not exist today and never
existed in the past as far as Fujitsu are aware. These
are identified in the classification column of the list
as 'unknown', and 2) do not exist today but did exist in
the past."
So let's just take this in stages, if we may. We
can see COBEN01 is Cath Obeng but she also has
a different entry below. And she is "Person-SSC", yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And we can see a number of "Person SSC"s. And then if
we go halfway down we can see Andy Gibson is "Person-POA
UNIX". Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And we can see that Ed Ashford is also "POA UNIX" on the
next page, {H/196/11}, four down.
A. Yes.
Q. We can see at the bottom of the page Paul Simpson. If
we go over the page {H/196/12}, we can see Paul Stuart
and Wayne Calvert, halfway down, "POA UNIX", and if we
go please to page 14 of that letter, so two
pages further on {H/196/14}, the explanation is given:
"In respect of SSC user privileges, SSC users ..."
That's "Person SSC":
"... will typically have the following
privileges ..."
And then we can see what's said there. For example
at 8.6.3 a "Select" privilege. But if we go to 8.7
{H/196/15}:
"In respect of POA Unix user privileges, POA Unix
users (those identified as 'PERSON - POA UNIX' under
classification) will typically have the following
privileges/roles."
And 8.7.7 is:
"Granted the 'UNXADM' role which contains the
following role:
"(a) granted the 'DBA' role. This is an Oracle
supplied role for use by database administrators ...
lots of privileges are granted to this role so users
have the ability to update/delete/insert into any of the
branch database tables."
A. Yes.
Q. You would agree that those people have the role which
allows them privileges to update, delete, or insert into
branch database tables whether they are using the
correction tool or not?
A. Those people could log on to the database and do an
awful lot of damage.
Q. And the only audit of that that we have prior to 2015
was log on and log off; that's correct, isn't it?
A. Correct.
MR GREEN: My Lord, that's the end of that section of the
cross-examination. Would that be a convenient moment
for a break?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: All I have left to deal with is Mr Godeseth is
the bugs.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Okay. We will have ten minutes.
Mr Godeseth, another short break.
A. Thank you, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: If you could come back at 11.50, same as
before, but you know the form: don't discuss the case
with anyone.
(11.41 pm)
(Short Break)
(11.51 am)
MR GREEN: Mr Godeseth, I would now like to deal with the
key bugs that you deal with in your second witness
statement, if I may, at paragraph 3 at {E2/7/1} you
explain that this witness statement is prepared in
response to the witness evidence submitted by the
claimants and the report submitted by Mr Coyne. Is that
right?
A. Yes.
Q. And at the end of paragraph 3 you say you have consulted
with various colleagues and you have identified them
below.
Mr Bansal was involved in problem management; was he
involved in these bugs, do you know?
A. I certainly haven't spoken to Steve about any of these
bugs.
Q. You haven't spoken to him?
A. No.
Q. Let's look at Callendar Square, which you deal with from
paragraph 12 onwards at {E2/7/3}. And you say at
paragraph -- you are dealing with this in the context of
the trial of Seema Misra which you have referred to at
paragraph 7, because you are responding to
Mr McLachlan's witness statement as well, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And at paragraph 8 you say:
"I understand from Post Office's solicitors
that ..."
So some of this is just what you have been told by
Post Office's solicitors?
A. Absolutely, yes.
Q. And at 8.3:
"Post Office was represented [in that case] by
Cartwright King ~..."
Who informed Post Office's solicitors in turn about
what you then say at 8.3, that's correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And you didn't really know about any of that yourself?
A. No.
Q. You have just effectively been asked to put it in your
statement. And at paragraph 10 {E2/7/3} you say you
understand from Gareth Jenkins, halfway down:
"... that Professor McLachlan requested information
that was not necessary and/or obtainable."
That's what Mr Jenkins told you about what
Professor McLachlan had requested in that trial? You
didn't have any knowledge of it yourself?
A. The Misra trial -- I was in -- sorry, I was in Fujitsu
so I have -- we would have had fleeting conversations
about it but it was certainly not going down into any
detail at that time, but I do remember the -- I do
remember that we had been asked for an awful lot of
information.
Q. But the characterisation --
A. And, you know, specifically the fact that people were
wanting to keep the old Horizon system which just wasn't
a viable option.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: What do you mean "keep"?
A. Basically to have a Horizon system up and running, an
old Horizon system up and running, so that people could
go and try to play with it to replicate errors or
whatever.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So you mean retain at least one part of
it so that it would be available --
A. And --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Will you just let me finish.
A. Sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: When you say keep, you don't mean keep
it for use across the network?
A. Certainly not, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: You mean in respect of an operating
version that was still available to be inspected?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right. And in your view, that wasn't
viable?
A. You need to go beyond the counter to supporting
components behind it in order to have anything that is
likely to be of any use in trying to sort out how the
whole system works, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right.
MR GREEN: To your knowledge were there other requests made
by Professor McLachlan for information, or is that not
something you know about?
A. I don't know about the detail of that certainly.
Q. But what you do know you've got from Gareth Jenkins
there, that Professor McLachlan requested information
that was not necessary and/or obtainable, that's what
you've got from Gareth Jenkins?
A. Yes.
Q. If we go to paragraph 12 onwards, you are specifically
dealing with Callendar Square, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And you very fairly say that you don't have first-hand
knowledge of the issue, yes?
A. Correct.
Q. But you say you have reviewed the documents relating to
the issue and discussed it with Gareth Jenkins.
A. Yes.
Q. So you have both undertaken a review of the documents
and spoken to Mr Jenkins, that's correct?
A. Yes.
Q. That's what you say.
A. Yes, yes, I have certainly spoken to Gareth, but -- and
I have re-clarified a couple of things just to make sure
that my understanding was correct.
Q. Let's just start with Callendar Square. Just very
briefly, if I can take these reasonably quickly,
firstly, it is a Legacy Horizon problem not
a Horizon Online problem?
A. Correct.
Q. Secondly, it was a problem with Riposte?
A. Correct.
Q. Thirdly, it is sometimes referred to as the Riposte lock
or unlock problem?
A. Yes, I'm happy with that, yes.
Q. And, fourthly, it affected balancing in branches?
A. It could affect balancing in branches.
Q. And let's start, if we may please, at {F/243}. This is
the KEL ending in 1359R and we can see that the KEL was
raised on 24 November 2000. Do you see under the
"Raised" --
A. Yes.
Q. And you see it says "Time out waiting for lock agents
and correspondence"?
A. Yes.
Q. If you look under "Solution - ATOS":
"Needs investigating ... if we get an occasional one
of these events, when Riposte is busy (such as Riposte
starting up which was the occurrence on the 04/04/2003)
then this can be ignored. The original error type that
this call was raised for was when the Riposte service
hung following archiving and continuously output these
messages."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. This is a type of problem that could arise with Riposte
lock agents, yes? And on the face of --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: You are moving on before you got
an answer.
A. Sorry, my Lord, yes.
MR GREEN: I thought I heard him say yes.
And on the face of this, what's being said is if we
get an occasional one of these events, this can be
ignored.
A. Yes, an occasional time out when one thing is trying to
talk to another is something that you could say is okay,
but that's a highly subjective thing because you have to
work out what "occasional" means.
Q. Okay. Let's go forward to {F/565} please and look at
page 2 {F/565/2}. And if we look at February 2003, this
is the J Simpkins 338Q KEL.
A. Yes.
Q. And if we look at February 2003:
"We are seeing a few of these each week, on
Wednesdays during balancing. This can lead to problems
if the PM is balancing on the counter generating the
events, as it may not have a full view of transactions
done on other counters. PC0086212 sent to development."
And then if we look at June 2004 further -- this is
a year and a bit later on:
"This event can also give rise to Transfer problems,
where the eventing Node was not replicating and so
allowed Clerk to Transfer in ... of a [transaction]
which had already been TI [transferred in] on another
Node for the second time or an Existing Reversal ..."
Now, do you know if on the occasion being referred
to there, there was a discrepancy in the branch or not?
A. I don't know, my Lord.
Q. It's not apparent from this KEL anyway. Do you want to
go over the page {F/565/3}:
"This problem is still occurring every week, in one
case at the same site on 2 consecutive weeks."
It doesn't actually tell us whether there is
a discrepancy at the branch, does it?
A. No.
Q. And this final entry of September 2005 is actually the
Callendar Square branch so we can see that although
Callendar Square experienced this bug in 2005, the
genesis of it appears to go back to February 2003 and
similar lock agent problems back in November 2000, is
that fair?
A. I think that's fair.
Q. And if we go forward, please, to another KEL at {F/354}.
This is raised in June 2004:
"Transfer in accepted Twice, thus causing
a Discrepancy".
Now, we saw in June 2004 that there was a problem of
a duplicate transfer in on the other previous KEL,
didn't we, and this seems to be the June 2004 branch
referred to in the previous KEL. It says under
"Problem", discrepancy of £22,290. Do you see that
figure about five lines down?
A. Yes.
Q. So that's the discrepancy. Then if you look under
"Solution", it is:
"~... currently with [Escher] for investigation."
A. Yes.
Q. Yes? At the end of that solution. From this KEL we
don't know if this problem was sent to Escher in 2004
when it was first raised, or some time thereafter,
or October 2006 when this KEL was last updated, do we?
A. I don't know, I don't know when it was actually sent to
Escher.
Q. You can't tell from the KEL?
A. No.
Q. And then if we look at the Callendar Square branch
itself more closely, {F/297}, this is PEAK 0126042 and
you can see the Callendar Square branch FAD code of
160868.
A. Yes.
Q. And the problem is in the summary, just after the FAD
code:
"SU cash amounts vary on counters."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we look -- we can see first of all
15 September 2005, there's a call from Alan Brown. If
we go over the page {F/297/2} and it is the fifth box
I think, 15 September 2005 at 16.12.27. Do you see
there:
"Due to the Riposte errors on 14/09/05 from 15.30
onwards ... messages were not replicated on counter 3.
As a result, 3 transfers in to stock unit AA were done
twice, initially on other counters then again on counter
3. The transfers in were for ..."
And we can see the figures there:
"This has resulted in a loss of 3,489.69 in CAP 25
to the outlet, which POL may need to correct via an
error notice."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And then underneath that:
"Phoned the PM to explain what the problem was. He
is concerned about other transactions which he has input
twice (3 Giro deposits and another cheque) because of
the replication problem. Have advised him to contact
the NBSC as this is a business issue."
Now, it's clear that there is an underlying -- well,
we know the Callendar Square bug is a bug, don't we?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we move forward please to {F/298}. This is PEAK
0126376, and we can see it's the same FAD code, 160868,
and over the page on page 2 {F/298/2} he has called back
on 21 September 2005 at 17.09 and if you look under --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: 21 September at when? 17.09?
MR GREEN: At 17.09, just the top of the page.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: "Information: pm experienced similar problems
last week and wants us to investigate why this is
happening.
"PM stated he has not had any disconnected node
messages or any online issues."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And immediately below that, information at 5.14:
"Another transfer of £45.40 approx."
And then if we go down further can you see:
"This transfer appeared on both nodes 3 & 4."
A. Yes -- sorry, no.
Q. You can see "Transfer out - node 2", and then we go
below that to "Transfer in node 3 & 4"?
A. Yes.
Q. And then that tells us -- that's the information to
which the observation "This transfer appeared on both
nodes 3 & 4", is made?
A. Yes.
Q. And:
"When clerk accepted transfer in it accepted it.
After she had accepted it she went back into transfers
and node 4 transaction for £608.13 appeared."
So I think this is actually an assistant at the
branch, but it's the same branch.
A. Yes.
Q. And if we look on page 3 please {F/298/3},
22 September 2005, 16.13.08, which is about four down
from the top -- five down from the top.
A. Yes.
Q. Cheryl Card:
"This is another occurrence of last week's
problem ..."
With a PEAK reference there:
"... where messages were not replicated due to
Riposte errors. Last week the PM did some duplicate
transfer in transactions which caused reconciliation
errors - fortunately this week he has not done so. The
PM wants to know why these problems have occurred twice
within 2 weeks. I will pass the call to development for
comment."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And you can see there that the -- it is a pending
incident, yes? Category 40, "Under investigation"?
A. Yes.
Q. If we move forward, please, to {F/300.1}, this is now
from the SPM's point of view what's happening and he is
actually getting some support on this particular one
from his manager apparently here. There are visits
noted at 20th, 21st and 28th September 2005 and if we
look at page 2, please, {F/300.1/2} you can see under
"Expand on any letter requested ..." can you see:
"This office had severe problems balancing on [week]
25, resulting in a shortage of £6,414.46. After
checking various reports I am satisfied that the error
is made up of ..."
And they are then broken down carefully there and
you can see that the SPMR is saying there is a Horizon
software problem and so forth, giving the history, also
a problem with transfers from one stock to another, they
have doubled up. Then speaking to the Horizon support
centre at the bottom of the page. If we go over the
page please {F/300.1/3}:
"They told the SPMR that they would report to NBSC
that they had identified and rectified the problem and
that the amount could be held in the suspense account.
However, as part of the shortage relates to transfers,
and no error notice will be issued, then the
Suspense Account Team are not prepared to authorise the
entry."
So it wasn't easy for the subpostmaster, was it, you
can see here?
A. No, indeed, a horrible position to be in.
Q. And we can see the concern about follow up if you look
at the penultimate paragraph:
"No follow-up was received from Service Support
regarding this call."
Now that's the Horizon service desk, isn't it?
A. It would not be Fujitsu. Service Support, I think,
would be a Post Office business function.
Q. Was it? Okay, thank you.
Let's move forward please to {F/301.2}. This is
another log, "Area Intervention Manager Visit Log",
dated 7 October 2005, and if we go over the page
{F/301.2/2}:
"Telephoned Alan as requested. He is concerned that
he has still not heard anything regarding the loss that
he is rolling."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. Just tracing through the chronology. If we go to
{F/302} please, this is five days later,
12 October 2005, and if you look on this first page you
will see at 17.26, which is just below the second lot of
equal signs:
"PM is transferring a stock unit from node 7 to node
2, it has been accepted on node 2 but has not been
transferred."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And then at 17.39:
"PM was trying to transfer £2,490 from node 7 onto
node 2. She states that she has accepted the transfer
on node 2 but the system is not showing this.
"On node 7 it is showing pending transfer but it is
not showing on node 2.
"It appears on her transfer sheet as completed."
So that would be very anxious-making for the SPM,
wouldn't it?
A. Agreed, yes.
Q. If we go to {F/310.1/2}, 4 November 2005, page 2 please.
"Spoke to Alan about the ongoing issue of his
Horizon problems. He now has received the error notice
for the Girobank duplicate transactions. This still
leaves a loss of around £3,500. I told Alan that this
was still being investigated and as soon as I had some
news I would get back to him.
"Alan worried about this, because he has read an
article in the Subpostmaster which makes him think that
he will be held liable, and he has no intention of
making this good. He again said that the transfers had
been sorted, but he needed paperwork to back this up in
order to correct the loss."
Yes? Now, if we go back to the PEAK to see how this
is being dealt with at {F/298/5} please. We are now
at -- this is part of PEAK 0126376, and if we look at
10 November 2005 at 11.58.30, user Jez Murray, do you
see there:
"1. This problem is the root cause of the
reconciliation error closed in [previous PEAK].
"2. Presumably the root cause is deemed to be
software not hardware.
"3. The Postmaster has a workaround in place which
is not to duplicate transactions (eg Transfer In) just
because the original attempts were successful but not
showing on all nodes."
And then 4, you can see:
"POA CS MSU have a workaround in place which is that
if 3 above is not followed and [it] recurs, a BIMS will
be issued advising POL to issue a Transaction
Correction."
Then 5:
"There is no SLT for software fixes as they are
delivered based upon the priority or severity of the
issue and could remain open until both businesses decide
a fix is necessary or the workaround is adequate."
So just unpacking paragraph 5 for a moment, there's
no service level time for a software fix of this type,
is that right?
A. I'm -- it says it there so I'm -- yes, I would -- I have
no reason to doubt it.
Q. Sorry, service level target I should have said.
Now, if we move forward, please, from that being
left as a workaround to {F/312.1}. This is another log
of 167 November 2005. If we look at page 2 of that one
please {F/312.1/2} you can see there are two things
referred to there:
"Discussed ongoing issues of loss due to Horizon
misbalance. SPMR concerned that he has now made
a fraudulent entry in that he has rolled over to the
next trading period and put the loss into local
suspense. He has then gone on to state that the cash
has been made good, which it hasn't. This was done on
the advice of the Helpdesk."
Now, when you were at Post Office were you aware of
that sort of advice being given to people who were
suffering software or balancing problems?
A. No.
Q. 18 November 2005:
"I have contacted Jennifer Robson, who has confirmed
that the loss has to be put into Emergency Suspense.
I have now asked when this will be done as the SPMR is
worried about doing something that is totally contrary
to his contract."
You can understand those worries, can't you?
A. I certainly can.
Q. Now, did any of the Callendar Square matters really
bubble up to you, any of the aspects of this at the
time, or not?
A. I think I was probably aware of Callendar Square as --
but that would have been 2010 when I went into Fujitsu,
so I cannot remember ever having heard of
Callendar Square or Falkirk --
Q. Post Office.
A. -- Falkirk Post Office as an issue before that.
Q. Okay. Let's look at {F/324.1} please. We have 5 and
6 January, it's another log:
"Telephoned the office and Allan said that he was
having problems again with transfers. He has contacted
the Horizon helpdesk who have subsequently come back to
him to say that there is no system problem and that he
should contact NBSC."
Now, the Horizon help desk, was that one run by
Fujitsu or Post Office?
A. My recollection is that the Fujitsu help desk would have
been dealing with hardware issues and the NBSC would
handle the process and business queries, so I think
there was a Fujitsu help desk which was where the
subpostmaster would ring to say he thought he had
a problem with his hardware.
Q. Didn't the Fujitsu help desk also deal with queries
about software problems?
A. Not talking to the Post Office -- not talking to the
subpostmaster, as far as I can recall.
Q. Okay:
"He did this and from what I can understand the NBSC
have told him that he is trying to balance on two
different terminals. Allan disputes this and is adamant
that there is a system error."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, given the history, it's quite likely that there was
a system error, isn't it?
A. I think it's -- it has been established that there was
a bug.
Q. Yes. If we then move forward please to {F/333.1} and we
go to page 3 first, please {F/333.1/3}. This is part of
an email chain and if we look at the email of
23 February 2006 from it Anne Chambers at Fujitsu to
Mike Stewart, you see that halfway down, Anne Chambers
to Mike Stewart about Callendar Square.
A. Yes.
Q. If you look, please, at the second paragraph:
"Haven't looked at the recent evidence, but I know
in the past this site had hit this Riposte lock problem
2 or 3 times within a few weeks. This problem has been
around for years ..."
That's consistent with the related KELs we have
already looked at, isn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. "... and affects a number of sites most weeks, and
finally Escher say they have done something about it.
I am interested in whether they really have fixed it
which is why I left the call open - to remind me to
check over the whole estate once S90 is live - call me
cynical but I do not just accept a 3rd party's word that
they have fixed something!."
Yes? So it had been open, we know, for years as
a known problem affecting sites for years, and Escher
are hopefully fixing it, although Anne Chambers is
doubtful about that, in February 2006?
A. She is cynical, yes.
Q. Yes? She goes:
"What I never got to the bottom of, having usually
had more pressing things to do, was why this outlet was
particularly prone to the problem."
So that doesn't suggest that she gave the problem of
this outlet a particularly special priority to sort out
its problems, does it, because she had more pressing
things than an outlet being affected by significant
discrepancies from a known bug?
A. Yes.
Q. "Possibly because they follow some particular
procedure/sequence which makes it more likely to happen?
This could still be worth investigating, especially if
they have continuing problems, but I don't think it is
worthwhile until we knew the S90 position."
So she doesn't seem to be going to investigate it at
that stage. And then she says:
"Please note that KELs tell SMC that they must
contact sites and warn them of balancing problems if
they notice the event storms caused by the held lock,
and advise them to reboot the affected counter before
continuing with the balance. Unfortunately in practice
it seems to take SMC several hours to notice these
storms by which time the damage may have been done."
Now, this isn't something you knew about at the
time, but from what she is saying there it doesn't seem
that the SMC information "watch out" is getting to the
branches in time, is that fair?
A. That's a fair assumption, yes.
Q. And you say in your witness statement that release S90
was distributed in March 2006. That's paragraph 14.2 at
{E2/7/5}.
A. Yes.
Q. So stepping back, we have had related problems since --
directly related at least since February 2003 and other
related ones we saw in the earlier KEL from 2000, and it
takes them until 2006 to distribute the fix that deals
with it, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. In circumstances where many branches had been affected,
including their branch accounts.
Now, can I ask you to look at {H/2/96} please. This
is part of a letter sent by Post Office's solicitors on
28 July 2016. If we look, this is dealing with
Callendar Square, paragraph 2.1:
"This defect, which was discovered in 2005 and fixed
in March 2006, involved Horizon failing to recognise
transfers between different stock units."
Now, we have seen that it's not correct that the
actual underlying defect was only discovered in 2005,
haven't we?
A. I would agree that the bug underlying it -- the
Callendar Square manifestation was discovered in 2005
but --
Q. The one at Callendar Square?
A. Yes, and I would agree that the underlying bug had been
there for a considerable time, probably since the
Horizon went in.
Q. And if we look at the following -- sorry, if we look at
{H/6/3}, this is part of a letter from Post Office's
solicitors on 11 January 2017 and if we can look at
page 3 of that letter very kindly, if you look at
paragraph 7.8.1:
"The Falkirk/Callendar Square issue was only known
to have affected that one branch."
That's also incorrect, isn't it?
A. Certainly there is a spreadsheet which actually talks
about where we found this lock problem and how many had
had a -- had discrepancies in there -- how many we
thought would have had -- there would have been an
impact of this type.
Q. That's wrong, isn't it?
A. On the face of it, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, you might want to look also at --
it is a PEAK that Mr Green took you to, but he didn't
draw your attention to the entry that I'm going to draw
your attention to, just out of fairness. It is at
{F/298/3} -- actually it starts at {F/298/1} so you can
see it is one of the PEAKs that Mr Green has been asking
you about and he took you to different entries, but if
we go now to page 3 of that {F/298/3} you will see in
the bottom half of the page in the light blue, entry
22 September 2005 from Cheryl Card, and in parentheses
at the bottom of that entry she says:
"A few of these errors seem to occur every week at
different sites."
Does that help you answer Mr Green's question?
A. I think that -- the "timeout occurred waiting for lock",
so this is a generic -- I would read that as a fairly
generic problem which is probably the one which goes
right back to the ATOS KEL -- sorry, the KEL which says
that if you see this occasionally, that might be okay,
but it's really when you get a storm of them that you
have effectively got one counter not being able to talk
to another and that is the underlying technical issue is
that a counter is simply not being able to get a message
across to another one.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Mr Green.
MR GREEN: And I think you fairly accept that there is
a spreadsheet, which we will come to, with a significant
number of branches that were affected by the
Falkirk/Callendar Square bug.
A. Yes.
Q. And that spreadsheet includes more than one entry,
doesn't it?
A. It does.
Q. Let's look at your witness statement, please, at
{E2/7/3}. You say the Callendar Square bug occurred in
2005. It would be more complete to cover the history
that we have covered now, wouldn't it?
A. That's a fair comment, yes.
Q. At paragraph 15 {E2/7/5} you say:
"I understand from Matthew Lenton (Fujitsu's
Post Office Account Document Manager) that this bug
affected thirty branches, resulting in mismatches at
twenty, and that Fujitsu has established this for the
purposes of this statement using the event logs
described above."
Is that really what Matthew Lenton told you?
A. I didn't speak to Matthew about it. I got ... so the
answer is no, that's not what Matthew told me.
Q. Did Matthew communicate directly with you in any way on
this point?
A. I think I got the spreadsheet from him.
Q. Directly from him, or from someone else?
A. I can't remember.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think to be fair, you actually
corrected that number in-chief, didn't you?
A. I did indeed, my Lord.
MR GREEN: Yes, I will come to that.
And just to clarify, is it your understanding from
the information that's found its way to you from
Matthew Lenton that there has been a specific process
for the purposes of your statement of analysing the
event logs historically across all the branches that may
have been affected by this to see how many were?
A. No, the spreadsheet is something that was done at the
time, as I understand it by Anne Chambers, to actually
investigate what had happened when we had had these
locks.
Q. Because the statement there would suggest that we can be
completely confident that Fujitsu have established
what's happened because they have looked at all the
event logs, and that's not right, is it?
A. I am comfortable that Anne will have done her job
correctly and she will have investigated all of those
issues at the time, resulting in the spreadsheet which
I believe we found in Steve Parker's -- he had -- he
still had it in it his audit trail.
Q. I will just put the question one more time: the
statement that's made there is not right, is it?
A. I agree, it's not right.
Q. Now let's look at {F/322.1} please. We can download
that. This appears to be the statement that you have
referred to in oral evidence now but that was not
referred to in your witness statement and we will see in
a minute that the properties identify Anne Chambers as
the author on 22 December 2015 and --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Maybe just pause while we wait for it to
come up.
MR GREEN: Could we just make it a little bit bigger, very
kindly.
Now, this is the spreadsheet you are referring to?
A. Correct.
Q. That you have just told the court about. We located
this and it was disclosed to us on 27 February 2019 and
if we look at the file tab at the top, please, and go
into -- just pause there. Can you see "Created", on the
right-hand side, 22/12/2015 and "Anne Chambers", do you
see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Is that how you identified it was from Anne Chambers, or
did Mr Parker give you an email or tell you about that?
A. Steve -- yes, Steve and I discussed it so I -- I think
I originally got the information that it was
Anne Chambers' spreadsheet from John Simpkins when I was
asking him for -- because I lost my copy of it so
I asked him for another copy and he explained to me that
it was from Anne Chambers originally.
Q. So you have always known that the actual source of the
information that you're talking about in your witness
statement was this Anne Chambers spreadsheet, haven't
you, because you say you lost your copy of it?
A. Yes. I certainly became aware of this spreadsheet and
it was available to me. I at first did not know it was
Anne Chambers who had created it.
Q. Well, let's go to the content of it please. If we look
at the box at the top under D2 -- 2D:
"NB many other branches had multiple events,
preventing replication, but these are the majority of
those which came to PEAK, having either reported
a problem or it caused a reconciliation report entry.
"From Sept 2005, cash accounts were replaced by
branch trading statements and the TPSC256 report was no
longer populated. I can't remember how we then knew
about receipts and payments mismatches and if we would
have picked up on further issues."
You said -- first of all, it's clear that this is
not a document which mirrors or reflects the accuracy
which one might have understood from your paragraph 15;
that's fair, isn't it?
A. Fair comment.
Q. And secondly, you said it's a document she made at the
time, but we can see it was created in 2015 from the
properties.
A. She created it in 2015, yes. Sorry, 2005.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: She created it in 2005?
A. Well, sorry, I can't remember the exact -- I'm accepting
the date of creation that was shown to me earlier --
sorry, it's 2015, sorry -- I had misinterpreted that
entirely. My understanding is that this was created at
the time by Anne Chambers. Sorry, I was misreading that
and seeing it as 2005.
Q. Let's move on to the receipts and payments mismatch bug
if we may now. Let's look please at E2/7 --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Just before you move off ...
(Pause).
Just one question. Was it the number of branches
shown on this document that led to you correcting the
figure of 20 to 19 in your evidence-in-chief?
A. I personally didn't -- I think it was a -- I certainly
did not correct that. We realised that my statement was
out of line with what this spreadsheet said, and so it
was somebody else who noticed it.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Understood, all right.
Right, Mr Green, go on.
MR GREEN: Let's move to receipts and payments mismatch, if
we may. You would fairly accept, I think, that this is
a shorthand for a number of different versions of a bug,
or a number of different bugs that can be helpfully
grouped together, is that fair?
A. I'm trying to get my head into the receipts and payments
one.
Q. Well, it's -- if it helps, it seems to become
a shorthand for a specific bug in Horizon Online which
arose in 2010.
A. Horizon Online 2010, I think was local suspense.
Q. Well, let's just have a look. Your paragraph 36
{E2/7/10} is in the section that begins on the previous
page at {E2/7/9}. You are dealing with --
A. Sorry, yes, it was Horizon Online, yes.
Q. Yes. Just to orientate you, let's go back to your
paragraph 36 {E2/7/10} you say:
"In September 2010 a bug in HNG-X (Horizon Online)
caused a receipts and payments mismatch in some
branches."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Then you say:
"I understand from Gareth Jenkins that the issue was
initially identified as a result of Fujitsu's monitoring
of Horizon Online system events and not as a result of
calls from branches. Fujitsu's Software Support Centre
~... which provides 2nd and 3rd line support, monitors
system events as a matter of course."
A. Correct, yes.
Q. So your evidence is that it arose in September 2010,
yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And Fujitsu identified it in September 2010?
A. I have not checked the detail, but I'm comfortable with
that, yes.
Q. Is this something that you actually know about yourself,
or have you got all this from Gareth Jenkins, as seems
to be the case from --
A. Gareth explained to me how the problem had occurred and
also -- yes, we went through the logic of what was
happening when a branch was going through this sequence
and why there would be a receipts and payments mismatch.
Q. So is it something you actually know about yourself, or
is it only -- is your knowledge derived really from what
Gareth Jenkins has told you?
A. It is knowledge derived from what Gareth told me, plus
further looking at some detail.
Q. And the document you repeatedly refer to, for example,
at paragraph 39, 40 and 41, is 29 September 2010. Let's
look at that. It's at {F/1000}. It is a document
written by Gareth Jenkins, do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we go forward, please, to the document at
{F/1001}, this is the receipts and payments mismatch
issue notes.
A. Yes.
Q. And we can actually see Mr Jenkins' name there, but not
yours?
A. Correct.
Q. You weren't involved in this at the time, were you?
A. No.
Q. And you don't refer to that document, even though
Mr Jenkins would have known about it?
A. Agreed.
Q. And at {F/777}, this is a receipts and payments mismatch
document, Fujitsu document, and you can see the author
is Mr Jenkins again.
A. Yes.
Q. That's not a document that you refer to in your witness
statement either, and this time there's been a BBC
documentary broadcast on Monday 7 February 2011, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So I think that's separate to the later Panorama
programme we get in 2013.
Did Mr Jenkins draw your attention to either of
those two documents that we have just seen to help you
get a fuller picture, or not?
A. No.
Q. No. It's clear who actually knows about this; it's not
you, is it?
A. Gareth certainly understands the detail.
Q. If we can go back to {F/1001}, this appears in fact to
be somewhere between 29 September 2010 and
4 October 2010, this document. Page 1 says in the
second paragraph, underneath "What is the issue?" which
explains that:
"Discrepancies showing at the Horizon counter
disappear when the branch follows certain ~... steps but
will still show within the back end branch account ...
impacting circa 40 branches since migration ... with an
overall cash value of~... £20K loss."
And:
"This issue will only occur if a branch cancels the
completion of the trading period, but within the same
session continues to roll into a new balance period."
Then you see:
"At this time we have not communicated with branches
affected and we do not believe they are exploiting this
bug intentionally."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So this was a known problem, wasn't it? And you can see
Mr Winn of POL Finance is there and Fujitsu are there?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you surprised that this had not been communicated so
people would just be warned about it?
A. There was obviously a fear that subpostmasters may be
looking to exploit this because it gave -- there was
a fear that people could see this as a way of defrauding
the Post Office.
Q. So concealing it from SPMs who were honest was justified
because of the expectation of dishonesty of
subpostmasters in the network, in a nutshell?
A. In my view, this was a decision made by Post Office on
how to manage this particular bug. You could interpret
it the way that you have put it.
Q. Do you agree with the way that I have put it to you?
A. I think I'm agnostic. I can see the -- I can see
a rationale for not broadcasting this, but equally, if
the objective is to be totally open and honest and take
the risk of causing more chaos in the network then yes,
I would have to agree with that.
Q. Let's look at page 2, please {F/1001/2}.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Have you seen this document before
today?
A. I have.
MR GREEN: At the top of the page:
"Note at this point nothing into feeds POLSAP and
Credence ..."
And then if you just look at the end, Credence --
"~... so in effect the POLSAP and Credence shows the
discrepancy whereas the Horizon system in the branch
doesn't."
So there's information in POLSAP and Credence that's
not available to the SPM, isn't there?
A. Yes, that's clearly the case.
Q. And so the branch will then believe they have balanced;
yes? Let's look at page 3 please {F/1001/3}:
"The Receipts And payment mismatch will result in an
error code being generated which will allow Fujitsu to
isolate branches affected this by this problem, although
this is not seen by the branches. We have asked Fujitsu
why it has taken so long to react to and escalate an
issue which began in May. They will provide feedback in
due course."
So given that we are either at the very end
of September or the beginning of October, this document
which you said you have seen before clearly shows that
it wasn't only in September 2010, was it?
A. No.
Q. And therefore the statement in your witness statement at
paragraph 36 that in September 2010 a bug caused
a receipts and payments mismatch in some branches is
materially wrong, isn't it?
A. On the basis of what we have just been through I think
I have to agree.
Q. And you can see that the roll-out is planned for
21 October, yes?
A. Sorry ..?
Q. "~... full roll-out to the network completed by 21st of
October"?
A. Sorry, where are we looking now?
Q. This is on page 3:
"Fujitsu are writing a code fix which stop the
discrepancy disappearing ..."
Do you see?
A. Yes.
Q. "... from Horizon in the future. They are aiming to
deliver this into test week commencing 4th October.
With live proving at the model office week commencing
11th October. With full roll-out to the network
completed by the 21st of October. We have explored
moving this forward and this is the earliest it can be
released into live."
So just pausing there, it has taken since May,
from May to October to be corrected and in the
meanwhile, branches appear to be kept in the dark, at
least up to the date of this document.
A. Yes.
Q. And then what is being considered is which of three
solutions to apply to the impacted branches. The
group's recommendation at the time is that solution 2
should be progressed. Now, just pausing there, do you
know which of these solutions was in fact progressed?
A. My understanding is that TCs were issued.
Q. Let's look at what the considerations were. Option 1,
solution 1 was:
"Alter the Horizon Branch figure at the counter to
show the discrepancy. Fujitsu would have to manually
write an entry value to the local branch account."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So this was being openly discussed between Fujitsu and
Post Office, that it was possible to manually write an
entry to the local branch account, wasn't it?
A. Clearly, yes.
Q. "Impact - when the branch comes to complete next Trading
Period they would have a discrepancy, which they would
have to bring to account."
A. Yes.
Q. "Risk - this has significant data integrity concerns and
could lead to questions of 'tampering' with the branch
system and could generate questions around how the
discrepancy was caused. This solution could have moral
implications of Post Office changing branch data without
informing the branch."
So on any view, the moral implications of changing
branch data without informing the branch were recognised
there, weren't they?
A. Yes.
Q. Solution 2:
"P&BA will journal values from the discrepancy
account into the customer account and recover/refund via
normal processes. This will need to be supported by an
approved POL communication. Unlike the branch 'POLSAP'
remains in balance albeit with an account
(discrepancies) that should be cleared.
"Impact - Post Office will be required to explain
the reason for a debt recovery/refund even though there
is no discrepancy at the branch.
"Risk - could potentially highlight to branches that
Horizon can lose data."
That sounds defensive, doesn't it?
A. Agreed.
Q. Solution 3:
"It is decided not to correct the data in the
branches (ie Post Office would prefer to write off the
'lost'.
"Impact - Post Office must absorb~... 20K loss.
"Risk - huge moral complications to the integrity of
the business, as there are agents that were potentially
due a cash gain on their system."
Go over the page -- that appears to be the end of
that solution. Now, this does not suggest, does it,
being open and transparent to SPMs about the problem
with Horizon?
A. Again, if -- I can accept that I can also understand the
reason to want to manage this carefully.
Q. And in fact, this problem became so well-known that in
the end, Post Office did communicate with SPMs, are you
aware of that?
A. No. I -- I will take your word for it.
Q. At paragraph 42, at {E2/7/11}, you said 60 branches were
affected and you said:
"... we can be sure that all instances of the bug
were identified ..."
Yes? That's now been corrected to 62, hasn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. And at paragraph 45 {E2/7/12} you refer to a spreadsheet
of affected branches which we had to seek disclosure of.
That's at {F/754}. If we could just make that larger
please. If we look at the "Affected branches" tab
first, there's a list of affected branches there, and if
we go back to the "Check for duplicate branches",
there's a total at the bottom of 64 but we can see the
number 2 in row 34 and the number 2 in row 41, can't we?
A. Yes.
Q. So if you subtract both those from 64 you get the 60
number in your original witness statement, don't we? Is
that a calculation that you made or someone else made?
A. No, no, I didn't do a calculation to come up with the
60. I was quoting from other people.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Someone just gave you the 60, did they?
A. I thought I was quoting from other people. I -- Gareth
even said to me that in my statement I had said
"approximately 60", so I was not -- clearly I didn't
because the statement here doesn't contain that word.
I had rather hoped it had when this was first brought to
my attention, but no, I certainly did not do any
specific calculation to come up with the 60 that I put
into my original statement.
MR GREEN: Did Gareth explain the change to you from 60 to
62?
A. No.
Q. But how did he come to tell you what was in your
original statement? What was that conversation?
A. I picked up the number -- to be -- my objective in this
was to explain to the court the symptoms of the bug and
how -- the technical aspect of it. I did not pay
particular attention to getting the detail on how many
branches were affected, correct.
Q. Okay. So you have spoken to Gareth since your
statement?
A. I don't think I have spoken to him about this in
particular. I was -- as I say, when Gareth had said
I had originally said "approximately 60" I was thinking
that was quite neat, but that's not the case.
Q. Well, you said "Gareth even said to me that in my
statement I had said 'approximately 60'", so he must
have said that to you after your statement had been
filed?
A. It was a comment in a document that we were exchanging.
Q. But you hadn't spoken to him about remote access since
your first statement?
A. No.
Q. Why have you stayed off that topic with him?
A. Oh, sorry, this was just a comment. We have been
exchanging documents, we have been commenting on
documents, so it was not a particular conversation. It
is merely a case of Gareth had commented on this when it
was pushed back to us that I had originally said 60 and
actually the answer was different.
Q. If we look please at the "Affected Branches" spreadsheet
for a moment please and if you look at line 7, do you
see there minus 777 in July 2010?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm sorry, which line are we on?
MR GREEN: I'm so sorry, row 7.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Row 7?
MR GREEN: 16 July 2010. That's long before Mr Jenkins has
written any notes about this at the end
of September 2010, isn't it?
A. The event certainly happened before Gareth's -- yes.
Q. And presumably at that time the branch has got an
unexplained discrepancy in its accounts, yes? Because
that was the point?
A. The branch wasn't actually seeing the discrepancy,
was it?
Q. There is a discrepancy in the branch's accounts at that
time.
A. Sorry, yes, yes, there has to be, because there's a
receipts and payments mismatch yes.
Q. At paragraph 43 of your witness statement which is at
{E2/7/11}, you say that you understand transactions were
not injected to resolve this problem.
A. Correct.
Q. Can we look at {H/2/25} please, paragraph 5.16.3 says --
if you can see the bottom three lines of 5.16.3:
"As far as Post Office is currently aware
a balancing transaction has only been used once to
correct a single branch's accounts (not being a branch
operated by one of the Claimants)."
And if we look at footnote 57 it says there:
"This was in relation to one of the branches
affected by the 'Payments Mismatch' error described in
Schedule 6."
Does that accord with your understanding?
A. I don't know the detail.
Q. If we look at {H/2/97}, "Payments mismatch" is referred
to there.
A. Yes.
Q. But you don't know whether the balancing transaction was
used in relation to that or not, is that your evidence?
A. I don't know.
Q. And then if we look please at {C4/2/15} -- my Lord,
I will be two minutes, if that's all right --
question 39:
"Please explain the reason(s) why this Balancing
Transaction was made."
And if we go over the page please {C4/2/16},
"Defendant's response 39":
"The Subpostmaster affected is not a Claimant and
the Claimants do not require the information sought in
order to understand Post Office's generic case or to
plead a Generic Reply. Post Office repeats the General
Response. However, the Balancing Transaction was used
to correct an error arising from the 'Payments Mismatch'
problem (as to which, see page 25 of the Letter of
Response)."
And at page 24 of that underlying document it is
signed with a statement of truth, so on the face of this
it is suggesting that a transaction was injected to at
least one account. Are you aware of whether that's
correct or not?
A. I would have to go and check the FAD code of the branch
where I know we did a balancing transaction and compare
it with the FAD codes that you're looking at here.
I haven't done that.
Q. And if they weren't the same, it might appear there was
more than one?
A. If they weren't the same, my interpretation would be
that this statement is incorrect. There has only been
one balancing transaction.
MR GREEN: My Lord, I only have local suspense, briefly, and
Dalmellington bug to go. Is that a convenient moment to
break?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think so. We're going to come back at
2 o'clock, Mr Godeseth, so same form as before, don't
chat to anyone about the case. If you could come back
at 2 o'clock.
(1.02 pm)
(The luncheon adjournment)
(2.02 pm)
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I have received an application,
Mr De Garr Robinson. Do you know about it?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I know that there has been an
application, that is almost all I know.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Has it been served on the claimants?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My understanding is it has, my Lord,
yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Do you know about it?
MR GREEN: My Lord, we have just seen it, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I just saw it five minutes ago. It is
an application for me to recuse myself as being the
managing judge in these proceedings which means
effectively -- and also for this trial to stop.
Although the application says "adjourn the trial",
I think it really means start it again with another
judge.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I haven't seen the application,
my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, no. That's what the application is.
So the practical effects of that are that application
has to be dealt with as soon as possible.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Simply in terms of timetabling, it
presents some difficulties because we're in the middle
of cross-examining a witness, so the options are for
this trial to stop now so that application can be heard
on a day which we will then come on to discuss, or we
finish with Mr Godeseth and then the trial comes to
an end, or is, rather, subject to an interval depending
on what the outcome of the application is, so do you
have any submissions about which of those two courses of
action --
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I didn't appreciate that
those were the options that you would be presenting now.
I do -- entirely without instructions I would say it
would be invidious for Mr Godeseth to remain in the
witness box, as it were, for an extended period of time.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, in principle I agree, but that's
dependent on a number of factors, one of which is how
much longer his cross-examination is going to be.
Mr Green, how long do you think you're going to be?
MR GREEN: I think about 10 to 15 minutes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And how long would your re-examination
be?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: 10 to 15 minutes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right, well, this is my proposal. I'm
going to rise now for ten minutes, so you can take
instructions. If you are minded to persuade me to stop
instantly then you can tell me at 2.15 and I will make
a ruling on that. If you are, in light of the
application, content for Mr Godeseth's evidence to
finish, in other words, it will be brought to an end
with the cross-examination finishing, re-examination
finishing, and any questions from me being dealt with,
we will do that, and then we will address other
logistical issues immediately after that.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, yes.
MR GREEN: My Lord, I'm sorry to interrupt, would
your Lordship be amenable if the applicant in the
application agreed to also hearing Mr Parker this
afternoon so that --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, that depends, because at the
moment the Post Office hasn't necessarily asked for
Mr Godeseth necessarily to be finished.
MR GREEN: My Lord, of course, but I mean --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: On the basis that if the application is
successful this trial will have to be stopped and
restarted, I'm not going to pre-judge the outcome of
that application, but if Mr De Garr Robinson wants to
take instructions on that then he can do that at the
same time.
MR GREEN: Of course.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, so is until 2.15 going to
give you long enough?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I would have thought so, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. If you want any more time
then just send a message. I will come back in at 2.15.
I'm afraid this is going to continue a little
longer, but you've got until 2.15, Mr Godeseth, so if
you can come back to the witness box for 2.15.
(2.05 pm)
(Short Break)
(2.18 pm)
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, we have not been able to make
contact with counsel instructed in the application.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Are you not instructed?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I'm not instructed in the application
at all. My Lord, it is Lord Grabiner from my chambers
who will be acting.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I have of course taken instructions.
The consensus on this side of the court is that without
prejudice to that application, it would be invidious for
Mr Godeseth to be left in limbo for an unidentified and
indeterminate period of time, so I suspect that it will
be common ground on all sides that in fairness to him,
his evidence should be finished.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, as long as that's -- when I said
take instructions, as long as I mean that that's
instructions you have taken from your solicitors who are
in court, then I'm completely content.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, as regards Mr Parker,
pragmatically we are all here ready to ask him
questions. On the other hand, your Lordship may not
feel comfortable dealing with Mr Parker's evidence given
the current state of affairs, and I'm happy to -- I have
no application that you should hear his evidence,
your Lordship won't be surprised to hear me say that.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, but you are effectively neutral, are
you?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I don't want to press upon
your Lordship continuing with his evidence. I know
my learned friend is anxious that he doesn't -- he needs
half a day with Mr Parker and he is anxious not to
lose -- we have already lost 15 minutes. But if
your Lordship were minded to continue with Mr Parker,
given the pragmatic situation we are in, I wouldn't
oppose that. Entirely without prejudice, of course, to
the application.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All of it is obviously without prejudice
to the application.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes, but I keep saying it, don't I.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I was not asking you the question in any
way to either dilute or change whatever the
Post Office's position is on the substantive
application, it was just a matter of trial management.
If we do continue and deal with Mr Parker as well, that
would at least have the advantage that it would
effectively be a clean break at the end of the evidence
of fact.
MR GREEN: My Lord, there is still Mr Membery.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I haven't forgotten about Mr Membery,
but he is not coming on today I don't think, is he?
MR GREEN: Not today, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I will revisit this at the conclusion --
I'm completely comfortable doing it, but I will revisit
it at the conclusion of Mr Godeseth because apart from
anything else, we don't know how long that is going to
take.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, Mr Green.
MR GREEN: Mr Godeseth, can we look at paragraph 46 of your
witness statement at {E2/7/12} please, and this bug
caused entries from local suspense accounts that had
been there in 2010 to be reproduced in two successive
years, yes?
A. Yes, that's right.
Q. And so this was something that persisted for years not
months as a bug, wasn't it?
A. There was data in the system that shouldn't have been
there for a couple of years.
Q. And if we look, please, at {F/1075}, this is a document
that you have referred to in your witness statement.
Now, its author is Gareth Jenkins, isn't it?
A. It is.
Q. And you have referred to understanding various matters
from Mr Jenkins at paragraphs 48 and 54 of your witness
statement. Is it fair to say that you've got most of
your information about this issue from Mr Jenkins?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we look over the page at page 2, please,
{F/1075/2} do you see "The Problem" at 2.2?
A. I do.
Q. And if you look at the screen and I read out the first
line of your 48.1:
"Data in the Branch Database is regularly
archived/deleted when it is no longer required."
There's a difference there because a slash has been
put in instead of "and then", yes? Otherwise the
sentence is identical. Then it says:
"There are different rules for how long different
types of data is retained and when it is deleted."
That is substantially the same, but with some
slightly different words, and we see other features
appearing, for example, at paragraph 50 of your witness
statement, at the bottom of that page {E2/7/13}.
This document has been substantially the source of
that part of your witness statement, hasn't it?
A. Correct.
Q. And if we look at paragraph 48.2 of your witness
statement {E2/7/13}, it says:
"As a result of some changes that were made on
3 July 2011 to the Horizon archiving strategy relating
to Stock Units that had been deleted in a branch, any
branch that deleted a Stock Unit at the end of 2010
which had a local suspense transaction in that Stock
Unit before it was deleted were left in the table used
for constructing the branch trading statement."
Now just pausing there, that's essentially how the
local suspense bug operated, isn't it?
A. The local suspense bug came about because there were
records in the branch database which should have been
removed -- whether you call that archiving or deleting,
they should not have been encountered by this particular
bit of processing.
Q. And this is a good example of how small changes to what
you might term non-transactional data can cause effects
to branch accounts, is that fair?
A. The record here was very much used in constructing the
branch trading statement.
Q. So does that suggest an interface between -- there's
a sort of -- it's not a clean break between operational
and transactional data, is it? There's a sort of
interlacing of the two where data has more than one
purpose.
A. The purpose of this particular record was really to keep
a running total of something, because you cannot go back
to the complete raw data in order to come up with the
branch trading statement, that would be a nightmare, and
so the process that it goes through is that data gets
summarised up into totals on a daily basis and you also
build up things such as suspense values and -- over
a period and then when you are producing the branch
trading statement, these things all get brought
together.
Q. Can I just ask you to look at paragraph 47 of your
witness statement please on page 12 {E2/7/12}:
"The bug was discovered in January 2013 when two
Subpostmasters, who experienced the largest
discrepancies, raised the issue with Post Office.
I understand from Gareth Jenkins that Post Office could
see the impact of the problem in their back end system
and wrote off the discrepancies~..."
The point there is that although it had persisted
for years not months, it was SPMs who drew it to
Post Office's attention and when they did, then Fujitsu
saw it and was able to try and correct it?
A. We became aware of it in 2013, from my understanding.
Q. Yes, because it was raised by SPMs?
A. Correct.
Q. And Post Office had known about it since 2012?
A. I can't comment on that.
Q. Let's move on to the Dalmellington bug please. This was
also known as the Branch Outreach issue and again here
you are heavily reliant on Mr Jenkins who you refer to
at paragraphs 55, 57, 58 and 61 of your witness
statement, is that fair?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you have any first-hand knowledge of this at all?
A. Only the research that I have done through this.
Q. Let's look at {F/1415} please. Do you know who prepared
this document?
A. I don't know who prepared it, no.
Q. Was it Mr Jenkins?
A. I don't know.
Q. Look at page 7, please, {F/1415/7}. So the history of
the Dalmellington bug -- we can see there are 65
incidents of this bug in 2010 and 2011 and they are
broken down there by time, and at the bottom of that you
will see:
"Post Office P&BA (FSC) fully aware at the time of
both Incidents."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And there are two fixes. There's a 2010 fix, and
there's a 2011 fix, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we move forward please now to page 8 {F/1415/8}
we then have a period from 2011, six incidents; 2012,
nine incidents; 2013, seven incidents. Go over the page
please {F/1415/9}. 2014, nine incidents; 2015, 16
incidents, and then you will see at the bottom there:
"Jan 2016 Fix to be applied (subject to POL
approval)."
And under all of those years, apart from 2015, the
last bullet point shows zero calls raised with Fujitsu.
Shall we go back a slide ? {F/1415/8} So zero calls
raised with Fujitsu in each of those years. So the
point that someone was making at Fujitsu there was that
Post Office had not raised the matter with Fujitsu so
that it could be corrected earlier. That's the point
being made in that slide, isn't it?
A. I can't comment.
Q. What do you think it looks like?
A. It looks like that.
Q. So there was no root cause analysis by Fujitsu carried
out because they had not been contacted by Post Office
over a period of a number of years, where at least
identified incidents were numerous.
A. I think these incidents came from us going through the
audit trail to identify where there had been duplicate
pouches.
Q. So SPMs were suffering duplicate pouches over a number
of years due to a known problem with the system and
Fujitsu was not informed over that period of years until
2015?
A. As far as I'm aware, the issue was not raised with
Fujitsu until 2013. It is entirely possible that
subpostmasters were dealing with this themselves.
Q. Do you mean not raised with Fujitsu until 2015?
A. Sorry, I would have to refer back to --
Q. If you go over the slide to the next page {F/1415/9} you
will see the one call is in 2015. Do you mean 2015?
A. I couldn't be categorical on when a call was raised.
I haven't seen the PEAK or whatever it was that raised
the call with us.
Q. It does not show that any supposed countermeasures to
ensure the robustness of Horizon as a system were
working, does it?
A. Unfortunately this particular error is not subject to
receipts and payments problems because it could be -- it
could be user doing something twice, it's -- the bug had
the effect of making it look as though a user was simply
doing something multiple times.
Q. Finally, Mr Godeseth, you will be pleased to hear, the
experts are agreed that Horizon has improved a lot over
the years. Would you agree with that assessment?
A. I would say that any system improves with time.
Q. Would you agree with the assessment of that in relation
to Horizon?
A. Yes.
Q. Could you look please at {F/1848.3} to see how incident
management is now being done, and you can see in the
"[Incident] detail reported/overview":
"NBSC called the ATOS service desk and passed on
a call from Woodgate branch who reported an issue with
mismatch data between recept and payment in the Trading
Statement."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And if we go over the page please {F/1848.3/2} under
"Background", second line:
"The background to this change was a requirement to
remove the 'Top Up' options associated to companies that
should now be branded EE, removing as example the Orange
& T-Mobile options from all the self-service machines
and Horizon counters ..."
Then we go down to the issue:
"There was a human mistake made when undertaking the
change to the reference data for these products.
"The 'front-end' reference was correctly removed.
"The 'back-end' reference was incorrectly removed at
the same time."
At the bottom, final line:
"This would have shown as a mismatch that the branch
had to accept."
That shows us, Mr Godeseth, doesn't it, how branch
data is incorporated into transaction data and accounts
for which a mismatch for which an SPM may be held liable
can arise?
A. If the reference data is wrong you can get a receipts
and payments mismatch.
Q. You mean "Yes"?
A. You can get a receipts and payments mismatch which would
be picked up by our monitoring, yes.
Q. If we go forward please to an example from 27 November
it is {F/1842} and if we go forward to page 2 please
{F/1842/2}, at the top:
"Enhanced User Management (known as Smart ID in
branch network) has been introduced to ensure all
Horizon users are both vetted and have the necessary
training to transact regulated products."
Then if we look at the issue, second paragraph:
"The change was to allow a given EUM user to lock a
counter and then log on to another counter ..."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm sorry, I have lost where you are.
MR GREEN: I'm so sorry, I apologise. On to page 3
{F/1842/3}, the second paragraph on page 3:
"The change was to allow a given EUM user to lock
a counter and then log on to another counter."
Do you see that? And then the middle paragraph on
that page -- in that box:
"This has caused incidents to occur in the live
estate ... if the active user session rolls over the
current stock unit, and a locked session on another
counter attached to the same stock unit is then resumed.
This is because when the locked user session is resumed
the counter is not aware of the rollover and continues
to trade in the old trading period (TP)/balance period
(BP). These transactions are then recorded in the old
TP/BP and so will not appear on the branch accounts,
although they will be successfully sent to the back-end
systems and will be visible in the counter transaction
log for the old TP/BP:
"... as of 22 January 19 this has impacted 19
branches to date over a 6-month period."
That illustrates a different sort of problem that
can arise, doesn't it?
A. It is a new problem, correct.
Q. And it has been impacting branches over a period of
six months we see there?
A. EUM went in fairly recently, so yes, I've got no reason
to disbelieve that.
Q. And finally {F/1848.2}, one from 1 February 2019. If we
go to page 2 please {F/1848.2/2}:
"As part of the Back Office programme to migrate
from POLSAP to Core Finance System (CFS) a data cleanse
was completed on any obsolete item IDs."
Then it mentions Official Postage which would be
ended and then second paragraph in that background box:
"Following the item being reinstated overnight on
the 1st February and being live again on the
2nd February - NBSC received further calls and it became
apparent that the accounting sense being applied at the
counter was positive value not negative value. We spoke
to a couple of contacts at Fujitsu but they couldn't
explain why this was so, we also spoke to Matthew Warren
who advised that we should try reinstating the default
mode".
"What's the issue?":
"When a branch was processing a claim for Official
Postage this was increasing the cash on hand figure
rather than decreasing which could potentially result in
the branch having a discrepancy if not identified."
And if we go over the page please to "Impact"
{F/1848.2/3}, we can see that:
"As of [2 February] 720 branches are impacted
including the live kit in NBSC ..."
Do those sort of problems fairly reflect the
difficulties that people have to deal with at Fujitsu in
the normal course of their job?
A. Whilst I was certainly aware of the EUM issue, this
particular one I've got no real knowledge of, or no
knowledge of.
MR GREEN: My Lord, I have no further questions.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Thank you very much.
Mr De Garr Robinson.
Re-examination by MR DE GARR ROBINSON
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Mr Godeseth, I would like you to go to
a document that Mr Green took you to yesterday at
{F/614}, please. This is a document by Mark Burley.
You will see that it is dated 8 April 2010 and you will
recall that it was the document which charted the
suspension of the pilot roll-out programme for
Horizon Online. Do you remember looking at this
document?
A. I do.
Q. And if we could go to page 4 {F/614/4} you will see that
there were 614 branches live on Horizon, and then on the
third bullet point it says the high volume pilot was
suspended. And if we go on to page 5 {F/614/5}, we will
see:
"All migrations suspended as from 25/03."
There is a reference to the programme support being
on red alert, and then there's a reference you will see
in the third bullet point -- four bullet points down:
"Success Criteria for further migrations under
discussion with Fujitsu to include:
"Period of stable running ... FS Review complete and
key recommendations implemented ... Fujitsu demonstrate
monitoring and alerting."
And:
"All high priority issues resolved or agreed
workarounds in place."
From your recollection, can you remember what the
priority issues were, the high priority issues were?
A. For me, my focus was very much on the Oracle bug, so
I don't have any personal recollection of the other high
priority issues. I was establishing myself in Fujitsu,
I was concentrating on the bug.
Q. And what was the Oracle issue?
A. I can't remember the details of it, I'm afraid, but it
certainly involved nodes of the branch database going
down which had the result that users would see the
message they were unable to contact the database, or,
sorry, the data centre.
Q. That's fine. After you were asked questions about this
you were then shown a PEAK and the document reference is
{F/588}, perhaps we could look at that. This is dated
5 March 2010. You were taken to this yesterday. I'm
not going to ask you any detailed questions on it, you
will be happy to know, but this was -- as I say, this
identifies an error experienced during the pilot scheme
and you were asked a number of questions about it and
you didn't know much because this wasn't what you were
working in it at the time.
Could you explain what the purpose of the pilot
scheme is? Why don't you just roll-out Horizon into all
of the branches all at once?
A. That would be frankly a ridiculous approach because you
had to go through a process of trying out new software
on a limited set of branches so that you can learn from
the experience.
Q. And when you say learn from the experience, what kind of
things do you anticipate might happen during an early
roll-out, even a high volume roll-out of this sort?
A. Well, since I recognise this as the occasion that we
used the branch trading -- sorry, the balancing
transaction, and I have also noticed from my statement
that the balancing transaction was to do with £4,000
being doubled up to 8,000, I think the purpose of
this -- the purpose of the pilot is simply to go through
the teething problems that you are bound to have when
you're introducing a new change.
Q. And the PEAK that we see here and the £4,000 problem
that resulted in the balancing transaction that you have
just referred to, are those the sorts of problems that
you anticipate you might encounter during a pilot scheme
of that sort, or are they not?
A. I always expect to encounter problems in the early days
of any system. I expect to encounter problems
immediately after I have put in a change.
Q. Thank you, Mr Godeseth. Now I would like to ask you
about another document, {F/611}. This is a PEAK you
were taken to today, 15 April 2010. This is also during
the pilot scheme. This is in fact the PEAK that led to
the balancing transaction. I think it is anyway.
If we go to page 3 {F/611/3}, you will see --
perhaps it isn't the balancing transaction one. You
will see that -- halfway down the page, 14 April 2010 at
13:00 hours, Gareth Jenkins says three lines down:
"What we need to do is the following: ...
"1. Update BRDB_BRANCH_STOCK_UNITS where fad_hash =
??? AND Branch_accounting_code = 314642 AND stock_Unit
equals = ?DEF? Setting trading_period to 11."
And 2:
"Delete BRDB_SU_OPENING_FIGURES WHERE fad_hash = ???
AND Branch_accounting code = 314642 AND stock_unit =
?DEF? trading_period = 12."
Can I just ask you to explain what the update
involved?
A. The update would simply change a value in a record from
the 12 to 11, I think in this case, so it would be
picking a record in the branch database which currently
has a value of 12 and changing it to 11.
Q. And that doesn't -- does that have an impact on the
branch accounts themselves, on any branch's
particular -- the values in any branch's accounts?
A. It does -- it most certainly does not impact on the
underlying data. It is used to put values into the
correct bucket.
Q. And what do you mean by "values into the correct
bucket"?
A. A number of transactions -- so the transactions would
not disappear, that's the fundamental point. The raw
data will not disappear. It is whether the three
transactions will appear in TP1, or whether they will
appear in TP2. It is a case of which bucket, which --
ultimately which trading period these transactions would
be accounted for in.
Q. I see. And the "Delete" instruction, what's the effect
of the "Delete" instruction?
A. It will remove a record from the branch database.
Q. And what record was it removing for these purposes?
A. This was removing a record which was an opening balance
for period 12 which happened to have zero in it and --
Q. So with removing this record, what happens to the
balance? What would the balance have been once this
zero record was removed?
A. Well, this was the initial -- this is the initial record
needed for period 12, so the problem that was being
referred to here was that at some point, this record had
been written into the branch database but then the
rollover had not completed, so we were left with
a record in the branch database which shouldn't have
been there -- sorry, it would have been there had the
rollover continued, then it and other records would have
reflected the true position. What happened here was
that for some reason, this record was there -- my
reading of the PEAK says that it was there as a result
of problems or migration, so where branches were being
prepared to migrate from old Horizon to new Horizon,
I think this record was erroneously there.
So effectively when you then came to do a proper
rollover, there was a record there and that confused the
software -- the software had to stop because it found
a record where there shouldn't be one.
Q. And so by deleting that record, what then happens when
you rollover?
A. Once -- then because the record wasn't there, the
rollover can just happen.
Q. Oh, I -- so would I be right in thinking what you're
saying is that the rollover then happens in the normal
way based upon the data from the previous transaction
period as should have happened in the first place; is
that what you're saying?
A. Yes.
Q. I see. Then you were shown the OCP that related to this
fix. It's at {F/616.1}. You have seen this before, OCP
26361, "Branch 314642 unable to rollover", and then
about a third of the way down there's a line which reads
"Steps to implement the fix", do you see that? And the
first step is:
"Logon to BRDB Node 1 as UNIX user 'brdb'."
Could you explain what "UNIX user brdb" means?
A. I don't know any detail, but fundamentally, you're
logging onto the branch database.
Q. And "UNIX user", who would the UNIX user be?
A. Oh, sorry, UNIX user would be one of the guys in
Ireland.
Q. One of the guys in Ireland. So when you say "one of the
guys in Ireland", do you mean members of the SSC, or do
you mean someone else?
A. Someone else.
Q. Well, if we go over the page to page 2 of the same
document {F/616.1/2} about a third of the way down
there's a reference to Ed Ashford at Core Services Unix
Support. Who is Ed Ashford?
A. Ed Ashford is one of the guys in Ireland.
Q. Who are the "guys in Ireland" exactly? Could you just
clarify -- I appreciate that this may not be your daily
fare but~...
A. They are the people who support the hardware, so UNIX is
an operating system so they work at a pretty low level
on the systems.
Q. When you say "low level", I mean what do you mean by
that? Do you mean they have powerful user rights, or
they have weak user rights or ..?
A. They have pretty powerful user rights, but they are
very -- very much driven by process as to how they use
them.
Q. What do you mean by "they are driven by process"?
A. There's complete and utter control on the processes they
go through before they do any of these -- this type of
activity.
Q. Okay, well, if I could ask you to go to your witness
statement, your first witness statement, {E2/1/17}
please. I would like you to look at paragraph 59.1.
You say:
"A limited number of authorised Fujitsu personnel
(I am advised by Jason Muir [at] the Security Operations
team that there are currently 19 at the operating system
layer and 26 at the database layer) who have access
privileges that could be used to edit or delete
transaction data in the BRDB in Horizon Online ..."
Stopping there, were the guys from Ireland amongst
these people that you refer to there?
A. Yes.
Q. I see. So they are privileged users, are they?
A. In my book, yes.
Q. And then you say:
"From the outset, I should make clear that this is
only a theoretical possibility (which would require the
circumstance invention of the controls described
above) ..."
And then you say:
"(a) Fujitsu has no policy, process, procedure or
operational practice that calls for it to use its
privileged access to edit or delete transaction data."
And at (b) you say:
"As far as I am aware, Fujitsu has never used its
privileged access to edit or delete transaction data."
A. Correct.
Q. Might it -- given what you have now seen with this OCP
and the PEAK we looked at before, would you care to
consider paragraph (b) of your witness statement?
A. I think the data that was deleted was not transaction
data.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Oh, I see. My Lord, I have no further
questions.
Questions by MR JUSTICE FRASER
MR JUSTICE FRASER: What sort of data would you describe it
as?
A. As I was -- it is data -- sorry, it is a field where you
are building up a running total, so I would see it as
analogous to -- if you are adding up 300 different
numbers, by the time you get to the end of 100 you might
jot down a total, then you add up the next 100, you jot
down another total. So it is where you are building up
data and this one happens to be an opening balance, but
it's building up data which is going to be used in
constructing the end branch trading statement.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So if I wanted to use a phrase for it
that wasn't "transaction data", what phrase should
I use?
A. I think we have been referring to it as "operational
data" but "operational" has such a wide connotation
that ... there possibly ought to be a different
definition for it.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: A different what, sorry?
A. There possibly ought to be a different definition for it
because equally data in the database which is telling
you which stock unit, you know, what -- which TP you're
in, whether a stock unit is in use, all of those are
operational data which do not go down and impact the
transaction data, so for me, the definition of
transaction data -- I should be able to get from one
opening -- one set of opening figures to the end opening
figures by going back to the transaction data in its
absolutely raw form.
As I said before, that is -- fundamentally that's
not a sensible way to process it, so you do go through
a sequence of adding things together and then you bring
them together to actually get the -- to get to your end
position in a trading statement.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right. I have just got a couple of
questions. I think you have explained at {E2/1/1} -- we
will just go to it, it's the very beginning of your
first statement, your early career. I think when you
were instructing in the Navy for those four years, what
subjects were you instructing?
A. Radar and electronics. Sorry, my Lord, in practical
terms, that was for the first two and a half years.
After that I went off to Bureau West in Devizes which is
where I joined the IT industry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The IT industry. Was that while you
were still in the Navy?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Then you explained about the Impact
system. What was your involvement in that, or Impact
project?
A. I was working with Post Office at the time and I was
interfacing to Fujitsu. I was also interfacing to Xansa
who were writing other components involved in the Impact
programme.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So you were working on the Impact
programme, were you?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Then if we could call up, please,
{F/322.2/1}. I'm so sorry, I have given you a wrong
reference. {F/432.2}. You will remember we looked at
that this morning.
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: It is an OCP. If you look against
"Extra detail" -- Mr Green took you through this in some
detail already -- but do you see where the new message
is described?
A. I do, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: There's quantity -- the sale value, that
would be in pounds, wouldn't it, or effectively
equivalent to the pounds?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then "PQty", am I right in reading
that as "product quantity"?
A. I don't recognise the P in there, but I think that would
be a fair assumption.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. If every single entry is
a negative, it will depend, won't it, how many entries
there are as to whether that has a negative or
a positive effect because if you multiply two negatives
together you get a positive, or am I being too
elementary?
A. I think this was simply saying that there was an
original message which had the positive values and then
you put in another message which has the negative values
and they will be added together as opposed to
multiplied.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, why would -- if you added quantity
to product quantity, you would get --
A. No, sorry, my Lord, you have -- I think you should see
these as two records, one above the other, and you're
going to add the two records together, so the quantity 1
would be cancelled out by the quantity minus 1, the sale
value 484 would be cancelled out by the sale value minus
484 and so on.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So is that describing what effect the
new message should have rather than what the contents of
the new message would be?
A. I think I would see it more as: this is the record that
I need to put in --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I see.
A. -- to negate the record that's there currently.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So this is the output required
effectively?
A. The output required is all zeros.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. This is the output required from
the message to result in all zeros?
A. Yes, so my reading of this is there is a record in there
already, I need to get rid of it logically, so therefore
I will insert a record which has got all the negatives
and that will make it go away.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Understood. Thank you very much.
Then the next point is at {F/425} we will start at
page 1 just so you can see what the document is. Do you
remember we looked at this document yesterday when we
were talking about --
A. We did, my Lord, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And I think I asked you an Oracle
question about "Insert" at the beginning of a line.
Do you remember?
A. I do.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: If we could look at page 11, please
{F/425/11}. Now, the second paragraph there is what
I asked you a question about, which was where in the
third line it said "It must start with the 'INSERT INTO'
clause", do you see that?
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And I think that's the point that
I asked you about yesterday, wasn't it?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: If we then go down to page 13
{F/425/13}, and maybe increase the size. This I think
is a template for the transaction -- or for the SQL
statement in the transaction file. Does that --
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- look as if it's right?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And what this page and the one I'm about
to ask you on the next page is the template for the SQL
which goes in the transaction file, is that correct? It
seems to be from the top two lines.
A. So we're inserting into a table called "RX cut off
summaries."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, but if you look at the very top of
the quotation which is just after the three lines of
text it says:
"The following SQL is a template for the SQL to be
placed in a transaction file for the~... Transaction
Correction tool ..."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And effectively the template starts with
the words "INSERT INTO"; is that right?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And if you -- I mean, just in passing,
the oblique stroke and the asterisk at the beginning of
the text and the end of the text just before "INSERT
INTO", those are symbols which mean that the passages
between the two symbols don't form part of the command,
is that correct?
A. I couldn't be categorical on that, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: You don't know if that's right -- would
that be conventional at least?
A. That would seem a very sensible convention, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. If you then go on to the
next page underneath, please {F/425/14} and increase the
size in that. That seems to me to be a continuation of
the sequence which starts on the previous page, is that
correct?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And where the numerous lines appear
about eight times one after the other "DO NOT CHANGE
THIS VALUE FROM THE ONE SPECIFIED!!!", am I right in
reading those as notes not forming part of the template
because they don't seem to be in the correct language?
A. This to me is an instruction to a user who knows what
they're doing --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Correct.
A. -- to say that the FAD hash has to be -- so you're not
allowed to go in there and change that.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Exactly.
A. You're not allowed to change the branch accounting code.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. So they don't form part of the
template, they're effectively warning -- well, I suppose
they do form part of the template, but they are warnings
to the person putting the information in the template,
aren't they? They're not part of the commands to the
system?
A. Those there are very much warnings to a person who is
going to use it, who is expected to know what he is
doing --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, or what she is doing.
A. Indeed, my Lord. And then this is to make it easy, or
as easy as possible for those people to do the job that
they are intended to do without making a mistake.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. Right, and then if we could go on
to the next page {F/425/15} and increase it, do you see
there the reference to "bind variables" and the three
bullet points?
A. I do.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Am I right that the bind variables are
also required to be inputted by whoever is it is putting
it together?
A. I'm afraid I don't know, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Do you know who puts the bind variables
in?
A. I don't know who would do that in practical terms, no.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Am I right that somebody would have to
do that though? That's not something that seems to me
to be generated automatically.
A. I cannot see how that could be -- if you read the rest
of the text:
"Substituted with the values of the branch code
argument ..."
That seems -- that to me is telling me exactly as
you are surmising.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, good. I just wanted to check
that. It seemed to me that was what it was doing but
I just wanted to check.
Any questions arising out of that?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, no.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Any questions?
MR GREEN: My Lord, no.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Mr Godeseth, you are now free to leave.
That's the end of your evidence, thank you very much
indeed.
A. Thank you, my Lord.
Procedural matter
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Upon reflection, and the fact it is
after 3 o'clock anyway, I intend not to ask you to call
Mr Parker. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give
some directions in respect of your application --
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- which has obviously got to be dealt
with.
One thing that the email letter that accompanied it
said which I literally received at 1.55 was that a hard
copy of it would be brought to court. Is there a hard
copy for me?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, there is.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Thank you.
(Pause).
I think there might be some exhibits. Is there an
exhibit as well?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I'm sorry. (Handed).
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Thank you very much.
Right, so it seems to me that there are three things
that need to be dealt with in order. One is any
response or responsive evidence by the claimants, if
they oppose the application, which I imagine they will
need some time to decide, the second is service of
skeletons, and the third is a date to hear it.
If it is at all feasible, I would like to hear this
application on the next day of this trial which is going
to be Monday 1 April which -- that's only likely to be
possible if those other two steps, but in particular,
the first of those two steps, can be accomplished in the
time between now and then, so that's really a question
for Mr Green.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, it is.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So Mr Green?
Submissions by MR GREEN
MR GREEN: My Lord, your Lordship won't have seen this
necessarily but there is a difficulty requiring an
earlier step, in our respectful submission.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I haven't. What is it?
MR GREEN: If your Lordship has the witness statement of
Mr Parsons. My clerks have printed this off over lunch
so I'm not sure what order your Lordship's one will be
in, but we have got a witness statement, I think, in
support.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I have a 14th witness statement of
Mr Parsons.
MR GREEN: Exactly. If your Lordship would just kindly turn
to page 6 of that --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I should say, other than reading the
first couple of paragraphs and then the letter and the
draft order, I haven't read this witness statement.
MR GREEN: That's why I'm drawing your Lordship's attention
to it.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right. Where do we go?
MR GREEN: If we go to page 6.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: The particularisation of the basis of the
application is I think supposed to be set out in
paragraphs 24 and 25 essentially. The first part is to
say that the findings in relation to matters which arose
in the common issues trial:
"... give the clear impression the judge has already
formed a firm view on these matters. It is expected
that this will prevent him from taking an impartial view
on the same matters when they are revisited at the
subsequent trials with the benefit of full evidence and
disclosure."
And then 25:
"The judgment also contains a great deal of critical
invective directed at Post Office, none of which is
relevant to the determination of the common issues.
That too creates a clear impression that the judge has
not behaved impartially. The same can be said for those
parts of the judgment which harshly criticised
Post Office's witnesses on matters irrelevant to the
common issues."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: And, my Lord, those complaints are wholly
unparticularised, they are serious matters and if we are
going to analyse them and respond to them -- I've never
seen any -- I have not seen very many recusal
applications, but I have not seen a recusal application
as lacking in particularity as this. If there are
specific criticisms of matters in the judgment that are
said to show -- create an impression of your Lordship
not having behaved impartially, any applicant in that
situation must set those out with particularity, for two
reasons: so that your Lordship can fairly consider what
is being said, not in some vague penumbra of complaint
by the losing party, but also so that the claimants have
an opportunity to consider precisely what the basis of
this remarkable application actually is, and at the
moment, we don't actually know which parts of the
judgment they are pointing to.
What is said to be -- what is a fair appraisal of
the credibility of a particular witness and what is
invective? And it's not to be left for us to scrabble
around, as we have had to do on some other things, to
try and work out what's being said, and so, my Lord, at
the moment we're not in a position to form a view on the
application, less still file responsive evidence.
The allegations -- the basis of this application,
which is a serious application to make, and is likely if
not calculated to derail these proceedings, has to be
spelt out with proper particularity before we are in
a position to respond to it, so I would invite
your Lordship to consider directing that that be done
and I would invite your Lordship to do so within
a fairly short time period, because no solicitor signing
a witness statement of this sort could put his name to
an allegation of that sort without having satisfied
himself of precisely the basis upon which it was being
said. So this is not "Oh, I will go away and work it
out now"; this must have been worked out with great care
already, otherwise an allegation of that sort could not
properly be made.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, well, just before I ask you
for a response on that, Mr De Garr Robinson, what I'm
actually going to do is I'm going to go and read the
whole witness statement, because I think I quite clearly
have explained I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Nor have I.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, you might then also benefit from
having had a chance to look at it.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Indeed.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I will come back in at I think 3.40.
I will take all the papers with me. The only ones that
I will probably have had a real chance to look at in
great detail is the witness statement. I know the
judgment fairly well, for obvious reasons. Then I will
come back, I will hear Mr De Garr Robinson what you have
to say about Mr Green's point, and we will revisit the
whole question of timetabling if I have missed out a
important step which, upon reflection, I decide ought to
be taken. So 3.40.
(3.14 pm)
(Short Break)
(3.44 pm)
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Mr De Garr Robinson.
Submissions by MR DE GARR ROBINSON
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, responding to my learned
friend's submission, he puts his point as a requirement
for particulars. The truth is this is a matter of
argument, and your Lordship and indeed my learned
friend, have already had no shortage of arguments.
There was an overwhelming number of those arguments at
the common issues trial.
It is not necessary for there to be a list of
critical findings in your Lordship's judgment, everybody
knows what those findings are and my learned friend's
suggestion that he needs particulars in order to decide
his position on the application is frankly surreal.
However, my Lord, I do have a proposal which in my
submission will be better than particulars, which is to
order sequential skeleton arguments and I would invite
your Lordship to order that the defendant's skeleton
argument be served by close of business on Tuesday, that
the claimants' skeleton argument be served by close of
business on Thursday, so that everyone is ready for the
hearing that you suggested, that obviously should be
dealt with as quickly as possible, on Monday the 1st.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm sorry, when did you say for the
claimants'? End of Thursday?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Thursday.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, that proposal doesn't include
within it provision for any evidence that they might
want to put in?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, that's true.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And I think it is also -- it effectively
takes as read that they are going to oppose the
application.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my learned friend suggested
otherwise, which is why I --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think he said he -- but in a way ...
yes, all right. So you say no need for any evidence in
response.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my Lord, if my learned friend
wishes to put in evidence, he can put in evidence, but
I do respectfully suggest that when he talks about
particulars, he is really talking about argument, and
I have no objection to giving him prior sight of --
I should say the defendant has no objection to giving
the claimants prior sight of their arguments, but,
my Lord, to slow matters down by having the formality,
in my respectful submission, the useless and expensive
formality of a list of points -- I don't quite know what
the particulars would look like -- that wouldn't add to
the efficiency of this process and it certainly wouldn't
add to its speed.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, but it is important that other
matters aren't sacrificed in the interests of speed,
given the nature of the application.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Of course.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: If the skeleton -- the defendant's
skeleton argument were to identify in a schedule the
following three points -- because apart from anything
else, I will need to know this at some point: the
specific findings that are referred to in paragraph 24,
the critical invective referred to in paragraph 25 and
the harsh criticisms referred to in paragraph 25, then
that would effectively -- whether it comes in a schedule
to a skeleton, or whether it comes in the 15th witness
statement of Mr Parsons, that would effectively identify
what parts of the judgment were being attacked -- or
were being relied on to found the application.
But let me hear from Mr Green about the sequential
skeleton approach.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, it would, but may I just
mention one thing.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Were an order -- a direction to be
made requiring a skeleton which contains a schedule of
that sort, those things would not be things in relation
to which my learned friend would wish to put in evidence
in response.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I entirely accept that, but what they
would do, for example, Mr De Garr Robinson, just taking
paragraph 24 as an example, they would say "These are
the specific findings which we, the Post Office, says
justifies the suggestion that the judge has already made
a clear -- that justify the clear impression that the
judge has formed a firm view on these other matters."
Now, those passage are going to have to be brought to my
attention at some point.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Absolutely. My Lord, I'm not
resisting any direction of that sort, just to be clear,
but what I am resisting is the suggestion that there
needs to be some further time to allow evidence to be
formulated once these matters are flushed out.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Evidence arguing to the contrary.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I agree with you about that. As
I understand the witness statement of Mr Parsons, which
I have now read very carefully, twice, it is based on
the judgment, number 3 on the common issues, or
certainly that's how it is explained in the actual
witness statement, and insofar as it is necessary to
look at other things, they are things in respect of
which there is a transcript available because they
relate to matters that have happened at an interlocutory
hearing, so there's not going to be any evidential
argument about what actually happened. Is that
a correct analysis?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, all I have done is read the
witness statement in the same way that your Lordship
has.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. Well, I don't want unfairly
to put you on the spot about that.
Mr Green.
Submissions by MR GREEN
MR GREEN: My Lord, I couldn't respectfully disagree more --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: With?
MR GREEN: -- with what Mr De Garr Robinson has just said.
The starting position for any application of this
type is that it must immediately be made on a basis
which clearly sets out, with particularity, the aspects
of the judgment in this case and findings which are said
to demonstrate apparent bias of the court. That is
a totally uncontroversial statement and one that is
not -- a principle that's not lightly to be departed
from. And the reason for that is it affords the party
on the other side an opportunity to consider, with
clarity, whether they wish to resist the application or
not.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: Before they are committed to a 24-hour or 36-hour
or 48-hour window in which to respond to a skeleton
argument, a skeleton argument which has doubtless
already been considered insofar as the matters which
would go into the schedule, and will continue to be
considered without us knowing what those points are all
the way up until Wednesday when it is served and when we
then learn for the first time what the actual basis of
this application is.
My Lord, the reason I say that is this: a finding
which is adverse to a party is not a proper foundation
for an application of this sort.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: A criticism of a witness is not a proper
foundation for an application of this sort. And
therefore, it is essential that the applicant in this
application spells out, in every case, what is said to
be critical invective going beyond the bounds of what
a court may properly do without creating the apparent
bias now alleged and what it is -- which findings it is
said or parts of the judgment which harshly criticise
Post Office witnesses on matters irrelevant to the
common issues.
Those matters have been to be spelled out and
my learned friend, Mr De Garr Robinson, has just told
the court that everybody knows which parts of the
judgment he is referring to. If that's true --
I don't -- but if there's any basis for saying that to
the court, then he can write them out in a list and,
my Lord, this application --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, I'm not necessarily sure
Mr De Garr Robinson could write them out in a list
but --
MR GREEN: Sorry, your Lordship is quite right.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- somebody at the Post Office can write
them out. Mr De Garr Robinson has been dealing with the
computer issues trial.
MR GREEN: My Lord, that's a very fair point and I should
observe that distinction, but it doesn't take away from
the fact that whoever has prepared and advised on and
considered whether this is a proper application to make
must have identified what the basis is, so asking them
to spell it out is not a subsequent step, they must have
done that before this could be signed off. This is not
an application for directions or something like that,
this is a very important application and it cannot have
been made without carefully thinking what the elements
in each case are and particularly where it is said that
the criticism, for example, of Post Office's witnesses
on matters irrelevant to the common issues -- that has
to be spelled out too and its basis. It is not
satisfactory, in our respectful submission, for this to
be done the other way round, so that we only find out
after a skeleton argument has been filed in an
application what the basis is and we then have to decide
both whether to resist it and on what basis within
a very truncated time period.
So I would be inviting your Lordship to order
provision of particulars of those two paragraphs, by
list, and an explanation, a proper explanation of the
basis of this application.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, the second of those -- what I'm
minded to do -- and I will explain what it is and
Mr De Garr Robinson can make any submissions about it he
wants to. What I am minded to do is order the
Post Office to provide a witness statement by noon on
Tuesday 26th -- but we can come and discuss the timing
in a moment -- that sets out: 1, the specific findings
in the judgment referred to in paragraph 24 of
Mr Parson's 14th witness statement; 2, the critical
invective referred to in paragraph 25 of Parsons 14; and
3, the criticisms of the Post Office witnesses referred
to in paragraph 25.
Now, in a way, Mr De Garr Robinson, it doesn't much
matter whether that's a schedule -- it would be the same
exercise whether it was a schedule to a skeleton or
whether it was in another witness statement from
Mr Parsons, but I think in the circumstances it should
be in a witness statement.
Submissions by MR DE GARR ROBINSON
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my Lord, I would resist that.
It shouldn't be in a witness statement in my respectful
submission. It's a list of particulars and the
appropriate document would be an order for particulars.
Actually it would be preferable, and more efficient in
my submission, if a skeleton argument were directed
which should have a schedule setting out those
particulars. That would actually be beneficial to --
and more useful for the claimants than a witness
statement or some independent document that goes on --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, I think everyone is agreed there
has to be an identification of them.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: In these circumstances I think it is
best if it is in a witness statement, but if that is to
refer to an exhibited schedule, well that's one way of
doing it. I'm not going to debate it endlessly.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my Lord, could I just address
your Lordship on that.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: There is -- it would put the person
making the witness statement in an invidious position.
I mean, if your Lordship is happy to direct a witness
statement in which a human being has to make a witness
statement saying these things then of course that order
will be complied with.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Why would it put them in an invidious
position?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my Lord, because it will be
a human being criticising a High Court judge for making
findings of that sort. Bearing in mind that the
important thing is simply that the information is
provided so that it can be understood, in my respectful
submission it would be better for it to be in a schedule
to a skeleton argument. If your Lordship wishes to
order that a human being makes a witness statement, then
that will of course be complied with.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, the purpose of this is not to
personalise it or in any way identify somebody as being
the personification of the application. I was assuming
it would be Mr Parsons because he has said these things
already in Parsons 14.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: He has.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So it would simply be identification of
which those passages are -- I don't think it is
necessary to add this, but I will in any case -- by
explaining which passages to which he is referring in
his 15th witness statement, or it might even be the
first witness statement of someone else. I don't think
there's any concern about exposure of a human being
because it would be coming from one of the parties'
advisors.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I have made my submission. I'm not
sure I can helpfully add to it.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And if it is -- and even if it is
a simple form of words like "The findings to which
I refer in paragraph 24 are ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ..."
I mean, I think that would be satisfactory but I'm not
going to give any specific direction about what the
contents of it should be. I think it's just explaining
what the paragraphs or the findings or the parts of the
judgments are which have already been referred to in
paragraphs 24 and 25 of Parsons 14.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I understand. My Lord, does that mean
that the hearing of the application will be delayed
beyond Monday?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, that's what we're going to have to
address now I think because what we have to do, or what
I have to do, is I have to balance enough time for the
steps that are necessary to be taken properly without
simply imposing inordinate delay on the process
generally, so if noon on Tuesday for the witness
statement -- by then that would be Tuesday 26th -- then
the claimants are going to have to provide their
response -- or identify, firstly, if they oppose the
application or not by a particular time or date which we
will come on to. Then if so advised, I suppose
technically they have to be given the opportunity to put
evidence in response, but I can't imagine if the
substance of the application is the judgment that would
necessarily be a step that would be taken, but I can't,
I don't think, press Mr Green to tell me now whether or
not it definitely will be, and then we will have to put
some provisions in for skeletons which, given these
circumstances, can be simultaneous I think.
So, Mr Green, if you get either Parsons 15 or Mr or
Mrs X number 1 by noon on Tuesday, when would you like
firstly to notify the other side of your position in
respect of the application?
MR GREEN: My Lord, I think we would have to have 24 hours.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, all right. So if you're asking
until noon on the 27th?
MR GREEN: My Lord, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And I imagine that will just be in
a letter?
MR GREEN: Indeed.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Then if so advised, evidence in response
by ..?
MR GREEN: Hopefully we would be able to do that within a --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Friday?
MR GREEN: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: By noon on Friday?
MR GREEN: By noon on Friday. My Lord, I think --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Just before I get onto skeletons,
Mr De Garr Robinson, do those two intervals require any
observation from you?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, none.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. That then means the
hearing -- I think I said rather peremptorily before
I left court it would be 1 April, but I think it's going
to have to be a day or two later in that week because
you're going to have to have provisions for skeletons,
I'm then going to have to have a little time to read
them, and the application says set down for four hours
but I think in the circumstances, I will just set it
down for a day.
Skeletons by 10 o'clock on Tuesday 2nd with the
hearing on Wednesday 3rd?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I'm unaware whether
Lord Grabiner will be available on Wednesday and
enquiries need to be made.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, Mr De Garr Robinson, in all the
circumstances and given that is actually one of the days
this trial should have been sitting, if you want to move
it from the 3rd you're going to have to issue an
application I'm afraid because I'm not going to say
anything more that at this point. So skeletons at the
end of Monday 1st, let's say 5 o'clock Monday 1st, the
skeletons, together with a single bundle of authorities,
although I can't imagine any of them will be
controversial, the test is fairly well-established.
Any further directions are going to have to wait
until the application has been resolved, I think. Will
the parties draw up an order?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, yes. When you say "any
further directions", do you mean directions in relation
to the Horizon trial?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, not necessarily in relation to the
Horizon trial, because that would suggest I have
prejudged the outcome of the application which obviously
I haven't. Well, the question of whether I would
reserve judgment, how long it would take, all of those
sorts of things, I don't think I'm in a position to say
anything about that now until having heard -- seen the
evidence and heard the arguments on the 3rd.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
(Pause).
My Lord, we are not presently aware of what
Lord Grabiner's availability will be, but we should know
by Monday, and if an application needs to be made,
your Lordship will hear it then.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Although I'm not making any directions
about this, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that
we still have got in the Horizon issues trial definitely
Mr Parker, who I think is going to be less than half
a day, because you haven't got longer than that anyway.
MR GREEN: No.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The position vis-Ã -vis Mr Membery, which
I know is in a state of flux because of his personal
circumstances.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then the experts. I think it is
pretty clear we won't be able to hear any more -- if the
application is not acceded to, we won't be able to hear
any expert evidence at all this side of Easter --
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I see.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- it seems to me, because apart from
anything else, depending on the outcome of the
application, either party might want to make a new
application about further delay, I say, expressing
myself neutrally, because they might want to appeal
whatever my answer is, but we will cross those bridges
if and when we come to them.
So I think that deals with everything in respect of
the application to recuse. Is there anything I have
missed out?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, not that I can think of.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Anything I have missed out?
MR GREEN: My Lord, no.
Housekeeping
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Turning to the rather more mundane
subject of outstanding housekeeping in what we have
already been doing, I was still waiting for hard copies
of the PEAKs and the KELs.
MR GREEN: My Lord, yes, we're going to put those together
for you and deliver them tomorrow, if that's all right.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think you should probably still do
that --
MR GREEN: It has to be done.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- so it doesn't get lost -- well, it
will have to be done for whoever it is who is the trial
judge who takes the matter all the way through, whether
it is me or somebody else.
There was still a hard copy of Dr Worden's report
with appendices.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Oh, has that not got to you? I do
apologise.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: It might have appeared somewhere, but
I don't believe it has.
I did, however, get three hard copies of the
application to recuse myself as the managing judge, but
I didn't get any hard copy of Dr Worden.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I'm so sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then there was still an outstanding
summary from you, Mr De Garr Robinson, about your
privilege redaction review but in the circumstances
I don't need to pursue that with you now.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: That's very kind. I am prepared to
address your Lordship on it now should you wish, but I'm
happy to -- perhaps it would be better ...
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think we will put that on the -- as
the only matter still outstanding so far as current
housekeeping is concerned in this trial, until the
application has been dealt with.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Very good, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Anything else?
MR GREEN: My Lord, no.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So someone is going to draw up an order.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: We will decide, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think you can probably agree between
yourselves who that is, and until Wednesday 3rd at 10.30
and we will have Opus here for that obviously.
MR GREEN: My Lord, yes.
(4.07 pm)
(The court adjourned until 10.30 am on
Wednesday, 3 April 2019)
(10.30 am)
MR TORSTEIN OLAV GODESETH (continued)
Cross-examination by MR GREEN (continued)
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, we are both standing up.
I wonder if your Lordship wishes to discuss housekeeping
matters or shall we leave it until after Mr Godeseth has
finished?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Absolutely. We will do it at the end.
MR GREEN: I'm grateful.
Mr Godeseth, just to clarify, yesterday -- and to
correct a point I put to you yesterday -- I suggested to
you that PEAK 0175821 at page {F/485} was
Horizon Online. It's clearly legacy.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Was this the one that because of the
dates could have been either?
MR GREEN: It could have been either. I will come back to
that but I just wanted Mr Godeseth not to be worried
that --
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, it was 2009, in fact, not
2010.
MR GREEN: I'm going to try and take this in a condensed
way, Mr Godeseth, if I can, and see what we can agree is
clear. Can we just -- what I'm proposing to do is take
you to the position under the legacy system separately
so there's no room for confusion by me or you and then
deal with Horizon Online after that and just briefly, if
we look first please at {F/323}. Now, this is
PEAK 0130275. Do you see that at the top?
A. I do.
Q. And the target date there is June 2006, but you can see
that from the progress narrative that it's initiated
in December 2005. Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And if you come down into the yellow box and you look
towards the bottom you will see 21/12/05 at 17.22.
A. I do.
Q. Can you see the figure of £18,000 there just below that?
It says:
"Contacted: contacted pm - pm states rolling over tp
with no items, 0 figures showing but allowed to rollover
and on the next rollover into bp there was a £18,000
discrepancy gain."
Do you see that?
A. I see that.
Q. So this is a problem that's caused a gain to the SPM?
A. Agreed.
Q. On the face of the Horizon system?
A. On the face of it, yes.
Q. And if we go over the page please to page 2 {F/323/2},
in the middle box you can see 22 December 2005 at
16.05.15 and if you come down to "Stock unit BB" halfway
down, do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. "Stock unit BB was rolled over in an effectively empty
state. The PM then declared the correct amount of cash,
and adjusted the stock levels up to the correct volumes.
This has resulted in a gain of approximately £18,000.
"We are unable to correct the system figures safely.
We can however provide accurate figures for what should
have been in the final balance for BB, to enable POL to
make the correction perhaps by using a Transaction
Correction."
Now, that's one of the ways of dealing with
a situation like this, isn't it?
A. It would be, yes.
Q. "POL need to make a decision on whether they are able to
correct the problem in this way, however we do not see
any other alternative. Corrective action should be
taken before 11 January when the branch is due to
rollover into TP10."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. So at that stage, what's been identified is that it is
really probably for POL to make the correction using
a transaction correction, and it needs to be done before
11 January because that's the next trading period
rollover, yes?
A. Okay, understood.
Q. And if we go over to page 3 please {F/323/3}, 3 January,
David Seddon, he says there:
"If we get to the problem before the office is
rolled we are able to change objects in the messagestore
to reset the stockunit back to the CAP (TP) rollover
trailer. The PM can then rollover. PM should get
a large shortage which cancels out the large gain.
"We don't want to be having to do this as making
manual changes to the messagestore is open to error and
each time we have to seek authorisation from [Post
Office Limited] to make the changes."
Now, pausing there, can we agree that it was
possible to change the objects in the messagestore in
the way described here?
A. I have -- yes, that would be possible.
Q. And that doing so would cause a large shortage which
would cancel out the large gain, as expressly stated
here?
A. Yes.
Q. And you would agree that making manual changes to the
messagestore is open to error?
A. It certainly is.
Q. And were you aware that each time it was done,
authorisation was sought from Post Office Limited to
make the changes, or was that not something you were
involved in?
A. At this stage I was working elsewhere, so -- 2006, early
2006 I would have been involved interfacing with Horizon
but certainly not at this operational level.
Q. So pausing there, just to get that very precise for
the court. Early 2006, which is the date of this
particular PEAK, you were interfacing with Fujitsu with
regard to Horizon in your job at Post Office?
A. I'm pretty sure I would have been because Impact was
going live in 2005, so I can't be -- but certainly
I wasn't involved in operational issues of this type.
Q. So you're not really the person to ask about those
authorities being sought?
A. Certainly not the -- Post Office would have given
authority through other parties. Certainly I --
I wouldn't have been involved in giving authority for
this sort of thing.
Q. Thank you. Then can we move forward then please to
{F/432}. Now, this is 10/12/2007 and it is PEAK number
0152014 and you will see that there's an OCP listed
there, OCP 17510 and an OCR listed there, 17532.
There's also an additional OCR listed below. Do you see
that?
A. I do.
Q. Now, just so you have a fair context to this question,
Mr Godeseth, it's accepted on behalf of the claimants
that we do see references behind some of these documents
to subpostmasters being made aware of changes being made
of this sort. So just so you're clear, it's not being
put to you that they were never made aware, but I want
you to look and see if you would agree with what this
PEAK shows.
Let's go over the page please {F/432/2}. If we look
at the top of the page, the yellow box, halfway down it,
do you see:
"Am currently retrieving the messagestore for this
branch [and] will then be inserting a new message on the
counter to remove the effects of this."
Do you see that sentence?
A. Yes, and I read this overnight.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Sorry, can you tell me where it is?
MR GREEN: I'm so sorry, in the yellow box at the top,
my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Oh, the yellow box at the top. I was
looking halfway down the page.
MR GREEN: Sorry, my mistake.
So this is one you have had the opportunity to look
at overnight and it clearly states there that Andy Keil,
who we see on the previous page, just to give you
context {F/432/1}, 10 December 2007, 12.36, Andy Keil --
or is it Andy Keil?
A. I don't remember him.
Q. Okay. So he is saying -- go over back again {F/432/2},
he is talking about a line written -- if we look at the
top of that yellow box -- he is talking about a problem
which is:
"... due to a single SC line written for $1,000
(£484) with no settlement in the middle of two RISP
transactions."
Can you tell the court what RISP transactions are?
A. I'm not -- RI is remit in; I can't remember what the SP
bit stands for.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And SC line?
A. Sorry? SC would be "serve customer", my Lord, so that's
a sale.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So it looks as if it they are selling
foreign currency?
A. This one is all related to selling foreign currency and
there's a bit of confusion as to whether it is American
or Canadian dollars.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: In the happy days when £484 sterling
bought 1,000 of either US or Canadian dollars.
A. And there was a change in exchange rates the last --
over the couple of days, yes.
MR GREEN: When we see halfway down that top yellow box:
"Am currently retrieving the messagestore for this
branch, we will then be inserting a new message on the
counter to remove the effects of this."
What's being considered there is making a change on
the counter messagestore, isn't it?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And halfway down you can see a double star, double
asterisk followed by:
"Again, this may also have caused a receipts and
payments error ..."
So they are trying to work out whether there's
a gain or a loss at the counter and the amount, yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And then if we go down to the bottom of this page,
12 December 2007, Andy Keil says:
"Worth noting that the branch did not have any
issues with the mismatched transactions because this was
fixed before they did the roll. The branch is not aware
of this and it's best that the branch is not advised."
Now, at that stage you would fairly accept, wouldn't
you, that although there are documents elsewhere that
show that sometimes SPMs were advised, this shows an
occasion when the SPM at this stage has not been
advised, doesn't it?
A. I don't know that it shows that, but it's a fair
inference from it. I think I would say that Post Office
were well aware of this and I would argue that it's
a Post Office decision whether or not to tell
a subpostmaster.
Q. So you are saying -- just clarify what you just said.
A. This was written by Andy Keil who is a Fujitsu employee
and I think he is recording things as he saw it, but in
the background to this there was a dialogue with
Post Office, from my reading of the PEAK.
Q. Yes, so Post Office would have been aware of what was
being done by Fujitsu in this respect?
A. Correct, my Lord.
Q. And then what seems to happen, if we go over the page to
{F/432/3}, in the big yellow box at the top:
"The counter problem which caused the first issue
has been corrected by inserting a message into the
messagestore, for equal but opposite values/quantities,
as agreed with POL ..."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And that refers there to an OCP, 17510. Do you see
that?
A. I do.
Q. And if we could just look at that for a moment please,
it's at {F/432.2}, "Write corrective bureau message for
FAD 183227."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Where are you reading?
MR GREEN: That's the heading of --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The bold heading.
MR GREEN: The bold heading, my Lord, yes. Then it says:
"A single SC message ... was written in error on
26th November ... selling 1,000 US dollars, with no
corresponding settlement line. To remove the effects of
this message at both the branch and on POLFS, we will
inset a new message to negate the effects of the
original message."
Yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. "Justification: If the change is not made in the counter
messagestore (before the stock unit is balanced on
Wednesday), the branch will have an unexpected gain of
£484 (or thereabouts - [depending] on exchange rate),
and a receipts and payments mismatch. This gain would
have to be resolved at the branch. There would also be
an inconsistency between the branch and POLFS to be
resolved. By correcting the problem locally, the branch
may not be aware of the problem, and there will be no
inconsistency between the branch and POLFS."
Yes?
A. Agreed, yes.
Q. So this is the reason for doing it, and it is planned
for 10 December 2007 at 5 o'clock with a duration of
ten minutes.
A. Yes.
Q. And then the extra detail provided says:
"The original message had Product [ID]: 5129,
[quantity 1], Sale value~... 484, [quantity]~...
1,000~..."
The new message will have quantity --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Quantity minus 1.
MR GREEN: Sorry:
"[Quantity]:-1, SaleValue:-484, PQty:-1,000 with,
other attributes (including exchange rate) as before."
So the OCP is the front-end fix, isn't it?
A. Yes, this is going into messagestore.
Q. This is going into the counter messagestore at the
branch?
A. Yes.
Q. And we can see that if we go over the page {F/432.2/2},
because at "Change at location" we see "Counter"?
A. Yes.
Q. And when the location at which the change is effected
for the back-end in an OCR, we tend to see location
BRA01 or one of the terminals within Bracknell or --
yes?
A. Understood.
Q. When we look at the relevant OCR, which is OCR17532
which is on page {F/434.1}, we can see there that the
change at location code is BRA01, as agreed already.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Where are you looking?
MR GREEN: In the middle of the page under "Other details".
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: And if we look under "Comments" we can see
Andy Keil wrote at 12/12, he is updating the POLFS feed
for the branch with a sale value of 1,014.73 and PQty of
2,080. Now, there's a difference between the updated
value that we saw on 432.2, which was a $1,000
transaction being inserted at the counter, and what we
see at {F/434.1} which is just over $2,000 being
inserted in the Post Office system, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. When we go back to the underlying PEAK at {F/432} --
hopefully you've got hard copies as well?
A. I believe I have.
Q. And if you want to look at those, please take your time.
If we look at page {F/432/3}, so the third page of that
PEAK, on 14 December 2007 Anne Chambers, in the large
yellow box at the top, towards the top of the page, she
writes, in the second paragraph there:
"The counter problem which caused the first issue
has been corrected by inserting a message into the
messagestore, for equal but opposite values/quantities,
as agreed with POL."
Which we have already looked at and there's the
reference to the OCP:
"As a result of this corrective action, the net
effect on POLFS is zero, and POLFS figures are in line
with the branch. POLMIS received both the original
message and the corrective message.
"Once the problem was corrected, there should have
been no impact on the branch. However, it has been
noted that the stock unit BDC had a loss of $1,000,
which was generated after the correction was made."
Now, that's of roughly the same amount as the
difference between what was entered in the front-end and
the back-end, wasn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. "We have already notified Gary Blackburn at POL ... this
appears to be a genuine loss at the branch, not
a consequence of the problem or correction."
Would you accept that it's a fair possibility that
the additional loss was in fact a result of the
difference in the two corrections made by the OCP and
OCR?
A. Having read this PEAK in more detail overnight then yes,
clearly that is what appears to have been the case.
Q. Can we move forward now to the 2009 PEAK at {F/485}.
This is PEAK 0175821 and this has a target date of
22 February 2009, and you can see that if we come down
to 19 February you can see there's an OCR reference
there, OCR 21847. And if we go down, just to give you
context -- hopefully you have had a chance to look at
this. At the bottom of the page, 19 February 2009 -- we
touched on this -- at 17.39.40, Catherine Obeng:
"There are two sides to the problem relating to
these transactions. The first is where all five SC
[transactions] missing core data as described in the
above-mentioned KEL. Second is absence of equal but
opposite (ie settlement) lines. See [another PEAK]
PC0152014 for a similar problem and how problem was
resolved.
"For the first problem, I have used the TRT ..."
That's the transaction repair tool?
A. Correct.
Q. "... to insert the missing data ie Region, Margin,
Margin Product and EffectiveEXRate."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, when we look over the page, please, at page 2
{F/485/2}, it is reasonably complicated to follow but
just to trying to take out a few simple points from it.
If we look at the second light blue box,
20 February 2009, Garrett Simpson, this is -- he says:
Following the investigation shown in another related
PEAK he has analysed the:
"~... TPS_POL_FS_Summaries_Incomp where article ~...
='USD'."
This is another one where there seems to be an
exchange rate issue, is that fair?
A. Certainly dealing with bureau is complicated by the fact
that there are exchange rates, there are margins, there
are quite a few components to the transaction.
Q. Indeed. And we can see the difference between the two
figures that have been recorded is 378.42 but the total
non-zero value for the branch is £989.96. So he says:
"So I have not found the proper exception".
What does "I have not found the proper exception"
mean?
A. I think this may well be the one where there was -- it
appeared to me to be confusion as to whether people were
talking about American dollars or Canadian dollars.
Q. Yes.
A. And I think further on in the PEAK, he identifies that
he has found the correct element to look at.
Q. Yes. If we go -- well, can I ask you this shortly: it
seems that there are two attempts to remedy this, is
that fair?
A. I think that was the previous one. Sorry, I think there
were two components to fixing this, in that there was
a change using the TIP repair tool to get the feed into
POLFS correct and then there was a change to the
messagestore to get the branch aligned.
Q. Yes. There are two aspects to it, the first using the
TIP repair tool and the second is the change to the
branch messagestore?
A. And I would see that as a way of keeping the branch and
POLFS aligned. The repair had to go two ways.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Can you just remind me which
three-letter abbreviation are we using for TIP repair
tool?
A. That is probably TRT -- no, sorry --
MR GREEN: It is TRT.
A. TRT on OCR17532, it says "Change type TRT" which I take
to mean TIP repair tool.
MR GREEN: And your Lordship will also find a reference to
it at {F/485} on the first page.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I saw the reference, it is just we had
been using TRT, although I know you mentioned yesterday
that's what you called the TIP repair tool, I think.
A. I have forgotten, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, don't worry.
MR GREEN: And just for completeness, if we look very kindly
at {F/485.2}, we can see that this is the OCP, 21918,
this is the change to branch messagestore OCP and if we
go over the page --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Can we just go back a second.
MR GREEN: Sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Under "Extra detail", Mr Godeseth, is
that just an explanation in prose of what you said were
the two components to remedying it?
A. I'm reading that as saying that we tested what we were
about to do on the live system. We tested in a test
system what we were about to do on a live system to
ensure that this was going to work.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, but in other words, that includes
the two components, does it? In other words, are your
two components together, as far as you can tell --
A. I can't tell from this I'm afraid, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: You can't, okay, that's fine.
MR GREEN: My Lord, I think I can help Mr Godeseth with
that, if that assists.
If we look -- the OCP is normally for the front-end,
the branch messagestore, and the OCR is normally the
back-end and if we look at {F/485.1} we have 21847. We
can see the deletion of transactions and updating of
transactions, extracts from some of the scripts used
there, can't we?
A. Yes.
Q. So the OCR relates to the POLFS system records?
A. Correct.
Q. And that's 485.1, and then the {F/485.2} is the OCP for
the branch messagestore?
A. Yes.
Q. And we can see there -- it's actually at the second half
of this page, we can see Gaby Reynolds of Post Office
Limited wrote --
A. Gaby Reynolds was Fujitsu.
Q. POL -- okay. So it says "POL" is that she is on the
Post Office account or ...?
A. Certainly the Gaby Reynolds I knew worked for Fujitsu
and never worked for Post Office.
Q. Okay, very good. So it seems to be between
Gaby Reynolds of Fujitsu -- sorry, received by
Gaby Reynolds of Fujitsu, from julie.edgeley@postoffice,
on behalf of duty_manager@royalmail.com,
27 February 2009 to Anne Chambers, who we see a lot in
in these.
A. Yes.
Q. And it says:
"~... malformed currency transactions ~...
"As discussed, POL are happy for you to make the
necessary system adjustments. From speaking to Wendy,
the manager in the branch, first thing on Tuesday
morning (between 9am and 10am) is the quietest time for
them.
"I have advised Wendy that you will call her as you
are about to start and as you finish.
"Thank you."
We can see over the page that that's then forwarded
on {F/485.2/2}. Or you've got a separate one from
Nicola Watson, Post Office, saying that:
"POL approve this change."
A. Yes.
Q. So effectively the agreement has come from two people at
Post Office and we have also seen from this particular
one that the SPM must have been made aware of it?
A. Yes.
Q. Because they're doing it at a time convenient for the
SPM. So that subpostmaster would have known that
changes could be effected at the branch messagestore, or
maybe not in those words, but certainly at the counter?
A. Certainly changes made to the messagestore. I don't
know whether we are discussing whether it was injected
at the counter or in the correspondence server here,
I can't remember the detail of this.
Q. Okay. Let's move forward, if we may --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, before we do I would like to go
back to {F/485.2/1} because Mr Green said he was going
to help you with something and I'm not necessarily sure
he did.
MR GREEN: My Lord, sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, that's all right.
As I understand it, OCP deals with the front-end, is
that right?
A. It appears so, certainly, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: As far as you know?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And OCR deals at the back-end?
A. That seems consistent, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. So when you were saying there are
two components to this correction, did you mean one
component was the OCP and one component was the OCR?
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: But that will be the case in all
corrections, won't it? There will always have to be
a correction at the front-end and the back-end.
A. No, not necessarily. The TIP repair tool was used quite
a lot to repair stuff which had gone through from the
branches -- or from the counters fine but it was missing
some attribute which POLFS or something else further up
the line needed and so therefore it would fail
validation at the point when it was hitting TIP and it
would be parked until it was repaired.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I see. So your two components were one
of them was the OCP and one of them was the OCR?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right.
A. For this particular problem we needed to change in two
places -- or they chose to change in two places.
Possibly it could have been done in a different way.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Understood. And when you look under
"Extra detail", the last sentence -- and I understand
this relates to foreign currency which is why it is
said:
"The gain may not be precisely the same as the
original loss ..."
Would there have been another component as well to
correct that, so far as you know, or do you not know?
A. It is tied up in exchange rates and margins, so there is
a mechanism in place to account for changes in currency
rates which would have to be replicated through this, so
that it would be taken into account.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And would that be another OCP then?
A. I don't imagine so. I think it would all be dealt with
in one go.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: In the same OCP?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Mr Green, over to you.
MR GREEN: Can we move forward now to 2010 and we've got
PC0195561 which is 7 March 2010.
Now, we have seen this before?
A. Sorry, I'm not seeing it yet, my Lord.
Q. Sorry, {F/590}. Have you not seen this one before?
A. Sorry, it was --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, it wasn't on the screen, Mr Green.
MR GREEN: I'm so sorry.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: It wasn't given last night either.
MR GREEN: This is the one that Mr Godeseth himself refers
to at paragraph 58.8 as the balancing transaction that
he is aware of.
If we look in the yellow box below the second line
of equals signs:
"~... pm was trying to transfer out 4,000 pds. The
system crashed. Pm was issued with 2 x 4,000pds
receipts."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So this is one you are familiar with?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we go to page 3 {F/590/3}, 10 March 2010 at
8.51.33, almost the top yellow box:
"After discussion with Gareth Jenkins, the suggested
correction is to negate the duplicate transfer out by
writing 2 lines to the BRDB_RX_REP_SESSION and
BRDB_RX_EPOSS_ TRANSACTIONS tables ..."
Yes?
A. Sorry, I missed -- sorry, could I just confirm that this
does relate to the one use of BT?
Q. This is -- if we have a look at your witness
statement --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Do you have your hard copy witness
statement?
A. I do. Which?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think it might be the one you are
being asked about at {E2/1/16}, but if that's an
incorrect reference, Mr Green will tell you.
MR GREEN: If we look at paragraph 58.8 {E2/1/17}, you say:
"The PEAK incident ticket raised in relation to the
BT ..."
A. Is 1955 ~... yes.
Q. Yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. So who have you got this information from about this?
A. I will have got this information -- this information
will have come from the guys who knew about the PEAK,
knew about the balancing transaction, the occurrence of
it.
Q. So who were the guys?
A. I can't remember, but I got a lot of information about
this it from Steve Parker.
Q. From Steve Parker?
A. So I imagine it came from -- via his team.
Q. So you got the information from Steve Parker and you
imagine it came from his team?
A. Yes.
Q. And let's go back to the PEAK, if we can, {F/590/1}. We
have seen that it is basically doubling the £4,000 of
receipts and we have moved on to page 3 {F/590/3} and
we've got the discussion with Gareth Jenkins at the top
suggesting writing two lines to the transaction tables,
yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And those tables are tables which record transaction
data, aren't they?
A. Yes.
Q. And there it says:
"An OCP approved by POL will be needed."
It says:
"[It] should be done using the Transaction
Correction Tool. An OCP approved by POL will be
needed."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know of any reason why the £4,000 difference
couldn't have been corrected by a transaction correction
being issued?
A. Yes, because this was a double entry -- this is on the
new system. This is not messagestore, so the only way
to actually change the branch database so that I had two
entries was to insert a record using the branch
transaction tool, or the balancing transaction tool.
Sorry, that is the only -- that is the chosen way to do
it, it was a way that we had anticipated dealing with
this type of problem.
Q. That's the way that had been planned for?
A. We obviously planned never to do it, but this was the
contingency should a problem arise in the branch
database which left us with an unbalanced transaction,
ie one side had been written but the other side had not.
Q. If we can go please for {F/590/9}, so page 9 of the same
PEAK, 22 April 2010 at 15.35.[54]. You are reasonably
familiar with this PEAK, I think?
A. Yes.
Q. What we see in this box if I can just summarise it, is
there had been two transactions with the same JSN number
and the second transaction should have been rejected as
a duplicate, but in fact, the data from the second entry
had in fact been committed to the database when it
shouldn't have been, and that was a bit puzzling. Is
that a fair summary?
A. I can agree it's all puzzling. I'm not sure that this
would be a totally accurate reflection of what happened.
This is an interpretation put together by a developer
who is investigating the problems and the --
Q. Well, if -- sorry.
A. The log files will still exist.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, let's go on what's on the face of
the page. As I understand it, your answer is that
you're not sure that what's on the screen is totally
accurate, is that right?
A. Correct, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Let's now work on the hypothesis that it
is, and Mr Green, continue.
MR GREEN: On that basis, what this shows is that there were
two entries with the same JSN number presented. The
second one should have been rejected because the
database should not accept data from duplicate JSN
numbers --
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. -- but in fact what's being said here is the data had
nonetheless been committed to the database when it
should not have been?
A. That's what I cannot understand, because the Oracle
database -- since the JSN is part of the primary key
into the message table, I cannot see how an Oracle
database would allow that to happen.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Because the fact it has accepted one
means it wouldn't accept the other?
A. Correct, that's the whole --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: That's how it is supposed to work.
A. The primary key in the Oracle database is there to say
"this is the one and only record" and trying to
overwrite that would be rejected by the branch database.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: But if this is right -- and this is
obviously something I will decide in due course after
hearing the experts, but if this is right, that doesn't
appear to have happened.
A. That would have to be a bug in Oracle, and it was
certainly not the bug that I was looking -- it was not
the bug that I was looking at for the red alert.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, all right.
MR GREEN: This is a different one?
A. If this in fact happened as written down here then it
would have had to have been a bug in Oracle and
I certainly don't remember any such bug.
Q. Let's move forward if I may --
A. Sorry, could I just bring your attention to the line
which says:
"I have requested for the journal table dump, to
check whether duplicate JSN entries exists in the table.
But from the DB dump, I couldn't find any duplicates."
I see that as highly significant.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Can you just tell me where that is?
A. Sorry, it is just above 2010-03-05 -- sorry, 15.05.
15.05.18, it is the two lines just above that.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm struggling, I'm afraid.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, it is halfway down the big
yellow box.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I was going to say, let's start with
a colour.
A. Sorry, I'm just seeing all of this in green.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Okay.
A. So if we go down to the line --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Which box? The big box at the bottom?
A. It is the big box which starts on -- 15.35.54.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Got that.
A. If we carry on down, the next line with a date on it is
2010/03/02, two chunks up from that it says:
"I have requested for the journal table dump, to
check whether duplicate JSN entries exists in the table.
But from the DB dump, I couldn't find any duplicates."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then "Even I have requested ..." is
that "OSR logs"?
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And OSR stands for?
A. It is online service routing, it is part of the BAL. It
is effectively a synonym for the BAL.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then does it say:
"I didn't get any clue on the request ... I could
only able to see the following in the osr.log file."
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And do I take it that the code -- or the
language that follows after that is what the OSR log
file would say?
A. The OSR log is saying that there was a basket settlement
transaction, it has timed out but is executing, so there
was an attempt to write a message to the BRDB, but it
has timed out.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And am I right that everything on those
two and a half lines that starts with 2010-03-02 appears
to be an extract from the OSR log?
A. That -- yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: From the use of the words "The
following", in the preceding --
A. Yes, that's a fair summary, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Thank you very much. Mr Green.
MR GREEN: Could we just go over the page to follow that
through to give you context {F/590/10}. You can see
that what's being looked at is -- you see the words
"I suspect" at the top:
"I suspect there must be something gone wrong with
this request ..."
Identifying the request:
"~... unfortunately no clue on this. I am not sure
why this might have happened. Normally, since this is
a retried one it should have failed at the Journal
filter stage."
So there's a retried transaction which should have
failed at the journal filter stage.
A. I think we're getting into fairly complicated territory
here, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think the whole case is fairly
complicated territory.
A. Sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: But I think I can follow it.
A. Fine. It is quite a normal situation -- or it will
happen that you will get the same message come from the
counter to the BAL, because something has gone wrong if
the counter is retrying whether it's a manual
button-press to say please retry this, or it is an
automated press, the same message will come up to the
BAL, the BAL will say: I have had this message before,
the answer last time was this, it will send the same
response back down and that should take care of
situations where you are having to retry because
something has simply failed on the comms channel.
In this situation the symptoms, as I'm reading them,
are that because there was a bug in Horizon and this is
in the new system, it was pretty early days of the
Horizon Online, because there was a problem, we had
something coming through which got through the journal
filter but then failed at the branch database and so
therefore, as far as the branch database is concerned,
it has not happened.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I understand that. I think what
Mr Green is putting to you is that this shouldn't have
got past the journal filter.
A. It's a bug, so certainly the way that the system should
have worked, a JSN -- the same JSN coming up would be
just a simple repeat of the message for -- because there
was some sort of glitch.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. Over to you, Mr Green.
MR GREEN: And just to clarify a small point on that: is it
fair that this box read as a whole shows that the person
looking into it was surprised that the second lot of
data had got into the BRDB, but there appeared to be no
duplicate JSN entry found in the JSN dump?
A. My Lord, you couldn't have two records in the Oracle
database with two JSNs unless there is an Oracle bug.
Q. So that's what they were looking for because the
duplicate -- there were two lots of data had been
entered in, so they looked to see if there had been
a duplicate JSN entry to try and find that out?
A. Somebody may have been trying to look for a duplicate
JSN entry. I can't really comment on what the guy was
doing at the time who was trying to investigate. I am
simply asserting that barring an Oracle bug, which would
have been huge, you cannot have two entries with the
same JSN.
Q. Let's move forward please now. You will be pleased to
know I think we only have two more PEAKs to go just by
way of illustration. {F/611} please.
So this is just moving forward in time, we are now
in April 2010, so this is a month after the acknowledged
balancing transaction that you have referred to in your
statement, yes?
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And we can see the problem there in the summary is FAD
code "314642 unable to rollover".
A. Yes, my Lord.
Q. And this is PEAK 0197592 and if we look just below the
second equals sign in the box you will see:
"When rolling over and doing branch trading
statements site gets message - unable to connect to data
centre."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And then there is a discussion that we see at 11.42 at
the foot of {F/611/2}. This is Anne Chambers and if we
go on to the next page {F/611/3}, you can see the third
paragraph she says:
"The bal osr log shows an exception while executing
statement insertOpeningBalanceForRollover ...
"I suspect this may be because there is already
a single entry in BRDB_SU [stock unit] _OPENING_BALANCE
for DEF TP 12 BP 1 [trading period 12, balancing period
1] inserted during migration. The entry is for cash,
zero value.
"I'm wondering if this branch could be sorted out by
changing the TP in BRDB_BRANCH_INFO (this would have to
be done by OCP by development/ISD). The PM already has
several printed copies of the TP1 11 BTS. From the logs,
I can see that suspense and cash/currencies awaiting
collection are all zero -- so no office opening figures
are required for TP 12??
"This needs looking at urgently for a workaround for
this branch, and longer term to see if this can be
avoided at other migrating branches."
So that's the context, isn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. If we look at 14 April 2010 at 1 o'clock and 9 seconds,
you see Gareth Jenkins again:
"I've had a look at this PEAK and agree that we need
an OCP to tidy up BRDB to ?un-stick? this Branch. Note
that what I am proposing here is slightly different from
what Anne has suggested above.
"What we need to do is the following:
(I know the SQL is wrong, but BRDB Host team can
correct it and fill in the gaps)."
So just pausing there, he doesn't seem to be going
to use the template SQL code that had already been
prepared at this stage, because he is going off piste
a bit in some sense here, isn't he?
A. He is -- the balancing transaction tool is designed, or
is intended to introduce the balancing part of a double
entry item. This is not, in my mind, a double entry
item. This is the opening balance for a trading period,
or for a period --
Q. Yes.
A. -- and there is no second entry to it, there is nothing
to balance that against. The only thing you could
balance it against would be the closing balance of the
previous thing. The way the system is designed, this is
a number in a table which represents the opening balance
of a particular period.
Q. Yes. So he is using SQL code to set that correctly so
that the problem we have seen above can be overcome at
rollover?
A. Technically what is about to happen is an item is going
to be deleted under careful -- so an entry in the branch
database is about to be deleted.
Q. Yes, the --
A. It is not transaction data.
Q. Yes, I think there are two things that are happening,
just to be absolutely precise. One is an update to
a stock unit entry, yes, which we see at the fourth
paragraph at the top of the page? There's there are
a single entry inserted during migration, this is for
cash zero value, so it looks like there's a stock unit
entry being updated in number 1 and then a deletion to
that opening figure of cash, is that right?
A. That's what that's saying, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And the second one is in respect of
trading period 12, I think.
A. The second one is to remove an item which is saying it's
the cash position in trading period 12, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The first one is in respect of trading
period -- is setting it to trading period 11?
A. Yes, I must admit I hadn't sort of picked up on that
nuance, but that would be saying that this is
effectively a flag to say, or an indication as to
which -- where you're at with that particular stock
unit.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm not making any findings or anything,
but it's not exactly a nuance, is it, if they're two
different trading periods?
A. Oh, sorry, no. I must admit I had missed in my sort of
reading through this that there was a problem with
a stock unit being flagged as being in period 12.
MR GREEN: Can we move on now please to {F/594}. This
is October 2010. It is PEAK number 0195962.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I wonder if we could keep the murmuring
backstage down a little bit please. Carry on, Mr Green.
MR GREEN: Thank you very much, my Lord.
This is later on in 2010, and if we look halfway
down underneath Gareth Seemungal's name we can see that
it appears to be created -- or the Impact statement is
set at August 2010 and we can see underneath from the
progress narrative that the actual PEAK is opened
in March 2010. Do you see those two dates?
A. I do.
Q. So this spans across the period we have been looking at,
yes? And what's said there is:
"The proposed fix would correct and update the BRDB
transaction correction tool templates, making it less
likely that mistakes will occur when SSC are trying to
resolve problems with transactions in BRDB."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we go down to Cheryl Card, 12 March 2.04.46:
"The Transaction Correction tool has now been used
in live. The templates for use with this tool need to
be updated to correct some details. Gareth Seemungal is
aware of the corrections needed."
A. Yes.
Q. Were you aware when you moved to Fujitsu what changes
were being made to the templates for this tool or not?
A. No.
Q. If we look at the bottom box, "Fix impact", if you look
at "Impact on user", well, let's look at "Impact on
test", first:
"Regression test ... with the new templates would be
required and necessary as this tool directly inserts
individual records into the branch database transaction
tables ..."
Yes?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: What type of file is a .sh file?
A. Sorry, which line are we at?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The one which says "Regression test
of ..."?
A. Sh -- I think it is a shell script.
MR GREEN: "Impact on user:
"Benefit of making the fix."
If you go over {F/594/2}:
"Corrects and updates the [transaction] correction
tool templates, makes it less likely that mistakes will
occur when fixing/resolving problems with transactions
in BRDB."
And then "Impact on operations":
"Benefit of fix that may not be visible to end user.
"SSC will be able to fix BRDB transactions quicker
and with more confidence."
Under "Risks":
"SSC will have to make a note of the shortcomings of
the existing templates and alter accordingly.
"What are the risks of this fix having unexpected
interactions with other areas?
"Possible, if the templates are incorrect then
branch totals, [transactions] ~... would be
incorrect - hence the required regression testing."
So that's the reason the regression testing is being
undertaken, to try to avoid unintended consequences of
the use of this tool. That's right, isn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. What this shows us is that the continued use of the tool
was at least anticipated at this time otherwise there's
no point in updating the templates.
A. Agreed, yes.
Q. Can we look at {F/768} please. This is PEAK number
0208119 and you can see this is in 2012 and if we go --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, the target date is 2012.
MR GREEN: Sorry, your Lordship is quite right. The target
date is 2012. If we look at the progress narrative, it
is created in February 2011, so again, spanning across
the period that we have been looking at.
Now, can we go down please just to get some context,
can we go please to page 4 {F/768/4} and if we look at
the second box, do you see the second paragraph there:
"The SSC role has execute permissions to the
Host-Dev delivered packages mentioned in the PEAK and
resource, monitor (and hence connect and select any
table) and select any dictionary."
Now, pausing there, a select permission is not the
same as an insert, delete or update permission, is it?
A. That's correct.
Q. Now, if we go up please to page {F/768/3} and look at
the bottom of this, this is 30 September 2011:
"As per the previous PEAK comments, the role
'APPSUP' is extremely powerful and should only be used
under extreme circumstances and under MSC supervision.
As such the Branch Database design was that 3rd line
support users should be given the 'SSC' role which is
effectively read access ..."
That's the select table and catalogue, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. "SSC team members should only have to ..."
It looks as if it is access but it has got
a little --
A. Yes.
Q. "... [access] BRSS for normal support investigations,
unless the information has not replicated in time. SSC
should only given the optional 'APPSUP' temporarily ...
if required to make emergency data amendments in BRDB
live."
A. Correct.
Q. So pausing there, what was meant to happen was that SSC
should only be given the optional APPSUP role
temporarily, yes?
A. That's right, yes.
Q. And if we go up, please, to page 2 {F/768/2}, you can
see Anne Chambers, halfway down the page -- do you see
Anne Chambers?
A. I do.
Q. You know she has been involved in a lot of these PEAKs,
hasn't she?
A. She has, certainly.
Q. And she is writing to Andrew Gibson; who is he?
A. Andrew Gibson is the guy in Ireland -- I can't remember
his exact title, but he is certainly a key person in the
operations area.
Q. And what she says is:
"Unfortunately development write their scripts
explicitly to use SSC. So I think we're stuck with it
unless they deliver new scripts (which would not be
a popular or quick option).
"When we go off piste we use appsup. Can we have
both??"
Do you know from your knowledge what she meant by
going off piste in that context?
A. It would be having to fix a problem that is not catered
for by a script that is available to these people.
Q. Do you know that, or are you speculating?
A. I'm very confident in that.
Q. Finally in relation to these matters, you are aware that
Ernst & Young in 2011 expressed concern about
permissions -- privileged access permissions?
A. I am.
Q. And that was at the end of -- the Opus date on that
document is 9 December 2011, yes? And just pausing
there, that is a very proper point for someone auditing
these sorts of issues to be concerned about, isn't it?
A. Absolutely.
Q. I won't take you to it, but that letter is at {F/869}.
If we now turn please to {H/196/9}, this is a part
of a letter of 11 February 2019 and is from Wombles to
Freeths and this user IDs point is being dealt with at
paragraph 8.2 onwards:
"We have taken further instructions from Fujitsu in
it respect of additional USERIDs in your schedule and
set out descriptions of each user below ... there are
some usernames that: 1) do not exist today and never
existed in the past as far as Fujitsu are aware. These
are identified in the classification column of the list
as 'unknown', and 2) do not exist today but did exist in
the past."
So let's just take this in stages, if we may. We
can see COBEN01 is Cath Obeng but she also has
a different entry below. And she is "Person-SSC", yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And we can see a number of "Person SSC"s. And then if
we go halfway down we can see Andy Gibson is "Person-POA
UNIX". Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And we can see that Ed Ashford is also "POA UNIX" on the
next page, {H/196/11}, four down.
A. Yes.
Q. We can see at the bottom of the page Paul Simpson. If
we go over the page {H/196/12}, we can see Paul Stuart
and Wayne Calvert, halfway down, "POA UNIX", and if we
go please to page 14 of that letter, so two
pages further on {H/196/14}, the explanation is given:
"In respect of SSC user privileges, SSC users ..."
That's "Person SSC":
"... will typically have the following
privileges ..."
And then we can see what's said there. For example
at 8.6.3 a "Select" privilege. But if we go to 8.7
{H/196/15}:
"In respect of POA Unix user privileges, POA Unix
users (those identified as 'PERSON - POA UNIX' under
classification) will typically have the following
privileges/roles."
And 8.7.7 is:
"Granted the 'UNXADM' role which contains the
following role:
"(a) granted the 'DBA' role. This is an Oracle
supplied role for use by database administrators ...
lots of privileges are granted to this role so users
have the ability to update/delete/insert into any of the
branch database tables."
A. Yes.
Q. You would agree that those people have the role which
allows them privileges to update, delete, or insert into
branch database tables whether they are using the
correction tool or not?
A. Those people could log on to the database and do an
awful lot of damage.
Q. And the only audit of that that we have prior to 2015
was log on and log off; that's correct, isn't it?
A. Correct.
MR GREEN: My Lord, that's the end of that section of the
cross-examination. Would that be a convenient moment
for a break?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: All I have left to deal with is Mr Godeseth is
the bugs.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Okay. We will have ten minutes.
Mr Godeseth, another short break.
A. Thank you, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: If you could come back at 11.50, same as
before, but you know the form: don't discuss the case
with anyone.
(11.41 pm)
(Short Break)
(11.51 am)
MR GREEN: Mr Godeseth, I would now like to deal with the
key bugs that you deal with in your second witness
statement, if I may, at paragraph 3 at {E2/7/1} you
explain that this witness statement is prepared in
response to the witness evidence submitted by the
claimants and the report submitted by Mr Coyne. Is that
right?
A. Yes.
Q. And at the end of paragraph 3 you say you have consulted
with various colleagues and you have identified them
below.
Mr Bansal was involved in problem management; was he
involved in these bugs, do you know?
A. I certainly haven't spoken to Steve about any of these
bugs.
Q. You haven't spoken to him?
A. No.
Q. Let's look at Callendar Square, which you deal with from
paragraph 12 onwards at {E2/7/3}. And you say at
paragraph -- you are dealing with this in the context of
the trial of Seema Misra which you have referred to at
paragraph 7, because you are responding to
Mr McLachlan's witness statement as well, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And at paragraph 8 you say:
"I understand from Post Office's solicitors
that ..."
So some of this is just what you have been told by
Post Office's solicitors?
A. Absolutely, yes.
Q. And at 8.3:
"Post Office was represented [in that case] by
Cartwright King ~..."
Who informed Post Office's solicitors in turn about
what you then say at 8.3, that's correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And you didn't really know about any of that yourself?
A. No.
Q. You have just effectively been asked to put it in your
statement. And at paragraph 10 {E2/7/3} you say you
understand from Gareth Jenkins, halfway down:
"... that Professor McLachlan requested information
that was not necessary and/or obtainable."
That's what Mr Jenkins told you about what
Professor McLachlan had requested in that trial? You
didn't have any knowledge of it yourself?
A. The Misra trial -- I was in -- sorry, I was in Fujitsu
so I have -- we would have had fleeting conversations
about it but it was certainly not going down into any
detail at that time, but I do remember the -- I do
remember that we had been asked for an awful lot of
information.
Q. But the characterisation --
A. And, you know, specifically the fact that people were
wanting to keep the old Horizon system which just wasn't
a viable option.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: What do you mean "keep"?
A. Basically to have a Horizon system up and running, an
old Horizon system up and running, so that people could
go and try to play with it to replicate errors or
whatever.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So you mean retain at least one part of
it so that it would be available --
A. And --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Will you just let me finish.
A. Sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: When you say keep, you don't mean keep
it for use across the network?
A. Certainly not, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: You mean in respect of an operating
version that was still available to be inspected?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right. And in your view, that wasn't
viable?
A. You need to go beyond the counter to supporting
components behind it in order to have anything that is
likely to be of any use in trying to sort out how the
whole system works, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right.
MR GREEN: To your knowledge were there other requests made
by Professor McLachlan for information, or is that not
something you know about?
A. I don't know about the detail of that certainly.
Q. But what you do know you've got from Gareth Jenkins
there, that Professor McLachlan requested information
that was not necessary and/or obtainable, that's what
you've got from Gareth Jenkins?
A. Yes.
Q. If we go to paragraph 12 onwards, you are specifically
dealing with Callendar Square, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And you very fairly say that you don't have first-hand
knowledge of the issue, yes?
A. Correct.
Q. But you say you have reviewed the documents relating to
the issue and discussed it with Gareth Jenkins.
A. Yes.
Q. So you have both undertaken a review of the documents
and spoken to Mr Jenkins, that's correct?
A. Yes.
Q. That's what you say.
A. Yes, yes, I have certainly spoken to Gareth, but -- and
I have re-clarified a couple of things just to make sure
that my understanding was correct.
Q. Let's just start with Callendar Square. Just very
briefly, if I can take these reasonably quickly,
firstly, it is a Legacy Horizon problem not
a Horizon Online problem?
A. Correct.
Q. Secondly, it was a problem with Riposte?
A. Correct.
Q. Thirdly, it is sometimes referred to as the Riposte lock
or unlock problem?
A. Yes, I'm happy with that, yes.
Q. And, fourthly, it affected balancing in branches?
A. It could affect balancing in branches.
Q. And let's start, if we may please, at {F/243}. This is
the KEL ending in 1359R and we can see that the KEL was
raised on 24 November 2000. Do you see under the
"Raised" --
A. Yes.
Q. And you see it says "Time out waiting for lock agents
and correspondence"?
A. Yes.
Q. If you look under "Solution - ATOS":
"Needs investigating ... if we get an occasional one
of these events, when Riposte is busy (such as Riposte
starting up which was the occurrence on the 04/04/2003)
then this can be ignored. The original error type that
this call was raised for was when the Riposte service
hung following archiving and continuously output these
messages."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. This is a type of problem that could arise with Riposte
lock agents, yes? And on the face of --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: You are moving on before you got
an answer.
A. Sorry, my Lord, yes.
MR GREEN: I thought I heard him say yes.
And on the face of this, what's being said is if we
get an occasional one of these events, this can be
ignored.
A. Yes, an occasional time out when one thing is trying to
talk to another is something that you could say is okay,
but that's a highly subjective thing because you have to
work out what "occasional" means.
Q. Okay. Let's go forward to {F/565} please and look at
page 2 {F/565/2}. And if we look at February 2003, this
is the J Simpkins 338Q KEL.
A. Yes.
Q. And if we look at February 2003:
"We are seeing a few of these each week, on
Wednesdays during balancing. This can lead to problems
if the PM is balancing on the counter generating the
events, as it may not have a full view of transactions
done on other counters. PC0086212 sent to development."
And then if we look at June 2004 further -- this is
a year and a bit later on:
"This event can also give rise to Transfer problems,
where the eventing Node was not replicating and so
allowed Clerk to Transfer in ... of a [transaction]
which had already been TI [transferred in] on another
Node for the second time or an Existing Reversal ..."
Now, do you know if on the occasion being referred
to there, there was a discrepancy in the branch or not?
A. I don't know, my Lord.
Q. It's not apparent from this KEL anyway. Do you want to
go over the page {F/565/3}:
"This problem is still occurring every week, in one
case at the same site on 2 consecutive weeks."
It doesn't actually tell us whether there is
a discrepancy at the branch, does it?
A. No.
Q. And this final entry of September 2005 is actually the
Callendar Square branch so we can see that although
Callendar Square experienced this bug in 2005, the
genesis of it appears to go back to February 2003 and
similar lock agent problems back in November 2000, is
that fair?
A. I think that's fair.
Q. And if we go forward, please, to another KEL at {F/354}.
This is raised in June 2004:
"Transfer in accepted Twice, thus causing
a Discrepancy".
Now, we saw in June 2004 that there was a problem of
a duplicate transfer in on the other previous KEL,
didn't we, and this seems to be the June 2004 branch
referred to in the previous KEL. It says under
"Problem", discrepancy of £22,290. Do you see that
figure about five lines down?
A. Yes.
Q. So that's the discrepancy. Then if you look under
"Solution", it is:
"~... currently with [Escher] for investigation."
A. Yes.
Q. Yes? At the end of that solution. From this KEL we
don't know if this problem was sent to Escher in 2004
when it was first raised, or some time thereafter,
or October 2006 when this KEL was last updated, do we?
A. I don't know, I don't know when it was actually sent to
Escher.
Q. You can't tell from the KEL?
A. No.
Q. And then if we look at the Callendar Square branch
itself more closely, {F/297}, this is PEAK 0126042 and
you can see the Callendar Square branch FAD code of
160868.
A. Yes.
Q. And the problem is in the summary, just after the FAD
code:
"SU cash amounts vary on counters."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we look -- we can see first of all
15 September 2005, there's a call from Alan Brown. If
we go over the page {F/297/2} and it is the fifth box
I think, 15 September 2005 at 16.12.27. Do you see
there:
"Due to the Riposte errors on 14/09/05 from 15.30
onwards ... messages were not replicated on counter 3.
As a result, 3 transfers in to stock unit AA were done
twice, initially on other counters then again on counter
3. The transfers in were for ..."
And we can see the figures there:
"This has resulted in a loss of 3,489.69 in CAP 25
to the outlet, which POL may need to correct via an
error notice."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And then underneath that:
"Phoned the PM to explain what the problem was. He
is concerned about other transactions which he has input
twice (3 Giro deposits and another cheque) because of
the replication problem. Have advised him to contact
the NBSC as this is a business issue."
Now, it's clear that there is an underlying -- well,
we know the Callendar Square bug is a bug, don't we?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we move forward please to {F/298}. This is PEAK
0126376, and we can see it's the same FAD code, 160868,
and over the page on page 2 {F/298/2} he has called back
on 21 September 2005 at 17.09 and if you look under --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: 21 September at when? 17.09?
MR GREEN: At 17.09, just the top of the page.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: "Information: pm experienced similar problems
last week and wants us to investigate why this is
happening.
"PM stated he has not had any disconnected node
messages or any online issues."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And immediately below that, information at 5.14:
"Another transfer of £45.40 approx."
And then if we go down further can you see:
"This transfer appeared on both nodes 3 & 4."
A. Yes -- sorry, no.
Q. You can see "Transfer out - node 2", and then we go
below that to "Transfer in node 3 & 4"?
A. Yes.
Q. And then that tells us -- that's the information to
which the observation "This transfer appeared on both
nodes 3 & 4", is made?
A. Yes.
Q. And:
"When clerk accepted transfer in it accepted it.
After she had accepted it she went back into transfers
and node 4 transaction for £608.13 appeared."
So I think this is actually an assistant at the
branch, but it's the same branch.
A. Yes.
Q. And if we look on page 3 please {F/298/3},
22 September 2005, 16.13.08, which is about four down
from the top -- five down from the top.
A. Yes.
Q. Cheryl Card:
"This is another occurrence of last week's
problem ..."
With a PEAK reference there:
"... where messages were not replicated due to
Riposte errors. Last week the PM did some duplicate
transfer in transactions which caused reconciliation
errors - fortunately this week he has not done so. The
PM wants to know why these problems have occurred twice
within 2 weeks. I will pass the call to development for
comment."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And you can see there that the -- it is a pending
incident, yes? Category 40, "Under investigation"?
A. Yes.
Q. If we move forward, please, to {F/300.1}, this is now
from the SPM's point of view what's happening and he is
actually getting some support on this particular one
from his manager apparently here. There are visits
noted at 20th, 21st and 28th September 2005 and if we
look at page 2, please, {F/300.1/2} you can see under
"Expand on any letter requested ..." can you see:
"This office had severe problems balancing on [week]
25, resulting in a shortage of £6,414.46. After
checking various reports I am satisfied that the error
is made up of ..."
And they are then broken down carefully there and
you can see that the SPMR is saying there is a Horizon
software problem and so forth, giving the history, also
a problem with transfers from one stock to another, they
have doubled up. Then speaking to the Horizon support
centre at the bottom of the page. If we go over the
page please {F/300.1/3}:
"They told the SPMR that they would report to NBSC
that they had identified and rectified the problem and
that the amount could be held in the suspense account.
However, as part of the shortage relates to transfers,
and no error notice will be issued, then the
Suspense Account Team are not prepared to authorise the
entry."
So it wasn't easy for the subpostmaster, was it, you
can see here?
A. No, indeed, a horrible position to be in.
Q. And we can see the concern about follow up if you look
at the penultimate paragraph:
"No follow-up was received from Service Support
regarding this call."
Now that's the Horizon service desk, isn't it?
A. It would not be Fujitsu. Service Support, I think,
would be a Post Office business function.
Q. Was it? Okay, thank you.
Let's move forward please to {F/301.2}. This is
another log, "Area Intervention Manager Visit Log",
dated 7 October 2005, and if we go over the page
{F/301.2/2}:
"Telephoned Alan as requested. He is concerned that
he has still not heard anything regarding the loss that
he is rolling."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. Just tracing through the chronology. If we go to
{F/302} please, this is five days later,
12 October 2005, and if you look on this first page you
will see at 17.26, which is just below the second lot of
equal signs:
"PM is transferring a stock unit from node 7 to node
2, it has been accepted on node 2 but has not been
transferred."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And then at 17.39:
"PM was trying to transfer £2,490 from node 7 onto
node 2. She states that she has accepted the transfer
on node 2 but the system is not showing this.
"On node 7 it is showing pending transfer but it is
not showing on node 2.
"It appears on her transfer sheet as completed."
So that would be very anxious-making for the SPM,
wouldn't it?
A. Agreed, yes.
Q. If we go to {F/310.1/2}, 4 November 2005, page 2 please.
"Spoke to Alan about the ongoing issue of his
Horizon problems. He now has received the error notice
for the Girobank duplicate transactions. This still
leaves a loss of around £3,500. I told Alan that this
was still being investigated and as soon as I had some
news I would get back to him.
"Alan worried about this, because he has read an
article in the Subpostmaster which makes him think that
he will be held liable, and he has no intention of
making this good. He again said that the transfers had
been sorted, but he needed paperwork to back this up in
order to correct the loss."
Yes? Now, if we go back to the PEAK to see how this
is being dealt with at {F/298/5} please. We are now
at -- this is part of PEAK 0126376, and if we look at
10 November 2005 at 11.58.30, user Jez Murray, do you
see there:
"1. This problem is the root cause of the
reconciliation error closed in [previous PEAK].
"2. Presumably the root cause is deemed to be
software not hardware.
"3. The Postmaster has a workaround in place which
is not to duplicate transactions (eg Transfer In) just
because the original attempts were successful but not
showing on all nodes."
And then 4, you can see:
"POA CS MSU have a workaround in place which is that
if 3 above is not followed and [it] recurs, a BIMS will
be issued advising POL to issue a Transaction
Correction."
Then 5:
"There is no SLT for software fixes as they are
delivered based upon the priority or severity of the
issue and could remain open until both businesses decide
a fix is necessary or the workaround is adequate."
So just unpacking paragraph 5 for a moment, there's
no service level time for a software fix of this type,
is that right?
A. I'm -- it says it there so I'm -- yes, I would -- I have
no reason to doubt it.
Q. Sorry, service level target I should have said.
Now, if we move forward, please, from that being
left as a workaround to {F/312.1}. This is another log
of 167 November 2005. If we look at page 2 of that one
please {F/312.1/2} you can see there are two things
referred to there:
"Discussed ongoing issues of loss due to Horizon
misbalance. SPMR concerned that he has now made
a fraudulent entry in that he has rolled over to the
next trading period and put the loss into local
suspense. He has then gone on to state that the cash
has been made good, which it hasn't. This was done on
the advice of the Helpdesk."
Now, when you were at Post Office were you aware of
that sort of advice being given to people who were
suffering software or balancing problems?
A. No.
Q. 18 November 2005:
"I have contacted Jennifer Robson, who has confirmed
that the loss has to be put into Emergency Suspense.
I have now asked when this will be done as the SPMR is
worried about doing something that is totally contrary
to his contract."
You can understand those worries, can't you?
A. I certainly can.
Q. Now, did any of the Callendar Square matters really
bubble up to you, any of the aspects of this at the
time, or not?
A. I think I was probably aware of Callendar Square as --
but that would have been 2010 when I went into Fujitsu,
so I cannot remember ever having heard of
Callendar Square or Falkirk --
Q. Post Office.
A. -- Falkirk Post Office as an issue before that.
Q. Okay. Let's look at {F/324.1} please. We have 5 and
6 January, it's another log:
"Telephoned the office and Allan said that he was
having problems again with transfers. He has contacted
the Horizon helpdesk who have subsequently come back to
him to say that there is no system problem and that he
should contact NBSC."
Now, the Horizon help desk, was that one run by
Fujitsu or Post Office?
A. My recollection is that the Fujitsu help desk would have
been dealing with hardware issues and the NBSC would
handle the process and business queries, so I think
there was a Fujitsu help desk which was where the
subpostmaster would ring to say he thought he had
a problem with his hardware.
Q. Didn't the Fujitsu help desk also deal with queries
about software problems?
A. Not talking to the Post Office -- not talking to the
subpostmaster, as far as I can recall.
Q. Okay:
"He did this and from what I can understand the NBSC
have told him that he is trying to balance on two
different terminals. Allan disputes this and is adamant
that there is a system error."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, given the history, it's quite likely that there was
a system error, isn't it?
A. I think it's -- it has been established that there was
a bug.
Q. Yes. If we then move forward please to {F/333.1} and we
go to page 3 first, please {F/333.1/3}. This is part of
an email chain and if we look at the email of
23 February 2006 from it Anne Chambers at Fujitsu to
Mike Stewart, you see that halfway down, Anne Chambers
to Mike Stewart about Callendar Square.
A. Yes.
Q. If you look, please, at the second paragraph:
"Haven't looked at the recent evidence, but I know
in the past this site had hit this Riposte lock problem
2 or 3 times within a few weeks. This problem has been
around for years ..."
That's consistent with the related KELs we have
already looked at, isn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. "... and affects a number of sites most weeks, and
finally Escher say they have done something about it.
I am interested in whether they really have fixed it
which is why I left the call open - to remind me to
check over the whole estate once S90 is live - call me
cynical but I do not just accept a 3rd party's word that
they have fixed something!."
Yes? So it had been open, we know, for years as
a known problem affecting sites for years, and Escher
are hopefully fixing it, although Anne Chambers is
doubtful about that, in February 2006?
A. She is cynical, yes.
Q. Yes? She goes:
"What I never got to the bottom of, having usually
had more pressing things to do, was why this outlet was
particularly prone to the problem."
So that doesn't suggest that she gave the problem of
this outlet a particularly special priority to sort out
its problems, does it, because she had more pressing
things than an outlet being affected by significant
discrepancies from a known bug?
A. Yes.
Q. "Possibly because they follow some particular
procedure/sequence which makes it more likely to happen?
This could still be worth investigating, especially if
they have continuing problems, but I don't think it is
worthwhile until we knew the S90 position."
So she doesn't seem to be going to investigate it at
that stage. And then she says:
"Please note that KELs tell SMC that they must
contact sites and warn them of balancing problems if
they notice the event storms caused by the held lock,
and advise them to reboot the affected counter before
continuing with the balance. Unfortunately in practice
it seems to take SMC several hours to notice these
storms by which time the damage may have been done."
Now, this isn't something you knew about at the
time, but from what she is saying there it doesn't seem
that the SMC information "watch out" is getting to the
branches in time, is that fair?
A. That's a fair assumption, yes.
Q. And you say in your witness statement that release S90
was distributed in March 2006. That's paragraph 14.2 at
{E2/7/5}.
A. Yes.
Q. So stepping back, we have had related problems since --
directly related at least since February 2003 and other
related ones we saw in the earlier KEL from 2000, and it
takes them until 2006 to distribute the fix that deals
with it, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. In circumstances where many branches had been affected,
including their branch accounts.
Now, can I ask you to look at {H/2/96} please. This
is part of a letter sent by Post Office's solicitors on
28 July 2016. If we look, this is dealing with
Callendar Square, paragraph 2.1:
"This defect, which was discovered in 2005 and fixed
in March 2006, involved Horizon failing to recognise
transfers between different stock units."
Now, we have seen that it's not correct that the
actual underlying defect was only discovered in 2005,
haven't we?
A. I would agree that the bug underlying it -- the
Callendar Square manifestation was discovered in 2005
but --
Q. The one at Callendar Square?
A. Yes, and I would agree that the underlying bug had been
there for a considerable time, probably since the
Horizon went in.
Q. And if we look at the following -- sorry, if we look at
{H/6/3}, this is part of a letter from Post Office's
solicitors on 11 January 2017 and if we can look at
page 3 of that letter very kindly, if you look at
paragraph 7.8.1:
"The Falkirk/Callendar Square issue was only known
to have affected that one branch."
That's also incorrect, isn't it?
A. Certainly there is a spreadsheet which actually talks
about where we found this lock problem and how many had
had a -- had discrepancies in there -- how many we
thought would have had -- there would have been an
impact of this type.
Q. That's wrong, isn't it?
A. On the face of it, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, you might want to look also at --
it is a PEAK that Mr Green took you to, but he didn't
draw your attention to the entry that I'm going to draw
your attention to, just out of fairness. It is at
{F/298/3} -- actually it starts at {F/298/1} so you can
see it is one of the PEAKs that Mr Green has been asking
you about and he took you to different entries, but if
we go now to page 3 of that {F/298/3} you will see in
the bottom half of the page in the light blue, entry
22 September 2005 from Cheryl Card, and in parentheses
at the bottom of that entry she says:
"A few of these errors seem to occur every week at
different sites."
Does that help you answer Mr Green's question?
A. I think that -- the "timeout occurred waiting for lock",
so this is a generic -- I would read that as a fairly
generic problem which is probably the one which goes
right back to the ATOS KEL -- sorry, the KEL which says
that if you see this occasionally, that might be okay,
but it's really when you get a storm of them that you
have effectively got one counter not being able to talk
to another and that is the underlying technical issue is
that a counter is simply not being able to get a message
across to another one.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Mr Green.
MR GREEN: And I think you fairly accept that there is
a spreadsheet, which we will come to, with a significant
number of branches that were affected by the
Falkirk/Callendar Square bug.
A. Yes.
Q. And that spreadsheet includes more than one entry,
doesn't it?
A. It does.
Q. Let's look at your witness statement, please, at
{E2/7/3}. You say the Callendar Square bug occurred in
2005. It would be more complete to cover the history
that we have covered now, wouldn't it?
A. That's a fair comment, yes.
Q. At paragraph 15 {E2/7/5} you say:
"I understand from Matthew Lenton (Fujitsu's
Post Office Account Document Manager) that this bug
affected thirty branches, resulting in mismatches at
twenty, and that Fujitsu has established this for the
purposes of this statement using the event logs
described above."
Is that really what Matthew Lenton told you?
A. I didn't speak to Matthew about it. I got ... so the
answer is no, that's not what Matthew told me.
Q. Did Matthew communicate directly with you in any way on
this point?
A. I think I got the spreadsheet from him.
Q. Directly from him, or from someone else?
A. I can't remember.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think to be fair, you actually
corrected that number in-chief, didn't you?
A. I did indeed, my Lord.
MR GREEN: Yes, I will come to that.
And just to clarify, is it your understanding from
the information that's found its way to you from
Matthew Lenton that there has been a specific process
for the purposes of your statement of analysing the
event logs historically across all the branches that may
have been affected by this to see how many were?
A. No, the spreadsheet is something that was done at the
time, as I understand it by Anne Chambers, to actually
investigate what had happened when we had had these
locks.
Q. Because the statement there would suggest that we can be
completely confident that Fujitsu have established
what's happened because they have looked at all the
event logs, and that's not right, is it?
A. I am comfortable that Anne will have done her job
correctly and she will have investigated all of those
issues at the time, resulting in the spreadsheet which
I believe we found in Steve Parker's -- he had -- he
still had it in it his audit trail.
Q. I will just put the question one more time: the
statement that's made there is not right, is it?
A. I agree, it's not right.
Q. Now let's look at {F/322.1} please. We can download
that. This appears to be the statement that you have
referred to in oral evidence now but that was not
referred to in your witness statement and we will see in
a minute that the properties identify Anne Chambers as
the author on 22 December 2015 and --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Maybe just pause while we wait for it to
come up.
MR GREEN: Could we just make it a little bit bigger, very
kindly.
Now, this is the spreadsheet you are referring to?
A. Correct.
Q. That you have just told the court about. We located
this and it was disclosed to us on 27 February 2019 and
if we look at the file tab at the top, please, and go
into -- just pause there. Can you see "Created", on the
right-hand side, 22/12/2015 and "Anne Chambers", do you
see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Is that how you identified it was from Anne Chambers, or
did Mr Parker give you an email or tell you about that?
A. Steve -- yes, Steve and I discussed it so I -- I think
I originally got the information that it was
Anne Chambers' spreadsheet from John Simpkins when I was
asking him for -- because I lost my copy of it so
I asked him for another copy and he explained to me that
it was from Anne Chambers originally.
Q. So you have always known that the actual source of the
information that you're talking about in your witness
statement was this Anne Chambers spreadsheet, haven't
you, because you say you lost your copy of it?
A. Yes. I certainly became aware of this spreadsheet and
it was available to me. I at first did not know it was
Anne Chambers who had created it.
Q. Well, let's go to the content of it please. If we look
at the box at the top under D2 -- 2D:
"NB many other branches had multiple events,
preventing replication, but these are the majority of
those which came to PEAK, having either reported
a problem or it caused a reconciliation report entry.
"From Sept 2005, cash accounts were replaced by
branch trading statements and the TPSC256 report was no
longer populated. I can't remember how we then knew
about receipts and payments mismatches and if we would
have picked up on further issues."
You said -- first of all, it's clear that this is
not a document which mirrors or reflects the accuracy
which one might have understood from your paragraph 15;
that's fair, isn't it?
A. Fair comment.
Q. And secondly, you said it's a document she made at the
time, but we can see it was created in 2015 from the
properties.
A. She created it in 2015, yes. Sorry, 2005.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: She created it in 2005?
A. Well, sorry, I can't remember the exact -- I'm accepting
the date of creation that was shown to me earlier --
sorry, it's 2015, sorry -- I had misinterpreted that
entirely. My understanding is that this was created at
the time by Anne Chambers. Sorry, I was misreading that
and seeing it as 2005.
Q. Let's move on to the receipts and payments mismatch bug
if we may now. Let's look please at E2/7 --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Just before you move off ...
(Pause).
Just one question. Was it the number of branches
shown on this document that led to you correcting the
figure of 20 to 19 in your evidence-in-chief?
A. I personally didn't -- I think it was a -- I certainly
did not correct that. We realised that my statement was
out of line with what this spreadsheet said, and so it
was somebody else who noticed it.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Understood, all right.
Right, Mr Green, go on.
MR GREEN: Let's move to receipts and payments mismatch, if
we may. You would fairly accept, I think, that this is
a shorthand for a number of different versions of a bug,
or a number of different bugs that can be helpfully
grouped together, is that fair?
A. I'm trying to get my head into the receipts and payments
one.
Q. Well, it's -- if it helps, it seems to become
a shorthand for a specific bug in Horizon Online which
arose in 2010.
A. Horizon Online 2010, I think was local suspense.
Q. Well, let's just have a look. Your paragraph 36
{E2/7/10} is in the section that begins on the previous
page at {E2/7/9}. You are dealing with --
A. Sorry, yes, it was Horizon Online, yes.
Q. Yes. Just to orientate you, let's go back to your
paragraph 36 {E2/7/10} you say:
"In September 2010 a bug in HNG-X (Horizon Online)
caused a receipts and payments mismatch in some
branches."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Then you say:
"I understand from Gareth Jenkins that the issue was
initially identified as a result of Fujitsu's monitoring
of Horizon Online system events and not as a result of
calls from branches. Fujitsu's Software Support Centre
~... which provides 2nd and 3rd line support, monitors
system events as a matter of course."
A. Correct, yes.
Q. So your evidence is that it arose in September 2010,
yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And Fujitsu identified it in September 2010?
A. I have not checked the detail, but I'm comfortable with
that, yes.
Q. Is this something that you actually know about yourself,
or have you got all this from Gareth Jenkins, as seems
to be the case from --
A. Gareth explained to me how the problem had occurred and
also -- yes, we went through the logic of what was
happening when a branch was going through this sequence
and why there would be a receipts and payments mismatch.
Q. So is it something you actually know about yourself, or
is it only -- is your knowledge derived really from what
Gareth Jenkins has told you?
A. It is knowledge derived from what Gareth told me, plus
further looking at some detail.
Q. And the document you repeatedly refer to, for example,
at paragraph 39, 40 and 41, is 29 September 2010. Let's
look at that. It's at {F/1000}. It is a document
written by Gareth Jenkins, do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we go forward, please, to the document at
{F/1001}, this is the receipts and payments mismatch
issue notes.
A. Yes.
Q. And we can actually see Mr Jenkins' name there, but not
yours?
A. Correct.
Q. You weren't involved in this at the time, were you?
A. No.
Q. And you don't refer to that document, even though
Mr Jenkins would have known about it?
A. Agreed.
Q. And at {F/777}, this is a receipts and payments mismatch
document, Fujitsu document, and you can see the author
is Mr Jenkins again.
A. Yes.
Q. That's not a document that you refer to in your witness
statement either, and this time there's been a BBC
documentary broadcast on Monday 7 February 2011, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So I think that's separate to the later Panorama
programme we get in 2013.
Did Mr Jenkins draw your attention to either of
those two documents that we have just seen to help you
get a fuller picture, or not?
A. No.
Q. No. It's clear who actually knows about this; it's not
you, is it?
A. Gareth certainly understands the detail.
Q. If we can go back to {F/1001}, this appears in fact to
be somewhere between 29 September 2010 and
4 October 2010, this document. Page 1 says in the
second paragraph, underneath "What is the issue?" which
explains that:
"Discrepancies showing at the Horizon counter
disappear when the branch follows certain ~... steps but
will still show within the back end branch account ...
impacting circa 40 branches since migration ... with an
overall cash value of~... £20K loss."
And:
"This issue will only occur if a branch cancels the
completion of the trading period, but within the same
session continues to roll into a new balance period."
Then you see:
"At this time we have not communicated with branches
affected and we do not believe they are exploiting this
bug intentionally."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So this was a known problem, wasn't it? And you can see
Mr Winn of POL Finance is there and Fujitsu are there?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you surprised that this had not been communicated so
people would just be warned about it?
A. There was obviously a fear that subpostmasters may be
looking to exploit this because it gave -- there was
a fear that people could see this as a way of defrauding
the Post Office.
Q. So concealing it from SPMs who were honest was justified
because of the expectation of dishonesty of
subpostmasters in the network, in a nutshell?
A. In my view, this was a decision made by Post Office on
how to manage this particular bug. You could interpret
it the way that you have put it.
Q. Do you agree with the way that I have put it to you?
A. I think I'm agnostic. I can see the -- I can see
a rationale for not broadcasting this, but equally, if
the objective is to be totally open and honest and take
the risk of causing more chaos in the network then yes,
I would have to agree with that.
Q. Let's look at page 2, please {F/1001/2}.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Have you seen this document before
today?
A. I have.
MR GREEN: At the top of the page:
"Note at this point nothing into feeds POLSAP and
Credence ..."
And then if you just look at the end, Credence --
"~... so in effect the POLSAP and Credence shows the
discrepancy whereas the Horizon system in the branch
doesn't."
So there's information in POLSAP and Credence that's
not available to the SPM, isn't there?
A. Yes, that's clearly the case.
Q. And so the branch will then believe they have balanced;
yes? Let's look at page 3 please {F/1001/3}:
"The Receipts And payment mismatch will result in an
error code being generated which will allow Fujitsu to
isolate branches affected this by this problem, although
this is not seen by the branches. We have asked Fujitsu
why it has taken so long to react to and escalate an
issue which began in May. They will provide feedback in
due course."
So given that we are either at the very end
of September or the beginning of October, this document
which you said you have seen before clearly shows that
it wasn't only in September 2010, was it?
A. No.
Q. And therefore the statement in your witness statement at
paragraph 36 that in September 2010 a bug caused
a receipts and payments mismatch in some branches is
materially wrong, isn't it?
A. On the basis of what we have just been through I think
I have to agree.
Q. And you can see that the roll-out is planned for
21 October, yes?
A. Sorry ..?
Q. "~... full roll-out to the network completed by 21st of
October"?
A. Sorry, where are we looking now?
Q. This is on page 3:
"Fujitsu are writing a code fix which stop the
discrepancy disappearing ..."
Do you see?
A. Yes.
Q. "... from Horizon in the future. They are aiming to
deliver this into test week commencing 4th October.
With live proving at the model office week commencing
11th October. With full roll-out to the network
completed by the 21st of October. We have explored
moving this forward and this is the earliest it can be
released into live."
So just pausing there, it has taken since May,
from May to October to be corrected and in the
meanwhile, branches appear to be kept in the dark, at
least up to the date of this document.
A. Yes.
Q. And then what is being considered is which of three
solutions to apply to the impacted branches. The
group's recommendation at the time is that solution 2
should be progressed. Now, just pausing there, do you
know which of these solutions was in fact progressed?
A. My understanding is that TCs were issued.
Q. Let's look at what the considerations were. Option 1,
solution 1 was:
"Alter the Horizon Branch figure at the counter to
show the discrepancy. Fujitsu would have to manually
write an entry value to the local branch account."
Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So this was being openly discussed between Fujitsu and
Post Office, that it was possible to manually write an
entry to the local branch account, wasn't it?
A. Clearly, yes.
Q. "Impact - when the branch comes to complete next Trading
Period they would have a discrepancy, which they would
have to bring to account."
A. Yes.
Q. "Risk - this has significant data integrity concerns and
could lead to questions of 'tampering' with the branch
system and could generate questions around how the
discrepancy was caused. This solution could have moral
implications of Post Office changing branch data without
informing the branch."
So on any view, the moral implications of changing
branch data without informing the branch were recognised
there, weren't they?
A. Yes.
Q. Solution 2:
"P&BA will journal values from the discrepancy
account into the customer account and recover/refund via
normal processes. This will need to be supported by an
approved POL communication. Unlike the branch 'POLSAP'
remains in balance albeit with an account
(discrepancies) that should be cleared.
"Impact - Post Office will be required to explain
the reason for a debt recovery/refund even though there
is no discrepancy at the branch.
"Risk - could potentially highlight to branches that
Horizon can lose data."
That sounds defensive, doesn't it?
A. Agreed.
Q. Solution 3:
"It is decided not to correct the data in the
branches (ie Post Office would prefer to write off the
'lost'.
"Impact - Post Office must absorb~... 20K loss.
"Risk - huge moral complications to the integrity of
the business, as there are agents that were potentially
due a cash gain on their system."
Go over the page -- that appears to be the end of
that solution. Now, this does not suggest, does it,
being open and transparent to SPMs about the problem
with Horizon?
A. Again, if -- I can accept that I can also understand the
reason to want to manage this carefully.
Q. And in fact, this problem became so well-known that in
the end, Post Office did communicate with SPMs, are you
aware of that?
A. No. I -- I will take your word for it.
Q. At paragraph 42, at {E2/7/11}, you said 60 branches were
affected and you said:
"... we can be sure that all instances of the bug
were identified ..."
Yes? That's now been corrected to 62, hasn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. And at paragraph 45 {E2/7/12} you refer to a spreadsheet
of affected branches which we had to seek disclosure of.
That's at {F/754}. If we could just make that larger
please. If we look at the "Affected branches" tab
first, there's a list of affected branches there, and if
we go back to the "Check for duplicate branches",
there's a total at the bottom of 64 but we can see the
number 2 in row 34 and the number 2 in row 41, can't we?
A. Yes.
Q. So if you subtract both those from 64 you get the 60
number in your original witness statement, don't we? Is
that a calculation that you made or someone else made?
A. No, no, I didn't do a calculation to come up with the
60. I was quoting from other people.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Someone just gave you the 60, did they?
A. I thought I was quoting from other people. I -- Gareth
even said to me that in my statement I had said
"approximately 60", so I was not -- clearly I didn't
because the statement here doesn't contain that word.
I had rather hoped it had when this was first brought to
my attention, but no, I certainly did not do any
specific calculation to come up with the 60 that I put
into my original statement.
MR GREEN: Did Gareth explain the change to you from 60 to
62?
A. No.
Q. But how did he come to tell you what was in your
original statement? What was that conversation?
A. I picked up the number -- to be -- my objective in this
was to explain to the court the symptoms of the bug and
how -- the technical aspect of it. I did not pay
particular attention to getting the detail on how many
branches were affected, correct.
Q. Okay. So you have spoken to Gareth since your
statement?
A. I don't think I have spoken to him about this in
particular. I was -- as I say, when Gareth had said
I had originally said "approximately 60" I was thinking
that was quite neat, but that's not the case.
Q. Well, you said "Gareth even said to me that in my
statement I had said 'approximately 60'", so he must
have said that to you after your statement had been
filed?
A. It was a comment in a document that we were exchanging.
Q. But you hadn't spoken to him about remote access since
your first statement?
A. No.
Q. Why have you stayed off that topic with him?
A. Oh, sorry, this was just a comment. We have been
exchanging documents, we have been commenting on
documents, so it was not a particular conversation. It
is merely a case of Gareth had commented on this when it
was pushed back to us that I had originally said 60 and
actually the answer was different.
Q. If we look please at the "Affected Branches" spreadsheet
for a moment please and if you look at line 7, do you
see there minus 777 in July 2010?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm sorry, which line are we on?
MR GREEN: I'm so sorry, row 7.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Row 7?
MR GREEN: 16 July 2010. That's long before Mr Jenkins has
written any notes about this at the end
of September 2010, isn't it?
A. The event certainly happened before Gareth's -- yes.
Q. And presumably at that time the branch has got an
unexplained discrepancy in its accounts, yes? Because
that was the point?
A. The branch wasn't actually seeing the discrepancy,
was it?
Q. There is a discrepancy in the branch's accounts at that
time.
A. Sorry, yes, yes, there has to be, because there's a
receipts and payments mismatch yes.
Q. At paragraph 43 of your witness statement which is at
{E2/7/11}, you say that you understand transactions were
not injected to resolve this problem.
A. Correct.
Q. Can we look at {H/2/25} please, paragraph 5.16.3 says --
if you can see the bottom three lines of 5.16.3:
"As far as Post Office is currently aware
a balancing transaction has only been used once to
correct a single branch's accounts (not being a branch
operated by one of the Claimants)."
And if we look at footnote 57 it says there:
"This was in relation to one of the branches
affected by the 'Payments Mismatch' error described in
Schedule 6."
Does that accord with your understanding?
A. I don't know the detail.
Q. If we look at {H/2/97}, "Payments mismatch" is referred
to there.
A. Yes.
Q. But you don't know whether the balancing transaction was
used in relation to that or not, is that your evidence?
A. I don't know.
Q. And then if we look please at {C4/2/15} -- my Lord,
I will be two minutes, if that's all right --
question 39:
"Please explain the reason(s) why this Balancing
Transaction was made."
And if we go over the page please {C4/2/16},
"Defendant's response 39":
"The Subpostmaster affected is not a Claimant and
the Claimants do not require the information sought in
order to understand Post Office's generic case or to
plead a Generic Reply. Post Office repeats the General
Response. However, the Balancing Transaction was used
to correct an error arising from the 'Payments Mismatch'
problem (as to which, see page 25 of the Letter of
Response)."
And at page 24 of that underlying document it is
signed with a statement of truth, so on the face of this
it is suggesting that a transaction was injected to at
least one account. Are you aware of whether that's
correct or not?
A. I would have to go and check the FAD code of the branch
where I know we did a balancing transaction and compare
it with the FAD codes that you're looking at here.
I haven't done that.
Q. And if they weren't the same, it might appear there was
more than one?
A. If they weren't the same, my interpretation would be
that this statement is incorrect. There has only been
one balancing transaction.
MR GREEN: My Lord, I only have local suspense, briefly, and
Dalmellington bug to go. Is that a convenient moment to
break?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think so. We're going to come back at
2 o'clock, Mr Godeseth, so same form as before, don't
chat to anyone about the case. If you could come back
at 2 o'clock.
(1.02 pm)
(The luncheon adjournment)
(2.02 pm)
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I have received an application,
Mr De Garr Robinson. Do you know about it?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I know that there has been an
application, that is almost all I know.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Has it been served on the claimants?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My understanding is it has, my Lord,
yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Do you know about it?
MR GREEN: My Lord, we have just seen it, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I just saw it five minutes ago. It is
an application for me to recuse myself as being the
managing judge in these proceedings which means
effectively -- and also for this trial to stop.
Although the application says "adjourn the trial",
I think it really means start it again with another
judge.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I haven't seen the application,
my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, no. That's what the application is.
So the practical effects of that are that application
has to be dealt with as soon as possible.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Simply in terms of timetabling, it
presents some difficulties because we're in the middle
of cross-examining a witness, so the options are for
this trial to stop now so that application can be heard
on a day which we will then come on to discuss, or we
finish with Mr Godeseth and then the trial comes to
an end, or is, rather, subject to an interval depending
on what the outcome of the application is, so do you
have any submissions about which of those two courses of
action --
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I didn't appreciate that
those were the options that you would be presenting now.
I do -- entirely without instructions I would say it
would be invidious for Mr Godeseth to remain in the
witness box, as it were, for an extended period of time.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, in principle I agree, but that's
dependent on a number of factors, one of which is how
much longer his cross-examination is going to be.
Mr Green, how long do you think you're going to be?
MR GREEN: I think about 10 to 15 minutes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And how long would your re-examination
be?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: 10 to 15 minutes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right, well, this is my proposal. I'm
going to rise now for ten minutes, so you can take
instructions. If you are minded to persuade me to stop
instantly then you can tell me at 2.15 and I will make
a ruling on that. If you are, in light of the
application, content for Mr Godeseth's evidence to
finish, in other words, it will be brought to an end
with the cross-examination finishing, re-examination
finishing, and any questions from me being dealt with,
we will do that, and then we will address other
logistical issues immediately after that.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, yes.
MR GREEN: My Lord, I'm sorry to interrupt, would
your Lordship be amenable if the applicant in the
application agreed to also hearing Mr Parker this
afternoon so that --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, that depends, because at the
moment the Post Office hasn't necessarily asked for
Mr Godeseth necessarily to be finished.
MR GREEN: My Lord, of course, but I mean --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: On the basis that if the application is
successful this trial will have to be stopped and
restarted, I'm not going to pre-judge the outcome of
that application, but if Mr De Garr Robinson wants to
take instructions on that then he can do that at the
same time.
MR GREEN: Of course.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, so is until 2.15 going to
give you long enough?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I would have thought so, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. If you want any more time
then just send a message. I will come back in at 2.15.
I'm afraid this is going to continue a little
longer, but you've got until 2.15, Mr Godeseth, so if
you can come back to the witness box for 2.15.
(2.05 pm)
(Short Break)
(2.18 pm)
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, we have not been able to make
contact with counsel instructed in the application.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Are you not instructed?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I'm not instructed in the application
at all. My Lord, it is Lord Grabiner from my chambers
who will be acting.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I have of course taken instructions.
The consensus on this side of the court is that without
prejudice to that application, it would be invidious for
Mr Godeseth to be left in limbo for an unidentified and
indeterminate period of time, so I suspect that it will
be common ground on all sides that in fairness to him,
his evidence should be finished.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, as long as that's -- when I said
take instructions, as long as I mean that that's
instructions you have taken from your solicitors who are
in court, then I'm completely content.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, as regards Mr Parker,
pragmatically we are all here ready to ask him
questions. On the other hand, your Lordship may not
feel comfortable dealing with Mr Parker's evidence given
the current state of affairs, and I'm happy to -- I have
no application that you should hear his evidence,
your Lordship won't be surprised to hear me say that.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, but you are effectively neutral, are
you?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I don't want to press upon
your Lordship continuing with his evidence. I know
my learned friend is anxious that he doesn't -- he needs
half a day with Mr Parker and he is anxious not to
lose -- we have already lost 15 minutes. But if
your Lordship were minded to continue with Mr Parker,
given the pragmatic situation we are in, I wouldn't
oppose that. Entirely without prejudice, of course, to
the application.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All of it is obviously without prejudice
to the application.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes, but I keep saying it, don't I.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I was not asking you the question in any
way to either dilute or change whatever the
Post Office's position is on the substantive
application, it was just a matter of trial management.
If we do continue and deal with Mr Parker as well, that
would at least have the advantage that it would
effectively be a clean break at the end of the evidence
of fact.
MR GREEN: My Lord, there is still Mr Membery.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I haven't forgotten about Mr Membery,
but he is not coming on today I don't think, is he?
MR GREEN: Not today, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I will revisit this at the conclusion --
I'm completely comfortable doing it, but I will revisit
it at the conclusion of Mr Godeseth because apart from
anything else, we don't know how long that is going to
take.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, Mr Green.
MR GREEN: Mr Godeseth, can we look at paragraph 46 of your
witness statement at {E2/7/12} please, and this bug
caused entries from local suspense accounts that had
been there in 2010 to be reproduced in two successive
years, yes?
A. Yes, that's right.
Q. And so this was something that persisted for years not
months as a bug, wasn't it?
A. There was data in the system that shouldn't have been
there for a couple of years.
Q. And if we look, please, at {F/1075}, this is a document
that you have referred to in your witness statement.
Now, its author is Gareth Jenkins, isn't it?
A. It is.
Q. And you have referred to understanding various matters
from Mr Jenkins at paragraphs 48 and 54 of your witness
statement. Is it fair to say that you've got most of
your information about this issue from Mr Jenkins?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we look over the page at page 2, please,
{F/1075/2} do you see "The Problem" at 2.2?
A. I do.
Q. And if you look at the screen and I read out the first
line of your 48.1:
"Data in the Branch Database is regularly
archived/deleted when it is no longer required."
There's a difference there because a slash has been
put in instead of "and then", yes? Otherwise the
sentence is identical. Then it says:
"There are different rules for how long different
types of data is retained and when it is deleted."
That is substantially the same, but with some
slightly different words, and we see other features
appearing, for example, at paragraph 50 of your witness
statement, at the bottom of that page {E2/7/13}.
This document has been substantially the source of
that part of your witness statement, hasn't it?
A. Correct.
Q. And if we look at paragraph 48.2 of your witness
statement {E2/7/13}, it says:
"As a result of some changes that were made on
3 July 2011 to the Horizon archiving strategy relating
to Stock Units that had been deleted in a branch, any
branch that deleted a Stock Unit at the end of 2010
which had a local suspense transaction in that Stock
Unit before it was deleted were left in the table used
for constructing the branch trading statement."
Now just pausing there, that's essentially how the
local suspense bug operated, isn't it?
A. The local suspense bug came about because there were
records in the branch database which should have been
removed -- whether you call that archiving or deleting,
they should not have been encountered by this particular
bit of processing.
Q. And this is a good example of how small changes to what
you might term non-transactional data can cause effects
to branch accounts, is that fair?
A. The record here was very much used in constructing the
branch trading statement.
Q. So does that suggest an interface between -- there's
a sort of -- it's not a clean break between operational
and transactional data, is it? There's a sort of
interlacing of the two where data has more than one
purpose.
A. The purpose of this particular record was really to keep
a running total of something, because you cannot go back
to the complete raw data in order to come up with the
branch trading statement, that would be a nightmare, and
so the process that it goes through is that data gets
summarised up into totals on a daily basis and you also
build up things such as suspense values and -- over
a period and then when you are producing the branch
trading statement, these things all get brought
together.
Q. Can I just ask you to look at paragraph 47 of your
witness statement please on page 12 {E2/7/12}:
"The bug was discovered in January 2013 when two
Subpostmasters, who experienced the largest
discrepancies, raised the issue with Post Office.
I understand from Gareth Jenkins that Post Office could
see the impact of the problem in their back end system
and wrote off the discrepancies~..."
The point there is that although it had persisted
for years not months, it was SPMs who drew it to
Post Office's attention and when they did, then Fujitsu
saw it and was able to try and correct it?
A. We became aware of it in 2013, from my understanding.
Q. Yes, because it was raised by SPMs?
A. Correct.
Q. And Post Office had known about it since 2012?
A. I can't comment on that.
Q. Let's move on to the Dalmellington bug please. This was
also known as the Branch Outreach issue and again here
you are heavily reliant on Mr Jenkins who you refer to
at paragraphs 55, 57, 58 and 61 of your witness
statement, is that fair?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you have any first-hand knowledge of this at all?
A. Only the research that I have done through this.
Q. Let's look at {F/1415} please. Do you know who prepared
this document?
A. I don't know who prepared it, no.
Q. Was it Mr Jenkins?
A. I don't know.
Q. Look at page 7, please, {F/1415/7}. So the history of
the Dalmellington bug -- we can see there are 65
incidents of this bug in 2010 and 2011 and they are
broken down there by time, and at the bottom of that you
will see:
"Post Office P&BA (FSC) fully aware at the time of
both Incidents."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And there are two fixes. There's a 2010 fix, and
there's a 2011 fix, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And if we move forward please now to page 8 {F/1415/8}
we then have a period from 2011, six incidents; 2012,
nine incidents; 2013, seven incidents. Go over the page
please {F/1415/9}. 2014, nine incidents; 2015, 16
incidents, and then you will see at the bottom there:
"Jan 2016 Fix to be applied (subject to POL
approval)."
And under all of those years, apart from 2015, the
last bullet point shows zero calls raised with Fujitsu.
Shall we go back a slide ? {F/1415/8} So zero calls
raised with Fujitsu in each of those years. So the
point that someone was making at Fujitsu there was that
Post Office had not raised the matter with Fujitsu so
that it could be corrected earlier. That's the point
being made in that slide, isn't it?
A. I can't comment.
Q. What do you think it looks like?
A. It looks like that.
Q. So there was no root cause analysis by Fujitsu carried
out because they had not been contacted by Post Office
over a period of a number of years, where at least
identified incidents were numerous.
A. I think these incidents came from us going through the
audit trail to identify where there had been duplicate
pouches.
Q. So SPMs were suffering duplicate pouches over a number
of years due to a known problem with the system and
Fujitsu was not informed over that period of years until
2015?
A. As far as I'm aware, the issue was not raised with
Fujitsu until 2013. It is entirely possible that
subpostmasters were dealing with this themselves.
Q. Do you mean not raised with Fujitsu until 2015?
A. Sorry, I would have to refer back to --
Q. If you go over the slide to the next page {F/1415/9} you
will see the one call is in 2015. Do you mean 2015?
A. I couldn't be categorical on when a call was raised.
I haven't seen the PEAK or whatever it was that raised
the call with us.
Q. It does not show that any supposed countermeasures to
ensure the robustness of Horizon as a system were
working, does it?
A. Unfortunately this particular error is not subject to
receipts and payments problems because it could be -- it
could be user doing something twice, it's -- the bug had
the effect of making it look as though a user was simply
doing something multiple times.
Q. Finally, Mr Godeseth, you will be pleased to hear, the
experts are agreed that Horizon has improved a lot over
the years. Would you agree with that assessment?
A. I would say that any system improves with time.
Q. Would you agree with the assessment of that in relation
to Horizon?
A. Yes.
Q. Could you look please at {F/1848.3} to see how incident
management is now being done, and you can see in the
"[Incident] detail reported/overview":
"NBSC called the ATOS service desk and passed on
a call from Woodgate branch who reported an issue with
mismatch data between recept and payment in the Trading
Statement."
Do you see that?
A. I do.
Q. And if we go over the page please {F/1848.3/2} under
"Background", second line:
"The background to this change was a requirement to
remove the 'Top Up' options associated to companies that
should now be branded EE, removing as example the Orange
& T-Mobile options from all the self-service machines
and Horizon counters ..."
Then we go down to the issue:
"There was a human mistake made when undertaking the
change to the reference data for these products.
"The 'front-end' reference was correctly removed.
"The 'back-end' reference was incorrectly removed at
the same time."
At the bottom, final line:
"This would have shown as a mismatch that the branch
had to accept."
That shows us, Mr Godeseth, doesn't it, how branch
data is incorporated into transaction data and accounts
for which a mismatch for which an SPM may be held liable
can arise?
A. If the reference data is wrong you can get a receipts
and payments mismatch.
Q. You mean "Yes"?
A. You can get a receipts and payments mismatch which would
be picked up by our monitoring, yes.
Q. If we go forward please to an example from 27 November
it is {F/1842} and if we go forward to page 2 please
{F/1842/2}, at the top:
"Enhanced User Management (known as Smart ID in
branch network) has been introduced to ensure all
Horizon users are both vetted and have the necessary
training to transact regulated products."
Then if we look at the issue, second paragraph:
"The change was to allow a given EUM user to lock a
counter and then log on to another counter ..."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm sorry, I have lost where you are.
MR GREEN: I'm so sorry, I apologise. On to page 3
{F/1842/3}, the second paragraph on page 3:
"The change was to allow a given EUM user to lock
a counter and then log on to another counter."
Do you see that? And then the middle paragraph on
that page -- in that box:
"This has caused incidents to occur in the live
estate ... if the active user session rolls over the
current stock unit, and a locked session on another
counter attached to the same stock unit is then resumed.
This is because when the locked user session is resumed
the counter is not aware of the rollover and continues
to trade in the old trading period (TP)/balance period
(BP). These transactions are then recorded in the old
TP/BP and so will not appear on the branch accounts,
although they will be successfully sent to the back-end
systems and will be visible in the counter transaction
log for the old TP/BP:
"... as of 22 January 19 this has impacted 19
branches to date over a 6-month period."
That illustrates a different sort of problem that
can arise, doesn't it?
A. It is a new problem, correct.
Q. And it has been impacting branches over a period of
six months we see there?
A. EUM went in fairly recently, so yes, I've got no reason
to disbelieve that.
Q. And finally {F/1848.2}, one from 1 February 2019. If we
go to page 2 please {F/1848.2/2}:
"As part of the Back Office programme to migrate
from POLSAP to Core Finance System (CFS) a data cleanse
was completed on any obsolete item IDs."
Then it mentions Official Postage which would be
ended and then second paragraph in that background box:
"Following the item being reinstated overnight on
the 1st February and being live again on the
2nd February - NBSC received further calls and it became
apparent that the accounting sense being applied at the
counter was positive value not negative value. We spoke
to a couple of contacts at Fujitsu but they couldn't
explain why this was so, we also spoke to Matthew Warren
who advised that we should try reinstating the default
mode".
"What's the issue?":
"When a branch was processing a claim for Official
Postage this was increasing the cash on hand figure
rather than decreasing which could potentially result in
the branch having a discrepancy if not identified."
And if we go over the page please to "Impact"
{F/1848.2/3}, we can see that:
"As of [2 February] 720 branches are impacted
including the live kit in NBSC ..."
Do those sort of problems fairly reflect the
difficulties that people have to deal with at Fujitsu in
the normal course of their job?
A. Whilst I was certainly aware of the EUM issue, this
particular one I've got no real knowledge of, or no
knowledge of.
MR GREEN: My Lord, I have no further questions.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Thank you very much.
Mr De Garr Robinson.
Re-examination by MR DE GARR ROBINSON
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Mr Godeseth, I would like you to go to
a document that Mr Green took you to yesterday at
{F/614}, please. This is a document by Mark Burley.
You will see that it is dated 8 April 2010 and you will
recall that it was the document which charted the
suspension of the pilot roll-out programme for
Horizon Online. Do you remember looking at this
document?
A. I do.
Q. And if we could go to page 4 {F/614/4} you will see that
there were 614 branches live on Horizon, and then on the
third bullet point it says the high volume pilot was
suspended. And if we go on to page 5 {F/614/5}, we will
see:
"All migrations suspended as from 25/03."
There is a reference to the programme support being
on red alert, and then there's a reference you will see
in the third bullet point -- four bullet points down:
"Success Criteria for further migrations under
discussion with Fujitsu to include:
"Period of stable running ... FS Review complete and
key recommendations implemented ... Fujitsu demonstrate
monitoring and alerting."
And:
"All high priority issues resolved or agreed
workarounds in place."
From your recollection, can you remember what the
priority issues were, the high priority issues were?
A. For me, my focus was very much on the Oracle bug, so
I don't have any personal recollection of the other high
priority issues. I was establishing myself in Fujitsu,
I was concentrating on the bug.
Q. And what was the Oracle issue?
A. I can't remember the details of it, I'm afraid, but it
certainly involved nodes of the branch database going
down which had the result that users would see the
message they were unable to contact the database, or,
sorry, the data centre.
Q. That's fine. After you were asked questions about this
you were then shown a PEAK and the document reference is
{F/588}, perhaps we could look at that. This is dated
5 March 2010. You were taken to this yesterday. I'm
not going to ask you any detailed questions on it, you
will be happy to know, but this was -- as I say, this
identifies an error experienced during the pilot scheme
and you were asked a number of questions about it and
you didn't know much because this wasn't what you were
working in it at the time.
Could you explain what the purpose of the pilot
scheme is? Why don't you just roll-out Horizon into all
of the branches all at once?
A. That would be frankly a ridiculous approach because you
had to go through a process of trying out new software
on a limited set of branches so that you can learn from
the experience.
Q. And when you say learn from the experience, what kind of
things do you anticipate might happen during an early
roll-out, even a high volume roll-out of this sort?
A. Well, since I recognise this as the occasion that we
used the branch trading -- sorry, the balancing
transaction, and I have also noticed from my statement
that the balancing transaction was to do with £4,000
being doubled up to 8,000, I think the purpose of
this -- the purpose of the pilot is simply to go through
the teething problems that you are bound to have when
you're introducing a new change.
Q. And the PEAK that we see here and the £4,000 problem
that resulted in the balancing transaction that you have
just referred to, are those the sorts of problems that
you anticipate you might encounter during a pilot scheme
of that sort, or are they not?
A. I always expect to encounter problems in the early days
of any system. I expect to encounter problems
immediately after I have put in a change.
Q. Thank you, Mr Godeseth. Now I would like to ask you
about another document, {F/611}. This is a PEAK you
were taken to today, 15 April 2010. This is also during
the pilot scheme. This is in fact the PEAK that led to
the balancing transaction. I think it is anyway.
If we go to page 3 {F/611/3}, you will see --
perhaps it isn't the balancing transaction one. You
will see that -- halfway down the page, 14 April 2010 at
13:00 hours, Gareth Jenkins says three lines down:
"What we need to do is the following: ...
"1. Update BRDB_BRANCH_STOCK_UNITS where fad_hash =
??? AND Branch_accounting_code = 314642 AND stock_Unit
equals = ?DEF? Setting trading_period to 11."
And 2:
"Delete BRDB_SU_OPENING_FIGURES WHERE fad_hash = ???
AND Branch_accounting code = 314642 AND stock_unit =
?DEF? trading_period = 12."
Can I just ask you to explain what the update
involved?
A. The update would simply change a value in a record from
the 12 to 11, I think in this case, so it would be
picking a record in the branch database which currently
has a value of 12 and changing it to 11.
Q. And that doesn't -- does that have an impact on the
branch accounts themselves, on any branch's
particular -- the values in any branch's accounts?
A. It does -- it most certainly does not impact on the
underlying data. It is used to put values into the
correct bucket.
Q. And what do you mean by "values into the correct
bucket"?
A. A number of transactions -- so the transactions would
not disappear, that's the fundamental point. The raw
data will not disappear. It is whether the three
transactions will appear in TP1, or whether they will
appear in TP2. It is a case of which bucket, which --
ultimately which trading period these transactions would
be accounted for in.
Q. I see. And the "Delete" instruction, what's the effect
of the "Delete" instruction?
A. It will remove a record from the branch database.
Q. And what record was it removing for these purposes?
A. This was removing a record which was an opening balance
for period 12 which happened to have zero in it and --
Q. So with removing this record, what happens to the
balance? What would the balance have been once this
zero record was removed?
A. Well, this was the initial -- this is the initial record
needed for period 12, so the problem that was being
referred to here was that at some point, this record had
been written into the branch database but then the
rollover had not completed, so we were left with
a record in the branch database which shouldn't have
been there -- sorry, it would have been there had the
rollover continued, then it and other records would have
reflected the true position. What happened here was
that for some reason, this record was there -- my
reading of the PEAK says that it was there as a result
of problems or migration, so where branches were being
prepared to migrate from old Horizon to new Horizon,
I think this record was erroneously there.
So effectively when you then came to do a proper
rollover, there was a record there and that confused the
software -- the software had to stop because it found
a record where there shouldn't be one.
Q. And so by deleting that record, what then happens when
you rollover?
A. Once -- then because the record wasn't there, the
rollover can just happen.
Q. Oh, I -- so would I be right in thinking what you're
saying is that the rollover then happens in the normal
way based upon the data from the previous transaction
period as should have happened in the first place; is
that what you're saying?
A. Yes.
Q. I see. Then you were shown the OCP that related to this
fix. It's at {F/616.1}. You have seen this before, OCP
26361, "Branch 314642 unable to rollover", and then
about a third of the way down there's a line which reads
"Steps to implement the fix", do you see that? And the
first step is:
"Logon to BRDB Node 1 as UNIX user 'brdb'."
Could you explain what "UNIX user brdb" means?
A. I don't know any detail, but fundamentally, you're
logging onto the branch database.
Q. And "UNIX user", who would the UNIX user be?
A. Oh, sorry, UNIX user would be one of the guys in
Ireland.
Q. One of the guys in Ireland. So when you say "one of the
guys in Ireland", do you mean members of the SSC, or do
you mean someone else?
A. Someone else.
Q. Well, if we go over the page to page 2 of the same
document {F/616.1/2} about a third of the way down
there's a reference to Ed Ashford at Core Services Unix
Support. Who is Ed Ashford?
A. Ed Ashford is one of the guys in Ireland.
Q. Who are the "guys in Ireland" exactly? Could you just
clarify -- I appreciate that this may not be your daily
fare but~...
A. They are the people who support the hardware, so UNIX is
an operating system so they work at a pretty low level
on the systems.
Q. When you say "low level", I mean what do you mean by
that? Do you mean they have powerful user rights, or
they have weak user rights or ..?
A. They have pretty powerful user rights, but they are
very -- very much driven by process as to how they use
them.
Q. What do you mean by "they are driven by process"?
A. There's complete and utter control on the processes they
go through before they do any of these -- this type of
activity.
Q. Okay, well, if I could ask you to go to your witness
statement, your first witness statement, {E2/1/17}
please. I would like you to look at paragraph 59.1.
You say:
"A limited number of authorised Fujitsu personnel
(I am advised by Jason Muir [at] the Security Operations
team that there are currently 19 at the operating system
layer and 26 at the database layer) who have access
privileges that could be used to edit or delete
transaction data in the BRDB in Horizon Online ..."
Stopping there, were the guys from Ireland amongst
these people that you refer to there?
A. Yes.
Q. I see. So they are privileged users, are they?
A. In my book, yes.
Q. And then you say:
"From the outset, I should make clear that this is
only a theoretical possibility (which would require the
circumstance invention of the controls described
above) ..."
And then you say:
"(a) Fujitsu has no policy, process, procedure or
operational practice that calls for it to use its
privileged access to edit or delete transaction data."
And at (b) you say:
"As far as I am aware, Fujitsu has never used its
privileged access to edit or delete transaction data."
A. Correct.
Q. Might it -- given what you have now seen with this OCP
and the PEAK we looked at before, would you care to
consider paragraph (b) of your witness statement?
A. I think the data that was deleted was not transaction
data.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Oh, I see. My Lord, I have no further
questions.
Questions by MR JUSTICE FRASER
MR JUSTICE FRASER: What sort of data would you describe it
as?
A. As I was -- it is data -- sorry, it is a field where you
are building up a running total, so I would see it as
analogous to -- if you are adding up 300 different
numbers, by the time you get to the end of 100 you might
jot down a total, then you add up the next 100, you jot
down another total. So it is where you are building up
data and this one happens to be an opening balance, but
it's building up data which is going to be used in
constructing the end branch trading statement.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So if I wanted to use a phrase for it
that wasn't "transaction data", what phrase should
I use?
A. I think we have been referring to it as "operational
data" but "operational" has such a wide connotation
that ... there possibly ought to be a different
definition for it.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: A different what, sorry?
A. There possibly ought to be a different definition for it
because equally data in the database which is telling
you which stock unit, you know, what -- which TP you're
in, whether a stock unit is in use, all of those are
operational data which do not go down and impact the
transaction data, so for me, the definition of
transaction data -- I should be able to get from one
opening -- one set of opening figures to the end opening
figures by going back to the transaction data in its
absolutely raw form.
As I said before, that is -- fundamentally that's
not a sensible way to process it, so you do go through
a sequence of adding things together and then you bring
them together to actually get the -- to get to your end
position in a trading statement.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right. I have just got a couple of
questions. I think you have explained at {E2/1/1} -- we
will just go to it, it's the very beginning of your
first statement, your early career. I think when you
were instructing in the Navy for those four years, what
subjects were you instructing?
A. Radar and electronics. Sorry, my Lord, in practical
terms, that was for the first two and a half years.
After that I went off to Bureau West in Devizes which is
where I joined the IT industry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The IT industry. Was that while you
were still in the Navy?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Then you explained about the Impact
system. What was your involvement in that, or Impact
project?
A. I was working with Post Office at the time and I was
interfacing to Fujitsu. I was also interfacing to Xansa
who were writing other components involved in the Impact
programme.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So you were working on the Impact
programme, were you?
A. Correct.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Then if we could call up, please,
{F/322.2/1}. I'm so sorry, I have given you a wrong
reference. {F/432.2}. You will remember we looked at
that this morning.
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: It is an OCP. If you look against
"Extra detail" -- Mr Green took you through this in some
detail already -- but do you see where the new message
is described?
A. I do, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: There's quantity -- the sale value, that
would be in pounds, wouldn't it, or effectively
equivalent to the pounds?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then "PQty", am I right in reading
that as "product quantity"?
A. I don't recognise the P in there, but I think that would
be a fair assumption.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. If every single entry is
a negative, it will depend, won't it, how many entries
there are as to whether that has a negative or
a positive effect because if you multiply two negatives
together you get a positive, or am I being too
elementary?
A. I think this was simply saying that there was an
original message which had the positive values and then
you put in another message which has the negative values
and they will be added together as opposed to
multiplied.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, why would -- if you added quantity
to product quantity, you would get --
A. No, sorry, my Lord, you have -- I think you should see
these as two records, one above the other, and you're
going to add the two records together, so the quantity 1
would be cancelled out by the quantity minus 1, the sale
value 484 would be cancelled out by the sale value minus
484 and so on.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So is that describing what effect the
new message should have rather than what the contents of
the new message would be?
A. I think I would see it more as: this is the record that
I need to put in --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I see.
A. -- to negate the record that's there currently.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So this is the output required
effectively?
A. The output required is all zeros.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. This is the output required from
the message to result in all zeros?
A. Yes, so my reading of this is there is a record in there
already, I need to get rid of it logically, so therefore
I will insert a record which has got all the negatives
and that will make it go away.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Understood. Thank you very much.
Then the next point is at {F/425} we will start at
page 1 just so you can see what the document is. Do you
remember we looked at this document yesterday when we
were talking about --
A. We did, my Lord, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And I think I asked you an Oracle
question about "Insert" at the beginning of a line.
Do you remember?
A. I do.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: If we could look at page 11, please
{F/425/11}. Now, the second paragraph there is what
I asked you a question about, which was where in the
third line it said "It must start with the 'INSERT INTO'
clause", do you see that?
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And I think that's the point that
I asked you about yesterday, wasn't it?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: If we then go down to page 13
{F/425/13}, and maybe increase the size. This I think
is a template for the transaction -- or for the SQL
statement in the transaction file. Does that --
A. Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- look as if it's right?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And what this page and the one I'm about
to ask you on the next page is the template for the SQL
which goes in the transaction file, is that correct? It
seems to be from the top two lines.
A. So we're inserting into a table called "RX cut off
summaries."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, but if you look at the very top of
the quotation which is just after the three lines of
text it says:
"The following SQL is a template for the SQL to be
placed in a transaction file for the~... Transaction
Correction tool ..."
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And effectively the template starts with
the words "INSERT INTO"; is that right?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And if you -- I mean, just in passing,
the oblique stroke and the asterisk at the beginning of
the text and the end of the text just before "INSERT
INTO", those are symbols which mean that the passages
between the two symbols don't form part of the command,
is that correct?
A. I couldn't be categorical on that, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: You don't know if that's right -- would
that be conventional at least?
A. That would seem a very sensible convention, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. If you then go on to the
next page underneath, please {F/425/14} and increase the
size in that. That seems to me to be a continuation of
the sequence which starts on the previous page, is that
correct?
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And where the numerous lines appear
about eight times one after the other "DO NOT CHANGE
THIS VALUE FROM THE ONE SPECIFIED!!!", am I right in
reading those as notes not forming part of the template
because they don't seem to be in the correct language?
A. This to me is an instruction to a user who knows what
they're doing --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Correct.
A. -- to say that the FAD hash has to be -- so you're not
allowed to go in there and change that.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Exactly.
A. You're not allowed to change the branch accounting code.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. So they don't form part of the
template, they're effectively warning -- well, I suppose
they do form part of the template, but they are warnings
to the person putting the information in the template,
aren't they? They're not part of the commands to the
system?
A. Those there are very much warnings to a person who is
going to use it, who is expected to know what he is
doing --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, or what she is doing.
A. Indeed, my Lord. And then this is to make it easy, or
as easy as possible for those people to do the job that
they are intended to do without making a mistake.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes. Right, and then if we could go on
to the next page {F/425/15} and increase it, do you see
there the reference to "bind variables" and the three
bullet points?
A. I do.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Am I right that the bind variables are
also required to be inputted by whoever is it is putting
it together?
A. I'm afraid I don't know, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Do you know who puts the bind variables
in?
A. I don't know who would do that in practical terms, no.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Am I right that somebody would have to
do that though? That's not something that seems to me
to be generated automatically.
A. I cannot see how that could be -- if you read the rest
of the text:
"Substituted with the values of the branch code
argument ..."
That seems -- that to me is telling me exactly as
you are surmising.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, good. I just wanted to check
that. It seemed to me that was what it was doing but
I just wanted to check.
Any questions arising out of that?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, no.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Any questions?
MR GREEN: My Lord, no.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Mr Godeseth, you are now free to leave.
That's the end of your evidence, thank you very much
indeed.
A. Thank you, my Lord.
Procedural matter
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Upon reflection, and the fact it is
after 3 o'clock anyway, I intend not to ask you to call
Mr Parker. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give
some directions in respect of your application --
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- which has obviously got to be dealt
with.
One thing that the email letter that accompanied it
said which I literally received at 1.55 was that a hard
copy of it would be brought to court. Is there a hard
copy for me?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, there is.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Thank you.
(Pause).
I think there might be some exhibits. Is there an
exhibit as well?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I'm sorry. (Handed).
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Thank you very much.
Right, so it seems to me that there are three things
that need to be dealt with in order. One is any
response or responsive evidence by the claimants, if
they oppose the application, which I imagine they will
need some time to decide, the second is service of
skeletons, and the third is a date to hear it.
If it is at all feasible, I would like to hear this
application on the next day of this trial which is going
to be Monday 1 April which -- that's only likely to be
possible if those other two steps, but in particular,
the first of those two steps, can be accomplished in the
time between now and then, so that's really a question
for Mr Green.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, it is.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So Mr Green?
Submissions by MR GREEN
MR GREEN: My Lord, your Lordship won't have seen this
necessarily but there is a difficulty requiring an
earlier step, in our respectful submission.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I haven't. What is it?
MR GREEN: If your Lordship has the witness statement of
Mr Parsons. My clerks have printed this off over lunch
so I'm not sure what order your Lordship's one will be
in, but we have got a witness statement, I think, in
support.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I have a 14th witness statement of
Mr Parsons.
MR GREEN: Exactly. If your Lordship would just kindly turn
to page 6 of that --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I should say, other than reading the
first couple of paragraphs and then the letter and the
draft order, I haven't read this witness statement.
MR GREEN: That's why I'm drawing your Lordship's attention
to it.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Right. Where do we go?
MR GREEN: If we go to page 6.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: The particularisation of the basis of the
application is I think supposed to be set out in
paragraphs 24 and 25 essentially. The first part is to
say that the findings in relation to matters which arose
in the common issues trial:
"... give the clear impression the judge has already
formed a firm view on these matters. It is expected
that this will prevent him from taking an impartial view
on the same matters when they are revisited at the
subsequent trials with the benefit of full evidence and
disclosure."
And then 25:
"The judgment also contains a great deal of critical
invective directed at Post Office, none of which is
relevant to the determination of the common issues.
That too creates a clear impression that the judge has
not behaved impartially. The same can be said for those
parts of the judgment which harshly criticised
Post Office's witnesses on matters irrelevant to the
common issues."
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: And, my Lord, those complaints are wholly
unparticularised, they are serious matters and if we are
going to analyse them and respond to them -- I've never
seen any -- I have not seen very many recusal
applications, but I have not seen a recusal application
as lacking in particularity as this. If there are
specific criticisms of matters in the judgment that are
said to show -- create an impression of your Lordship
not having behaved impartially, any applicant in that
situation must set those out with particularity, for two
reasons: so that your Lordship can fairly consider what
is being said, not in some vague penumbra of complaint
by the losing party, but also so that the claimants have
an opportunity to consider precisely what the basis of
this remarkable application actually is, and at the
moment, we don't actually know which parts of the
judgment they are pointing to.
What is said to be -- what is a fair appraisal of
the credibility of a particular witness and what is
invective? And it's not to be left for us to scrabble
around, as we have had to do on some other things, to
try and work out what's being said, and so, my Lord, at
the moment we're not in a position to form a view on the
application, less still file responsive evidence.
The allegations -- the basis of this application,
which is a serious application to make, and is likely if
not calculated to derail these proceedings, has to be
spelt out with proper particularity before we are in
a position to respond to it, so I would invite
your Lordship to consider directing that that be done
and I would invite your Lordship to do so within
a fairly short time period, because no solicitor signing
a witness statement of this sort could put his name to
an allegation of that sort without having satisfied
himself of precisely the basis upon which it was being
said. So this is not "Oh, I will go away and work it
out now"; this must have been worked out with great care
already, otherwise an allegation of that sort could not
properly be made.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right, well, just before I ask you
for a response on that, Mr De Garr Robinson, what I'm
actually going to do is I'm going to go and read the
whole witness statement, because I think I quite clearly
have explained I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Nor have I.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, you might then also benefit from
having had a chance to look at it.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Indeed.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I will come back in at I think 3.40.
I will take all the papers with me. The only ones that
I will probably have had a real chance to look at in
great detail is the witness statement. I know the
judgment fairly well, for obvious reasons. Then I will
come back, I will hear Mr De Garr Robinson what you have
to say about Mr Green's point, and we will revisit the
whole question of timetabling if I have missed out a
important step which, upon reflection, I decide ought to
be taken. So 3.40.
(3.14 pm)
(Short Break)
(3.44 pm)
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Mr De Garr Robinson.
Submissions by MR DE GARR ROBINSON
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, responding to my learned
friend's submission, he puts his point as a requirement
for particulars. The truth is this is a matter of
argument, and your Lordship and indeed my learned
friend, have already had no shortage of arguments.
There was an overwhelming number of those arguments at
the common issues trial.
It is not necessary for there to be a list of
critical findings in your Lordship's judgment, everybody
knows what those findings are and my learned friend's
suggestion that he needs particulars in order to decide
his position on the application is frankly surreal.
However, my Lord, I do have a proposal which in my
submission will be better than particulars, which is to
order sequential skeleton arguments and I would invite
your Lordship to order that the defendant's skeleton
argument be served by close of business on Tuesday, that
the claimants' skeleton argument be served by close of
business on Thursday, so that everyone is ready for the
hearing that you suggested, that obviously should be
dealt with as quickly as possible, on Monday the 1st.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I'm sorry, when did you say for the
claimants'? End of Thursday?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Thursday.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, that proposal doesn't include
within it provision for any evidence that they might
want to put in?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, that's true.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And I think it is also -- it effectively
takes as read that they are going to oppose the
application.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my learned friend suggested
otherwise, which is why I --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think he said he -- but in a way ...
yes, all right. So you say no need for any evidence in
response.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my Lord, if my learned friend
wishes to put in evidence, he can put in evidence, but
I do respectfully suggest that when he talks about
particulars, he is really talking about argument, and
I have no objection to giving him prior sight of --
I should say the defendant has no objection to giving
the claimants prior sight of their arguments, but,
my Lord, to slow matters down by having the formality,
in my respectful submission, the useless and expensive
formality of a list of points -- I don't quite know what
the particulars would look like -- that wouldn't add to
the efficiency of this process and it certainly wouldn't
add to its speed.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: No, but it is important that other
matters aren't sacrificed in the interests of speed,
given the nature of the application.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Of course.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: If the skeleton -- the defendant's
skeleton argument were to identify in a schedule the
following three points -- because apart from anything
else, I will need to know this at some point: the
specific findings that are referred to in paragraph 24,
the critical invective referred to in paragraph 25 and
the harsh criticisms referred to in paragraph 25, then
that would effectively -- whether it comes in a schedule
to a skeleton, or whether it comes in the 15th witness
statement of Mr Parsons, that would effectively identify
what parts of the judgment were being attacked -- or
were being relied on to found the application.
But let me hear from Mr Green about the sequential
skeleton approach.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, it would, but may I just
mention one thing.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Were an order -- a direction to be
made requiring a skeleton which contains a schedule of
that sort, those things would not be things in relation
to which my learned friend would wish to put in evidence
in response.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I entirely accept that, but what they
would do, for example, Mr De Garr Robinson, just taking
paragraph 24 as an example, they would say "These are
the specific findings which we, the Post Office, says
justifies the suggestion that the judge has already made
a clear -- that justify the clear impression that the
judge has formed a firm view on these other matters."
Now, those passage are going to have to be brought to my
attention at some point.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Absolutely. My Lord, I'm not
resisting any direction of that sort, just to be clear,
but what I am resisting is the suggestion that there
needs to be some further time to allow evidence to be
formulated once these matters are flushed out.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Evidence arguing to the contrary.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I agree with you about that. As
I understand the witness statement of Mr Parsons, which
I have now read very carefully, twice, it is based on
the judgment, number 3 on the common issues, or
certainly that's how it is explained in the actual
witness statement, and insofar as it is necessary to
look at other things, they are things in respect of
which there is a transcript available because they
relate to matters that have happened at an interlocutory
hearing, so there's not going to be any evidential
argument about what actually happened. Is that
a correct analysis?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, all I have done is read the
witness statement in the same way that your Lordship
has.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. Well, I don't want unfairly
to put you on the spot about that.
Mr Green.
Submissions by MR GREEN
MR GREEN: My Lord, I couldn't respectfully disagree more --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: With?
MR GREEN: -- with what Mr De Garr Robinson has just said.
The starting position for any application of this
type is that it must immediately be made on a basis
which clearly sets out, with particularity, the aspects
of the judgment in this case and findings which are said
to demonstrate apparent bias of the court. That is
a totally uncontroversial statement and one that is
not -- a principle that's not lightly to be departed
from. And the reason for that is it affords the party
on the other side an opportunity to consider, with
clarity, whether they wish to resist the application or
not.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: Before they are committed to a 24-hour or 36-hour
or 48-hour window in which to respond to a skeleton
argument, a skeleton argument which has doubtless
already been considered insofar as the matters which
would go into the schedule, and will continue to be
considered without us knowing what those points are all
the way up until Wednesday when it is served and when we
then learn for the first time what the actual basis of
this application is.
My Lord, the reason I say that is this: a finding
which is adverse to a party is not a proper foundation
for an application of this sort.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR GREEN: A criticism of a witness is not a proper
foundation for an application of this sort. And
therefore, it is essential that the applicant in this
application spells out, in every case, what is said to
be critical invective going beyond the bounds of what
a court may properly do without creating the apparent
bias now alleged and what it is -- which findings it is
said or parts of the judgment which harshly criticise
Post Office witnesses on matters irrelevant to the
common issues.
Those matters have been to be spelled out and
my learned friend, Mr De Garr Robinson, has just told
the court that everybody knows which parts of the
judgment he is referring to. If that's true --
I don't -- but if there's any basis for saying that to
the court, then he can write them out in a list and,
my Lord, this application --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, I'm not necessarily sure
Mr De Garr Robinson could write them out in a list
but --
MR GREEN: Sorry, your Lordship is quite right.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- somebody at the Post Office can write
them out. Mr De Garr Robinson has been dealing with the
computer issues trial.
MR GREEN: My Lord, that's a very fair point and I should
observe that distinction, but it doesn't take away from
the fact that whoever has prepared and advised on and
considered whether this is a proper application to make
must have identified what the basis is, so asking them
to spell it out is not a subsequent step, they must have
done that before this could be signed off. This is not
an application for directions or something like that,
this is a very important application and it cannot have
been made without carefully thinking what the elements
in each case are and particularly where it is said that
the criticism, for example, of Post Office's witnesses
on matters irrelevant to the common issues -- that has
to be spelled out too and its basis. It is not
satisfactory, in our respectful submission, for this to
be done the other way round, so that we only find out
after a skeleton argument has been filed in an
application what the basis is and we then have to decide
both whether to resist it and on what basis within
a very truncated time period.
So I would be inviting your Lordship to order
provision of particulars of those two paragraphs, by
list, and an explanation, a proper explanation of the
basis of this application.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, the second of those -- what I'm
minded to do -- and I will explain what it is and
Mr De Garr Robinson can make any submissions about it he
wants to. What I am minded to do is order the
Post Office to provide a witness statement by noon on
Tuesday 26th -- but we can come and discuss the timing
in a moment -- that sets out: 1, the specific findings
in the judgment referred to in paragraph 24 of
Mr Parson's 14th witness statement; 2, the critical
invective referred to in paragraph 25 of Parsons 14; and
3, the criticisms of the Post Office witnesses referred
to in paragraph 25.
Now, in a way, Mr De Garr Robinson, it doesn't much
matter whether that's a schedule -- it would be the same
exercise whether it was a schedule to a skeleton or
whether it was in another witness statement from
Mr Parsons, but I think in the circumstances it should
be in a witness statement.
Submissions by MR DE GARR ROBINSON
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my Lord, I would resist that.
It shouldn't be in a witness statement in my respectful
submission. It's a list of particulars and the
appropriate document would be an order for particulars.
Actually it would be preferable, and more efficient in
my submission, if a skeleton argument were directed
which should have a schedule setting out those
particulars. That would actually be beneficial to --
and more useful for the claimants than a witness
statement or some independent document that goes on --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, I think everyone is agreed there
has to be an identification of them.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: In these circumstances I think it is
best if it is in a witness statement, but if that is to
refer to an exhibited schedule, well that's one way of
doing it. I'm not going to debate it endlessly.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my Lord, could I just address
your Lordship on that.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: There is -- it would put the person
making the witness statement in an invidious position.
I mean, if your Lordship is happy to direct a witness
statement in which a human being has to make a witness
statement saying these things then of course that order
will be complied with.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Why would it put them in an invidious
position?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Well, my Lord, because it will be
a human being criticising a High Court judge for making
findings of that sort. Bearing in mind that the
important thing is simply that the information is
provided so that it can be understood, in my respectful
submission it would be better for it to be in a schedule
to a skeleton argument. If your Lordship wishes to
order that a human being makes a witness statement, then
that will of course be complied with.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, the purpose of this is not to
personalise it or in any way identify somebody as being
the personification of the application. I was assuming
it would be Mr Parsons because he has said these things
already in Parsons 14.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: He has.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So it would simply be identification of
which those passages are -- I don't think it is
necessary to add this, but I will in any case -- by
explaining which passages to which he is referring in
his 15th witness statement, or it might even be the
first witness statement of someone else. I don't think
there's any concern about exposure of a human being
because it would be coming from one of the parties'
advisors.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I have made my submission. I'm not
sure I can helpfully add to it.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And if it is -- and even if it is
a simple form of words like "The findings to which
I refer in paragraph 24 are ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ..."
I mean, I think that would be satisfactory but I'm not
going to give any specific direction about what the
contents of it should be. I think it's just explaining
what the paragraphs or the findings or the parts of the
judgments are which have already been referred to in
paragraphs 24 and 25 of Parsons 14.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I understand. My Lord, does that mean
that the hearing of the application will be delayed
beyond Monday?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, that's what we're going to have to
address now I think because what we have to do, or what
I have to do, is I have to balance enough time for the
steps that are necessary to be taken properly without
simply imposing inordinate delay on the process
generally, so if noon on Tuesday for the witness
statement -- by then that would be Tuesday 26th -- then
the claimants are going to have to provide their
response -- or identify, firstly, if they oppose the
application or not by a particular time or date which we
will come on to. Then if so advised, I suppose
technically they have to be given the opportunity to put
evidence in response, but I can't imagine if the
substance of the application is the judgment that would
necessarily be a step that would be taken, but I can't,
I don't think, press Mr Green to tell me now whether or
not it definitely will be, and then we will have to put
some provisions in for skeletons which, given these
circumstances, can be simultaneous I think.
So, Mr Green, if you get either Parsons 15 or Mr or
Mrs X number 1 by noon on Tuesday, when would you like
firstly to notify the other side of your position in
respect of the application?
MR GREEN: My Lord, I think we would have to have 24 hours.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Yes, all right. So if you're asking
until noon on the 27th?
MR GREEN: My Lord, yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And I imagine that will just be in
a letter?
MR GREEN: Indeed.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Then if so advised, evidence in response
by ..?
MR GREEN: Hopefully we would be able to do that within a --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Friday?
MR GREEN: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: By noon on Friday?
MR GREEN: By noon on Friday. My Lord, I think --
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Just before I get onto skeletons,
Mr De Garr Robinson, do those two intervals require any
observation from you?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, none.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: All right. That then means the
hearing -- I think I said rather peremptorily before
I left court it would be 1 April, but I think it's going
to have to be a day or two later in that week because
you're going to have to have provisions for skeletons,
I'm then going to have to have a little time to read
them, and the application says set down for four hours
but I think in the circumstances, I will just set it
down for a day.
Skeletons by 10 o'clock on Tuesday 2nd with the
hearing on Wednesday 3rd?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, I'm unaware whether
Lord Grabiner will be available on Wednesday and
enquiries need to be made.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, Mr De Garr Robinson, in all the
circumstances and given that is actually one of the days
this trial should have been sitting, if you want to move
it from the 3rd you're going to have to issue an
application I'm afraid because I'm not going to say
anything more that at this point. So skeletons at the
end of Monday 1st, let's say 5 o'clock Monday 1st, the
skeletons, together with a single bundle of authorities,
although I can't imagine any of them will be
controversial, the test is fairly well-established.
Any further directions are going to have to wait
until the application has been resolved, I think. Will
the parties draw up an order?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, yes. When you say "any
further directions", do you mean directions in relation
to the Horizon trial?
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Well, not necessarily in relation to the
Horizon trial, because that would suggest I have
prejudged the outcome of the application which obviously
I haven't. Well, the question of whether I would
reserve judgment, how long it would take, all of those
sorts of things, I don't think I'm in a position to say
anything about that now until having heard -- seen the
evidence and heard the arguments on the 3rd.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
(Pause).
My Lord, we are not presently aware of what
Lord Grabiner's availability will be, but we should know
by Monday, and if an application needs to be made,
your Lordship will hear it then.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Although I'm not making any directions
about this, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that
we still have got in the Horizon issues trial definitely
Mr Parker, who I think is going to be less than half
a day, because you haven't got longer than that anyway.
MR GREEN: No.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: The position vis-Ã -vis Mr Membery, which
I know is in a state of flux because of his personal
circumstances.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then the experts. I think it is
pretty clear we won't be able to hear any more -- if the
application is not acceded to, we won't be able to hear
any expert evidence at all this side of Easter --
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I see.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- it seems to me, because apart from
anything else, depending on the outcome of the
application, either party might want to make a new
application about further delay, I say, expressing
myself neutrally, because they might want to appeal
whatever my answer is, but we will cross those bridges
if and when we come to them.
So I think that deals with everything in respect of
the application to recuse. Is there anything I have
missed out?
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: My Lord, not that I can think of.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Anything I have missed out?
MR GREEN: My Lord, no.
Housekeeping
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Turning to the rather more mundane
subject of outstanding housekeeping in what we have
already been doing, I was still waiting for hard copies
of the PEAKs and the KELs.
MR GREEN: My Lord, yes, we're going to put those together
for you and deliver them tomorrow, if that's all right.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think you should probably still do
that --
MR GREEN: It has to be done.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: -- so it doesn't get lost -- well, it
will have to be done for whoever it is who is the trial
judge who takes the matter all the way through, whether
it is me or somebody else.
There was still a hard copy of Dr Worden's report
with appendices.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Oh, has that not got to you? I do
apologise.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: It might have appeared somewhere, but
I don't believe it has.
I did, however, get three hard copies of the
application to recuse myself as the managing judge, but
I didn't get any hard copy of Dr Worden.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: I'm so sorry.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: And then there was still an outstanding
summary from you, Mr De Garr Robinson, about your
privilege redaction review but in the circumstances
I don't need to pursue that with you now.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: That's very kind. I am prepared to
address your Lordship on it now should you wish, but I'm
happy to -- perhaps it would be better ...
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think we will put that on the -- as
the only matter still outstanding so far as current
housekeeping is concerned in this trial, until the
application has been dealt with.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: Very good, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: Anything else?
MR GREEN: My Lord, no.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: So someone is going to draw up an order.
MR DE GARR ROBINSON: We will decide, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE FRASER: I think you can probably agree between
yourselves who that is, and until Wednesday 3rd at 10.30
and we will have Opus here for that obviously.
MR GREEN: My Lord, yes.
(4.07 pm)
(The court adjourned until 10.30 am on
Wednesday, 3 April 2019)