Fujitsu’s boss tells the post office that he ‘doesn’t know’ whether Horizon IT is reliable

Thomas Mackintosh
Report from the investigation

Angela Patrick asks Kemi Badenoch to clarify what she previously meant by the “government machine”, which she blamed for the slowness of the financial compensation plan for sub-postmasters.

Badenoch says: “It’s all the procedures, decisions, consultations, reviews, submissions, all those things that have to be done to prove decisions.

“There is no one in my opinion who wanted to delay compensation, there were rightly people who wanted to ensure that there was value for money.

“But as there are more and more checks and balances, more and more accountability, more and more rules and regulations, these things do have an impact and they tend to slow down processes when you just want to get money out the door.”

Patrick asks who is responsible for fixing the so-called ‘government machine’ if it is perceived as ‘broken’.

Badenoch says it must be recognized that the policy is broken, saying this is not a view shared by the new Labor government.

She says the reforms “need to be looked at,” without specifying who or what would be responsible for them.