A handwritten note from the then-Labour PM, published by the public inquiry on Friday, suggests he raised concerns after being warned the system was “possibly unreliable”.
In 1998 Horizon was being developed by a firm called ICL, owned by Fujitsu, as a way of paying welfare benefits through Post Office counters using a swipe card.
On 14 December 1998, his private secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood wrote to Mr Mulgan to say that the prime minister’s “clear preference would be to avoid cancelling the project”.
Witness statements given by other former Labour ministers, including Alistair Darling and Stephen Byers, previously set out how the government came up with a number of options to save the ailing scheme.
Lord Mandelson’s letter, which was sent to the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury Stephen Byers and copied to the prime minister, also reflected concerns the system was vital for generating the footfall needed to keep post offices open.
He wrote that “the damage to the confidence of sub-postmasters and the knock-on effect of network closures”, which he said would come from cancelling Horizon, “will produce political fallout, no matter how carefully we try to handle it”.
The original article contains 806 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A handwritten note from the then-Labour PM, published by the public inquiry on Friday, suggests he raised concerns after being warned the system was “possibly unreliable”.
In 1998 Horizon was being developed by a firm called ICL, owned by Fujitsu, as a way of paying welfare benefits through Post Office counters using a swipe card.
On 14 December 1998, his private secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood wrote to Mr Mulgan to say that the prime minister’s “clear preference would be to avoid cancelling the project”.
Witness statements given by other former Labour ministers, including Alistair Darling and Stephen Byers, previously set out how the government came up with a number of options to save the ailing scheme.
Lord Mandelson’s letter, which was sent to the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury Stephen Byers and copied to the prime minister, also reflected concerns the system was vital for generating the footfall needed to keep post offices open.
He wrote that “the damage to the confidence of sub-postmasters and the knock-on effect of network closures”, which he said would come from cancelling Horizon, “will produce political fallout, no matter how carefully we try to handle it”.
The original article contains 806 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!