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Witness Name: James Arbuthnot
Statement No.: WITNO0020200
Dated: 17 June 2025
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
SECOND WITNESS STATEMENT OF JAMES ARBUTHNOT
I, James Norwich Arbuthnot of Edrom, will say as follows...
INTRODUCTION
1, lam the former Member of Parliament for North East Hampshire and currently
a Member of the House of Lords and of the Horizon Compensation Advisory
Board
2. This witness statement is made to assist the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry (the
“Inquiry") with the matters set out in the Rule 9 Request dated 23" May 2025.
Correction of Paragraph 23 of my first Witness Statement
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In paragraph 23 of my first witness statement (WITN00020100) I said, “At some
stage during 2011, probably at a defence conference at Ditchley Park of 22nd
and 23rd September 2011, I had a conversation with Alice Perkins.” As I set
out in paragraph 32 of the statement I emailed Alice Perkins on 234 February
2012 and said, “You may remember that when we last met at, I think, Ditchley
Park I mentioned the issue of the Horizon computer system in use in Sub Post
Offices throughout the country, and said I had a real concern about the way
some of the sub-Post Masters in and outside my constituency had been
treated.”
Nick Wallis has drawn to my attention that if I was right about the meeting
having taken place on or around 22" or 234 September 2011, that would
conflict with Alice Perkins’ evidence to the Inquiry that on 27" September 2011
she met Angus Grant, the auditor from EY, who told her that Horizon was a real
risk, and she told the Inquiry that she “had never previously heard of Horizon or
of the cases of the subpostmasters”.
I have therefore re-examined my diary for that period. The Defence
Conference I referred to in paragraph 23 of my first witness statement was the
inaugural Defence Konigswinter Conference. I find I have the list of participants
for it, and Alice Perkins was not amongst them
On going through the subsequent weeks, however, I found that on the weekend
of 7th to 9th October 2011 there was, also at Ditchley, a Tatlidil (British-Turkish)
conference, a forerunner of the similar conference I referred to in paragraph
202 of my first witness statement. The joint organiser of that conference was
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Jack Straw, and Alice Perkins, his wife, always went to them. It must have
been then that I raised the issue with her.
7. 1am sorry for this mistake in my first witness statement and for the extra work it
has caused. I believe (though I cannot be sure) that the reason for the mistake
was that my attendance at a Ditchley Park conference was a comparatively
rare thing, so that when I found the Konigswinter Conference in my diary I
thought it unnecessary to look further.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true
Signed
pated: I7 June 2025
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Index to Second Witness Statement of James Arbuthnot
. I URN ~ I Document Description I Control —
I I : - Number
1 WITN00020100 I First Witness Statement of James Arbuthnot WITNO0020100 I
I I
1 1
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