Mr Bates vs The Post Office

[vaud]

LimmerickLad said:

Have you been watching the Inquiry? She knew full well there were "bugs" but wanted to downplay them to protect POL's reputation regardless of the fact SPM's had been falsely accused and prosecuted based upon Horizon's faulty system.......nasty evil piece of work IMO and deserves everything she gets.

Yes and I think she is accountable. I'm just not 100% it was a premeditated and organised coverup. I suspect mass incompetence in a dysfunctional organisation.

I 100% agree that she should be held to account.

[FiF]

vaud said:

Oh she is accountable I completely agree.

The issue with boards (and I have sat on one for 6 years as a non-exec) is that they tend to be more mature executives and the level of technical or even basic IT knowledge is shockingly low. They might receive the reports but they often have no idea of the implications.

Agreed on that, direct experience of a CEO who couldn't send or read a simple email unless it was printed.

Bit like a judge who asks "Who exactly are these people The Rolling Stones?"

Edited to add, I should talk though, navigation round Instagram and Facebook = completely befuddled mystery. Just like Richard "Sniff Petrol" Porter, afraid of accidentally buying a pair of trousers or something.

Edited by FiF on Saturday 25th May 11:55

[skwdenyer]

Ken_Code said:

The fact that there was obviously no reconciliation of payments and inventory is utterly damning of everyone involved.

The alleged missing money was not missing. There was no hole in the accounts, Horizon was allowing an alleged balance to be taken as gospel rather than the actual balance.

After decades in banking I can’t begin to explain how unacceptable it is, or how unacceptable it is to allow unaudited and ad-hoc “balancing” payments to be made.

The system itself should have been found to be unfit for purpose whether these payments ever happened or not. You can’t have a “back door” into an accounting system to just fiddle the numbers.

All accounting systems have that capability. Just wait until you see what journaling can achieve in any system…

That’s why there was a suspense account issue - the system overall almost certainly did track everything properly. The complexity is that branch accounts are if you like a subset of the whole, yet are viewed in isolation in these cases.

A journal entry in branch accounts seems to have been reflected elsewhere in POL. Failing to marry that all up is an issue. The added complexity that Horizon handles money for many different businesses (including AIUI the SPM’s own non-POL business) makes this all a real muddle to unpick.

[CoolHands]

I think incompetence is a get out and not true. They knew since I think about 2010 it had bugs and could be edited from outside the SPM system. They did things to cover it up - stopped second sight in their tracks. She knew. Look at how she framed her answer to the poor guy that walked in front of a bus. She knew but didn’t want to know, and hence the continual reorganisations and change ‘projects’ etc. Alan Bates had written directly to her, Private eye and computer world had published articles on this st show at the time.

[skwdenyer]

Ken_Code said:

I took over the equities division of an investment bank once. I sat down with everyone with any seniority and asked them about present or historic issues,

I read write-ups of technical systems, communications with regulators, used the booking systems myself, asked for any known weaknesses, and so on.

What I did not do was to assume that unless someone brought an issue to my attention that all was fine.

This should be normal, and expected.

I’ve done similar. If you don’t know where you are now, you can’t navigate to somewhere new.

It isn’t normal. It isn’t expected.

[732NM]

outnumbered said:

skwdenyer said:

As was quite clear from PV’s testimony, much of the legal apparatus was inherited from Royal Mail at the point of split. I am prepared to believe that somebody along the way said something like “don’t listen to the bleating of the SPMs - there are always bad apples with their hands in the till. We’ve been dealing with them for years. Just let legal handle it.”

If we look at this issue in the round we’re saying somebody somewhere should have seen a pattern of complaints. But would they? Or would the cynics (and let’s be honest, anyone working in POL/RM investigations would essentially have a job description of being thick-skinned and impervious to SPM protestations) think to themselves “this is all the fault of the Internet - in the past they’d be bang to rights, but now they’ve read somebody saying it is Horizon’s fault and now they’re all trying it in with that line.”

Hindsight is a very exact science. What is abundantly clear is how poor our courts are at establishing guilt or innocence, and how very difficult it is to disprove the evidence of a computer system.

What’s also very clear is that, even when the evidence started to reach a tipping point, people in POL still stuck to their guns. My sense from many witnesses is that many really still don’t believe that Horizon was really at fault.

The big smoking gun is around Second Sight. Who shut them down? Why was it allowed to happen?

I think that's a great summary of the likely culture and how the senior people were treating the issue.

If you have seen the testimony of the legal teams and the investigators, you should not come to that conclusion.

To a man or woman, they are shysters and incompetents.

[lornemalvo]

Bonefish Blues said:

I commented to Mrs BF that I thought that she looked utterly broken by late morning yesterday.

Sadly, not as broken as the sub postmasters who took their own lives or died through stress related illnesses.

[simon_harris]

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I think there was an unshakeable determination that the POL would not could not be wrong.

I think there was a certain belief that postmasters were robbing bar stewards that had been getting away with it for far too long.

Add that to the benefits they were seeing on the bottom line and from the management team perspective it was win win win

[Bonefish Blues]

lornemalvo said:

Bonefish Blues said:

I commented to Mrs BF that I thought that she looked utterly broken by late morning yesterday.

Sadly, not as broken as the sub postmasters who took their own lives or died through stress related illnesses.

It did cross my mind that she could take a similar path

[Blackpuddin]

Speed 3 said:

CoolHands said:

But some of the SPM had supposedly stolen £200k! It was outlandishly preposterous, based on a bag of ste IT system - I’m sure we’ve all had to use completely wk IT systems / programmes at work so you’ll know what it’s like. But we don’t rely on them for prosecutions!

This guy jailed for 3 years for £206k: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-5...
This couple £200k: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-6...

This is what gets me. I would imagine a PO's sales (particularly back then) would have been pretty consistent year-on-year so any spike in period sales would immediately ring alarm bells / questions to any normal business leader. Couple that with no cash to show for it, it should have shouted IT error (miss-keyed entry or bug).

If you're skimming from a business you deliberately don't put it through the till.

Not one of them was displaying any benefits of ill-gotten gains, eg new car, new furniture, posh holidays etc.

[732NM]

Blackpuddin said:

Not one of them was displaying any benefits of ill-gotten gains, eg new car, new furniture, posh holidays etc.

Quite the oposite was the case, they were borrowing money, not taking an income or using their personal savings to make up shortfalls.

[Boringvolvodriver]

732NM said:

Blackpuddin said:

Not one of them was displaying any benefits of ill-gotten gains, eg new car, new furniture, posh holidays etc.

Quite the oposite was the case, they were borrowing money, not taking an income or using their personal savings to make up shortfalls.

In one case the investigation report actually said that there was no evidence of theft!

In other cases, the size of the differences should at the very least have raised questions.

[Boringvolvodriver]

Prolex-UK said:

skwdenyer said:

FiF said:

No disagreement that the problem spreads wider than PV and indeed wider than just Post Office Limited.

Against that there needs to be a measured view that the buck stops somewhere.

As was quite clear from PV’s testimony, much of the legal apparatus was inherited from Royal Mail at the point of split. I am prepared to believe that somebody along the way said something like “don’t listen to the bleating of the SPMs - there are always bad apples with their hands in the till. We’ve been dealing with them for years. Just let legal handle it.”

If we look at this issue in the round we’re saying somebody somewhere should have seen a pattern of complaints. But would they? Or would the cynics (and let’s be honest, anyone working in POL/RM investigations would essentially have a job description of being thick-skinned and impervious to SPM protestations) think to themselves “this is all the fault of the Internet - in the past they’d be bang to rights, but now they’ve read somebody saying it is Horizon’s fault and now they’re all trying it in with that line.”

Hindsight is a very exact science. What is abundantly clear is how poor our courts are at establishing guilt or innocence, and how very difficult it is to disprove the evidence of a computer system.

What’s also very clear is that, even when the evidence started to reach a tipping point, people in POL still stuck to their guns. My sense from many witnesses is that many really still don’t believe that Horizon was really at fault.

The big smoking gun is around Second Sight. Who shut them down? Why was it allowed to happen?

True.

Who was it?

From what I saw, there were board discussions and papers regarding the Second Sight review where they were unhappy with the time being taken, the cost and the fact that the ToR appeared to have changed.

There is evidence that Alice Perkins (chair) said that in the civil service there would be a CS employee embedded in the review with the implication being to ensure that the “right” result was achieved and that it didn’t go looking at things they wanted hidden.

Susan Crichton had recommended SS and was running the project and there were discussions (not sure about timings) where SC felt her reputation had been damaged due to criticism (PV and AP implying that she was putting her professional responsibilities above those of the PO).

I suspect there were a lot of conversations going on which were not minuted between at a guess Ángela De Bogard, PV and possibly AP, as to how to stop SS. I could be wrong of course.

My take on the evidence from PV is that is is both incompetent and lying about how much she knew. Her admission that she was too trusting doesn’t wash for me because if she was reading, at the very least the board papers, alarm bells should have been ringing.

She said she was told in passing about Gareth Jenkins being unreliable (no name mentioned) and that Lesley Sewell had look concerned but apparently left it at that, likewise with Susan Crichton.

There was a board meeting where SC was due to present a paper about the issues with GJ where for some reason, despite SC being sat outside with all the details, PV presented a summary in which she claims she didn’t understand. As one of the lawyers pointed out, why didn’t PV insist that SC the actual legal expert present the paper?

Again, only a suspicion, but my theory is that AP and PV both knew what was contained in it and had decided that SC would not present. On something so important, I would have thought that a strong CEO wanting the board to know the position, would have made sure that the General Counsel presented the legal position and that the Chair would want the board to know.

[Richard-D]

Blackpuddin said:

Speed 3 said:

CoolHands said:

But some of the SPM had supposedly stolen £200k! It was outlandishly preposterous, based on a bag of ste IT system - I’m sure we’ve all had to use completely wk IT systems / programmes at work so you’ll know what it’s like. But we don’t rely on them for prosecutions!

This guy jailed for 3 years for £206k: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-5...
This couple £200k: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-6...

This is what gets me. I would imagine a PO's sales (particularly back then) would have been pretty consistent year-on-year so any spike in period sales would immediately ring alarm bells / questions to any normal business leader. Couple that with no cash to show for it, it should have shouted IT error (miss-keyed entry or bug).

If you're skimming from a business you deliberately don't put it through the till.

Not one of them was displaying any benefits of ill-gotten gains, eg new car, new furniture, posh holidays etc.

I can see that initially, it could be easy to believe that your new expensive computer system was able to prove that the skimming that you'd suspected had been happening for years was rife. As you say though, investigating the people involved should have quickly shown where the money was going.

[Gladers01]

Pitre said:

It certainly seems that PV was either negligent or incompetent or both.

However, Fujitsu are to blame for the bug, so at what point do they get their comeuppance and will they pay a large chunk of the compensation instead of the taxpayer?

The Fujitsu spokesman earlier in the inquiry confirmed they would help the govt/taxpayer with the compensation packages and rightly so, to what extent remains to be seen

[Sway]

Gladers01 said:

Pitre said:

It certainly seems that PV was either negligent or incompetent or both.

However, Fujitsu are to blame for the bug, so at what point do they get their comeuppance and will they pay a large chunk of the compensation instead of the taxpayer?

The Fujitsu spokesman earlier in the inquiry confirmed they would help the govt/taxpayer with the compensation packages and rightly so, to what extent remains to be seen

They also said they'd stop tendering for new government business until the enquiry was concluded.

That, was a lie.

[vaud]

Sway said:

They also said they'd stop tendering for new government business until the enquiry was concluded.

That, was a lie.

I thought they had, aside from tenders that were already in process (RFI/RFP)? I know they have killed the business in Ireland.

[Sway]

vaud said:

Sway said:

They also said they'd stop tendering for new government business until the enquiry was concluded.

That, was a lie.

I thought they had, aside from tenders that were already in process (RFI/RFP)? I know they have killed the business in Ireland.

Apparently not, according to the Eye (although admittedly I only skimmed the surface due to pay wall).

[Vasco]

Ken_Code said:

The fact that there was obviously no reconciliation of payments and inventory is utterly damning of everyone involved.

The alleged missing money was not missing. There was no hole in the accounts, Horizon was allowing an alleged balance to be taken as gospel rather than the actual balance.

After decades in banking I can’t begin to explain how unacceptable it is, or how unacceptable it is to allow unaudited and ad-hoc “balancing” payments to be made.

The system itself should have been found to be unfit for purpose whether these payments ever happened or not. You can’t have a “back door” into an accounting system to just fiddle the numbers.

Agreed, all utterly disgusting.

Two things stand out to me -

- who, realistically, would have expected any new computer system to suddenly find massive £000's of supposed losses, particularly as some were low turnover branches and long serving staff ?

- if they had nothing to hide, why did each 'culprit' get told that they were the only case ?

Most of those questionned were far too smug, knowing that 'I've forgotten/never knew....etc' would kill off any further questions.

[Vipers]

Did any of the postmasters who had to make up shortfalls, and either did or didn't go to prison, get their money back, which they didnt steal in the first place?