I reproduce below the most recent of my interventions on the Post Office Horizon disaster. Others can also be found going back for a decade by searching the website. I have consistently argued that it was exceedingly unlikely that there was a sudden outbreak of mass criminality by respected Post Office managers at the same time as a new computing system was brought in. I have urged the Post Office to reconsider, to apologise and to pay prompt and generous compensation to those it wrongfully prosecuted. It is dreadful it took them so long to own up to their mistakes.Â
Post Office compensation
I am glad the government has now signed off on a compensation scheme for Post Office managers wrongly accused and badly treated by the Post Office over the introduction of the Horizon computer system. Some were made to pay large sums to the Post Office they did not owe and some were falsely accused…
Some compensation at last for Post Office managers
I reproduce below a letter from the Minister about compensation for those caught up in the Horizon software problems. I have been pressing for a long time for proper compensation. Â Dear Colleagues, Post Office Horizon Compensation I know that colleagues will welcome an update on compensation for postmasters who were wrongfully convicted on…
Post office: Compensation Payments for Postmasters with Overturned criminal convictions
I have received the enclosed update from Minister for Small Business, Consumers & Labour Markets about compensation Payments for Postmasters with Overturned criminal convictions. Dear Colleagues, I know members across the House are aware of the longstanding Horizon issues whereby postmasters were prosecuted and convicted on the basis of Horizon evidence that we now…
Compensation for Postal Managers
I have pursued the issue of compensation for Postal Managers who were wrongly accused when the new computer system failed to account properly for their businesses. The letter beneath gives us the latest update on compensation, where I have urged the government to be generous and get these matters settled: Â Dear Colleague, POST…
My support for the Governmentâs new policy to ensure that the Post Office properly apologises and compensates every post master wrongfully convicted
Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I am grateful to the Minister for changing the policy. I have been a long-standing critic of past Governments and Ministers for not telling the Post Office to apologise and pay up, and I encourage him today to ensure that the Post Office apologises properly, and pays up quickly and generously.  …
Approval of Funds for Full & Final Settlement for Postmasters with Overturned Criminal Convictions
I have received the enclosed letter regarding the settlement funds for Postmasters: Approval of Funds for Full & Final Settlement for Postmasters with Overturned Criminal Convictions This House is aware of the distressing impact that problems with the Post Officeâs Horizon IT system have had on the lives and livelihoods of many postmasters. The…
My Question during the Statement on Post Office Court of Appeal Judgment, 27 April 2021
Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Will the Minister understand that there has to be compensation, and urgently, and this compensation has to cover not just the Horizon losses but the legal costs and the loss of business and income that people suffered from the damage to their reputation? Many MPs, including myself, told past…
The Post Office systems scandal
It has taken many years, much suffering and plenty of legal bills for the Postmasters to get justice over the Horizon scandal. MPs including myself told past Ministers there was no sudden outbreak of mass criminality by Postmasters, but there was a systems and accounting problem created by new computers. This has at last…
Justice for Post Office managers
I was pleased to learn that at last the Post Office accepts its accounting software was faulty and led to wrongful accusations and cases against Post Office managers. Various MPs took up these matters without success, as in this 2014 debate to highlight the problem: Post Office Mediation Scheme, 17 December 2014 Mr John…
My question during the Urgent Question on Horizon: Sub-Postmaster Convictions, 10 June 2020
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Most MPs want the Post Office to apologise to all those it has wronged and pay generous compensation to them in the circumstances. Will the Minister add the Governmentâs voice to that and make it a demand of the Post Office? The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and…
January 4, 2024
Good morning.
Well it would have meant that those responsible pay for the error with they jobs, so it was perhaps easier to throw these poor people under the bus rather that do the decent thing. A very common occurrence, Sir John.
Well done to you and others.
Now, what about all those that were harmed during the SCAMDEMIC ?
January 4, 2024
So what happens to Post Office bosses? When are they held accountable? They were paid bonuses to attend inquiry? Only one paid the bonus back. What about Paula Vennels the boss of Post Office? All happy to receive huge pay awards and OBEs how being responsible for the injustice and tragedy of all those who suffered ie children and parents separated while in prison!
January 4, 2024
Maybe the job had been done according to plan?
Why did the computer provider have access to the accountsâŠand were able to manipulate them?
I mean compare and contrast the Post Office today with the Post Office of yore.
But never mind, since at least 1993 the push has been towards harmonising with the EU.
Or so I have read.
January 4, 2024
You would think that if so widespread the bosses would make a link to the computer, same for police!
January 5, 2024
Iâve worked on government IT systems for decades and it is necessary to go in and amend live databases but the control around this is extremely rigorous. Any amendments have to be documented and authorised by one person and actioned by another. It is hard to believe that Fujitsu could have been so blasĂ© about their process. I said right from the start of this debacle that it was a computer error as it defied logic that hundreds of post office staff would suddenly commit fraud.
January 5, 2024
I’m quite curious about who was in charge of the Post Office during the time of the prosecutions. 557 Sub post masters and mistresses faced charges of criminal wrongdoing from 2001 to 2013.
Vennells took over in 2012. She had her hands dirty covering up the problem, but the problem started before she took over the top position. During her time, big losses of ÂŁ120m per year went to making a profit, so was that her job to destroy the failing, unprofitable sub-post offices? However, they seem to have been shut before she started.
All of these post officers had representation; I wondered what the NFSP’s role was in all this. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/5207/pdf/
Janet Skinner’s story was horrific to read, too, although not featured in the show.
January 4, 2024
Or maybe PO management enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution?
January 4, 2024
No doubt all those responsible went on to better well remunerated jobs and probably honours.
I hope the victims bring a class act against those responsible and have them bankrupted.
January 4, 2024
According to a lawyer in the first episode the PO can actually bring about private prosecution.
January 4, 2024
It is perhaps rather generous to call them merely mistakes. Many must have know just from the numbers of previously good character people suddenly being accused or fraud.
But what about the lawyers and the legal systems failures. How could judges and juries find guilt âbeyond reasonable doubtâ given the numbers 600+ now being falsely accused – directly post the introduction of this software. Surely by far the most likely explanation was aways duff software and many insiders at the Post Office must have known of these problems. Was this not perverting the course of justice.
I read that Ed Davey responsible minister at the time even failed to meet those being accused.
January 4, 2024
The lawyers and judges who participated in this outrage should be named and shamed. Likewise the post office leadership who pushed it (do any have honours which could be revoked, or outlandish pensions?). Terrible that Ed Davey refused even to meet with the victims. Another reason if we needed it, never to vote LibDem.
January 4, 2024
Indeed. The main reason not to vote LibDim is they are wrong on almost every issue. But then so largely is most of Sunakâs Tories and Starmer. They are pro EU alignment at least, for open door immigration, for ever higher taxes, evermore red tape, ever more net zero crap and market rigging in healthcare, transport, energy, heating, educationâŠ
So many, even usually sensible people and the media are vehemently against the junior doctors. Do not blame them it is the way the dire NHS is run by Government and NHS managers. A typical new junior doctor may typically have ÂŁ100k of student debt (5 or 6 years at Uni) plus 7% interest on this to repay. This needs about ÂŁ20k PA of their salary for 15 years just to repay fully by about age 40 after tax and NI. They start on about ÂŁ30k and might earn ÂŁ80k as experience junior doctors by they time they are aged 40. Take this ÂŁ20k off and they are clearly appallingly under paid. They struggle to rent, let alone buy a one bed flat in most areas. Are they really expected to live in a small rented room in a shared flat for ever?
Unless they inherit money that is.
January 4, 2024
Even people on three year degrees, with perhaps just circa ÂŁ50k of student debt plus interest need to earn about ÂŁ10K more for 15 years just to repay their student debts (after tax and NI). Plus they have given up three years of pay too. University rarely pays back (financially) for the majority of degrees anyway a job plus night school or day release is best for many people. Even those with a medical degree struggle.
January 4, 2024
It’s a market.
They qualify and choose where they work. Maybe they should sign an agreement to work until retirement in the NHS in return for higher starting pay and no loan, but they’d probably say that’d breach their human rights.
Doctors make a choice.
Live with it.
January 5, 2024
They have little choice if they want to stay in the medical profession, either work for essentially monopoly NHS, leave the country or leave medicine. Whereas a lawyer, banker, accountant, stock broker, footballer⊠has many choices of employer. So many leave as the NHS underpays them. Bonded labour is not the answer,
January 5, 2024
No it is a rigged market with only one main employer the NHS!
January 4, 2024
Judges never take responsibility for their judgements. If they make a mistake it’s just overturned by a higher court. If we make a mistake, we have to pay.
January 4, 2024
Indeed we have to know decide what the law is and obey it. But as we saw with Boris and the Suprmeme Court and many other issues the different courts cannot even agree themselves.
See also Birmingham council and gendered jobs of “equal” value bankrupting them?
January 4, 2024
Well done, and good work Sir J.
Next target in the ‘entitled elites’ should be your own backbenchers Conservative Environment Network, receiving funding from the Net Zero billionaires. True, or no? If it is get them in the spotlight and exposed.
January 4, 2024
It is true, Peter, they have been exposed and the MPs are named on the CEN website. But since they practise the approved new religion, they continue their billionaire-funded lobbying undisturbed by the party leadership or the legacy media.
January 4, 2024
Indeed. It is very hard indeed to explain why nearly every MP in all parties supported net zero and the Climate Change without assuming they have been bought or at least conned. They surely cannot all be so moronic, deluded and scientifically illiterate can they?
January 4, 2024
Don’t see why not. They follow whips instructions with very rare rebellions and vote for whatever moronic bills their leaders put up. Personal enrichment and laziness seems to be the main ‘attribute’ of current MP’s in this parliament and downright contempt for the voters who put them there in the last one (trying to stop Brexit for instance which is still going on, even at the very top)).
January 4, 2024
A number of the judges involved should be feeling some heat.
The IT suppliers leadership should be feeling some heat.
If they are all let off free of consequences then it sends completely the wrong signals.
January 4, 2024
Paula Vennells, CEO at the time, was awarded a CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours List for services to the organisation. That was the government’s only response to her part in the scandal as far as I can see.
January 4, 2024
@ Hat man – not the only response, for Board member Perkins (Mrs. Jack Straw) was also awarded a CBE for her time serving alonside Vennells.
Vennells at present chairs an NHS Trust.
January 5, 2024
Are you sure, F57? Her Wikipedia entry says she received an honour (Companion of the Order of Bath) in 2002, and doesn’t mention a CBE. But as PO Chair 2011-2015 she was certainly in the frame for failing to stop the persecution of postmasters, and will not be held to account for it.
January 4, 2024
The cover up – still ongoing it seems was even more appalling still it seems.
January 4, 2024
Scanning the Terms of Reference for the Public Inquiry, there seems to be no mention of the arcane employment status, rights and responsibilities for Postmasters. There are always going to be potential blowups where an employee invests so much and signs away so many rights, and is then reliant on the counterparty – I hesitate to say employer – for systems infrastructure. A true employee ought to be able to consult management about errors and walk away without fault. A true self employed business would have the systems under its own control and anyway likely to be limited in liability. This no man’s land employment situation with a trusted institution run by incompetents on the one hand and employees with unlimited liability on the other was always disaster waiting to happen.
January 4, 2024
More than polite urgings and demands are needed. This is another example of the impossibility to get justice for the innocent and punishment of the guilty in this country, often not at all, but certainly in a decent short time.
The whole government and administration of the people is corrupted with a legal system which is for the benefit almost entirely for the legal and police professions.
Serious action in the streets is needed on this and countless other injustices.
January 4, 2024
Money alone cannot compensate for irreversible loss. Equality should prevail.
Sentence each of the guilty to serve all of the jail sentences wrongly imposed on the innocents, consecutively.
January 4, 2024
I heard the discussion about the Post Office mess up yesterday and some of the victims!
Like you, SJR, I think, why on earth, after installing a new computer system, would any employer assume that, not one or two, but thousands of their staff be fiddling the books and stealing?
For goodness sake, what is wrong with so many people these days? It defies logic that a sudden, huge surge in apparent discrepancies couldn’t be linked to the new system! The whole debacle is disgusting, and that it took so long to sort is outrageous!
January 4, 2024
Indeed and why did the defence lawyers, judges, juries fail to show or to see that there was no way these cases were guilty beyond reasonable doubt or even on the balamce of probability.
January 4, 2024
Were there juries? The TV show didn’t show juries; granted, it was a TV recreation.
The Judges seemed from the show to believe The Post Office that they were isolated and couldn’t possibly be the machine. It was heartening when Jo’s village came out in support of her; even that amount of evidence that she was of good character didn’t ring alarm bells.
January 4, 2024
The problem with judges is, they are ruled by the law and/or their interpretation of it. The law is incapable of ‘thinking outside the box’ so the defendants must rely upon the requirement for “reasonable doubt” in their case.
Their problem with that, is “reasonable doubt” is applied to jury trials only, as judges are a rule unto themselves.
From what I have seen on the TV drama there was no jury and the judge was swayed by the Plaintiffs’ argument, despite there is was evidence of where the missing money had gone and the fact that the presumed fraud was perpetrated at the same time of the new system’s introduction and the sub post masters clearly had had insufficient training on it.
Surely a jury would have found the reasonable doubt for themselves. Yet no judge will suffer from their bad judgement, despite it ruining the lives of innocent people. Clearly, some Animals are more equal than others.
January 4, 2024
Surely they could have elected for jury trials, but perhaps were advised/encouraged not too as higher sentences then possible.
January 5, 2024
Thankfully, my bad mistake of omitting “No” as in ‘was NO evidence’ was realised by readers. Too bad some of those judges could not see the same in their courts.
January 5, 2024
To Lifelogic, the Post Office were able to take them to court as Private Prosecutions, which does not call for a jury. These defendants had no recourse but go to Court (at their expense) or accept the PO deal, as some did.
This made a mockery of the whole ‘judicial” system, which is why new courts are addressing the grotesque miscarriage of justice that has been ongoing for decades.
As it stands, I see that the PO did take all of their money under false pretences and therefore are liable, at the very least, for its total return plus interest lost over the period. It has been a terrible damnation of “Fair” British justice.
January 4, 2024
Sharon
I agree with your points, but the people you mention will be hiding behind their own computer ignorance, suggesting the software and computer experts advised them, and said nothing was wrong with the system, and came up with so called facts and figures at the time, which would probably have outlined to them at least, that the system was sound and not at fault.
Where all this appears to have gone wrong, is nobody looked at the bigger picture, why so many similar errors at the same time, with so many different unconnected people, who previously had not been, or had a problem.
The law and legal system, the lawyers and judges failed, in so far as they did not stand the critical test of “innocent until proven guilty”.
This is a huge failure of management, when having little detailed knowledge yourself of any product or system, you rely upon so called expensive outside experts, and put too much trust in their so called findings over your own common sense, something the government and opposition does on a very regular basis.
A quite disgraceful set of circumstances where i fear those who were responsible for overseeing this debacle, will never have to see their day in Court, or suffer any financial penalty, which makes it a doubly insulting to those innocent people who have suffered financially now for decades, and with their personal lives and reputations trashed.
January 4, 2024
I do so admire JR for what he has done re PO.
He disproves that theory of not being able to confront illogicality with logic.
If you keep on, along the same tack it works!
From yesterday.
Here is one of the articles I found âŠwith JRâs consentâŠ
https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC2030203&blobtype=pdf
January 4, 2024
Everhopeful
Many thanks, makes interesting reading, seems like the trial vaccine had some benefit for many of volunteers that took part, which I guess meant that the future flu vaccines were then able to be started to be developed on an increasing scale.
Problem with flu vaccines is that it is usually a calculated guess as to what the infection type may be in advance of new strains so that that years vaccine can be produced in time.
I think you may find that the medical reports with regards to the smog victims/patients may be very different to that from possible flu victims, although I have nothing to support that suggestion.
Having lived in west London for the first 24 years of my life I am aware that filthy air was a problem for decades, as choking smog occurred on a regular basis for many years, the 1952-3 version had such a big effect on people because it lasted for days rather than hours.
Certainly after the Clean Air act of 1956 came into force it improved the air quality considerably.
January 6, 2024
We had smog where I lived in 1970, we had to wear arm bands to infant school.
January 4, 2024
The dramatic description of this heinous crime carried out by Post Office management to cover its own incompetence and the failings of its computer accounting programme has yet to be watched.
The complicity of government in it and the tardiness of their correction of the failings of one of their areas of responsibility only confirms in my mind the immorality of the civil service scribes involved. Add it to the Thalidomide crime and the Contaminated Blood crime and it further demonstrates elements of the civil service totally unfit for purpose.
I strongly suspect yet another cover up of government and civil service failure in the PPE scandal that this collective body of incompetence is striving to land at the feet of one company associated with one of their own. Many companies were involved and widespread is the complicity of government incapable of organising a pissup in a brewery, such that they have contrived to close down meaningful enquiry into it until 2025 plus. Ensuring the culprits are out of office or retired to other jurisdictions.
Thank you for identifying the problem with Post office and Government failings and persuing it to correction. The harm done can never be fully compensated however.
Trying those who organised this life damaging cover up that attempted to shift blame to the little people is awaited, if only to instil a sense of ultimate responsibility in those who aspire to run our lives.
January 4, 2024
If anyone else subscribes to the Salisbury Review, they would have read an article written by a former Barrister/Judge outlining the collapse of the judicial system.
It is actually quite terrifying and yet another marker of the collapse of a once well functioning state.
You rarely hear the phrase ‘British justice, the best in the world’ anymore.
To be the victim here now of any crime, (being falsely accused included) is not a safe and sure place to be.
January 4, 2024
An example of what you get with a state-run business. Sir Ed Davey was Post Office minister for part of the time (2010-12) and will be seeking our votes for more state control at the next election.
January 4, 2024
The problem, Sir John, is that most of your fellow MPs are socialists. They see all the problems in the world down to private sector greed. They want to operate things in the public sector, believing everything is hunky-dory there.
As we know, things can go criminally wrong anywhere. But with little individual risks from failure, scrutiny of public bodies must be greater than that of private enterprises. But at the moment, the socialist mindset means we get less.
January 10, 2024
There is abuse in both the private and public sector.
It’s ultimately about values (work ethic etc) which people learn as children, in education, from the arts, and from reading the media.
The private / public sector works well for men who want to do well in the private sector and women with children who don’t have the energy to work in private sector and also for people with mental issues who can’t work in the private sector. It’s better to get these latter people than doing some work than depending on the dole. But that public sector should be paid a lot less than private sector.
January 4, 2024
It beggars belief that the post office was able to bring its own criminal prosecutions without the CPS involvement. Does any other organisation have this authority?
Likewise any judge who believed âbeyond reasonable doubtâ based only on the evidence of a computer system should have all their previous cases reviewed for miscarriages of justice, and their pensions reduced as punishment for professional incompetence.
Similarly, Fujitsu managers should have already spent the last decade in prison for what they did.
Where have we got to? A half arsed apology, some compensation for those wronged and no punishment for the perpetrators. Justice indeed.
January 4, 2024
Aaron
I think you will find Customs and Excise also have more legal powers in their own right than perhaps other Government Departments, as they work as the “Kings men”
I believe they actually have power of entry anywhere, at any time, without even a Warrant being needed, all they need is suspicion !
Happy to be corrected if I am wrong.
January 4, 2024
+ 1 – and prison time for selected personalities from the Post Office board and other of its senior management too. But for that we would need a justice system and a government on the side of the people and such is not in prospect.
January 4, 2024
…..the post office was able to bring its own criminal prosecutions,,,,,
I would stand to be corrected but as far as I know prosecutions, some criminal, can be brought privately by the BBC, RSPCA, and railway companies, Maybe there are others. A hangover from when certain organisations were run directly by the government.
January 4, 2024
Why would you believe that an organisation that was so inept at putting a bespoke computer system into production was nevertheless capable of defining precisely the requirements of that system to its supplier which is clearly the implication of your comment?
Do you realise it is standard computer industry practice for the customer of a new bespoke computer system to perform an acceptance test on the system provided? Had the PO done that, the supplier would not have been applying fixes to the system after it had been put into production.
January 4, 2024
and each business ought to have relied on an Audit to provide sufficient examination of the checks and balances. Once more than a few of these businesses were under suspicion, the PO should have arranged for an independent analysis of the cases. Their failure should be held criminal.
January 4, 2024
Criminal charges should be brought against those in the Post Office and government, past and present, responsible for this scandal and the perversion of the course of justice.
January 4, 2024
Each sentence should fit the crime.
Imprison each of the guilty in solitary with the computer code for the faulty Horizon program for three years. Allow them release earlier only after they have solved it.
Those who wrote the faulty software would be ineligible for such kind incentive and would serve their full sentence in a post box.
January 4, 2024
Sir John
Great work on your part on this. If only we had more MPs that knew their job.
The observation is that this Conservative Government (and those before it) have allowed the UK Legal system to move from innocent before proof, to guilty until proven otherwise.
The PO Management has got off âScot-Freeâ and in some ways has been rewarded for incompetence. The UK Legal/Prosecution service like-wise neglected its job and brought the justice system into disrepute. Both the PO Management and the Prosecutors had in the first instance to prove that the IT system was perfect and fit for purpose
The common denominator in all this is âwho careâ it will be the taxpayer that pays not me, this attitude permutates down from the top and is demonstrated daily from the top.
Another UK Political Scandal perpetrated by a HoC and a Conservative Government not fit for purpose â and it still goes on with endless prevarication
January 4, 2024
The other scandal in the offing but no where to the same degree, is the Mayor of Londonâs(He has put his name on it) ULEZ. Euro 4 emissions standards were introduced in 2005, they never existed before that date. i.e. you cant have something before it exists, but that doesn’t mean you are not at that standard. The London Mayor has simply said as the standard didnât exist for vehicles before that date those vehicles don’t comply, â no proof of not being up-to standards all though many cars were and are – it is just his say so.
That is not good Law or regulations â you are Guilty because I say you are
January 4, 2024
He even had the bare-faced cheek to have his candidature lit up in the London fireworks by hundreds of drones.
I assume he paid? Perhaps Sir John could make enquiries?
January 4, 2024
@Mickey Taking – even that thing now called Transport for London(London Transport actually worked), is called Transport for London brought to you by the Mayor of London. He forgets to mention it is subsidized by the UK Taxpayer long before his voters.
Should that sort of self promotion of someone campaigning for office in an election year be permitted. If it is, then shouldn’t all the other candidates get Taxpayer subsidy.
You have to wonder where the taxpayer is to get all this money from.
January 4, 2024
At one time in my career I held a senior position in a very large financial services company whose 350 branch offices handled a lot of cash.
Even in the early 1990s, our computer system told us what was going on and any anomily such as that experienced by the Post Office would have stood out immediately. To have approaching 1,000 PO branches showing large discrepancies would have told us that the system was at fault, not the branch managers. They surely should have recognised that long-serving sub-postmasters would not all suddenly have started stealing thousands of pounds.
The blind faith that PO management had in their computer system is inexplicable to me. We would never have behaved in that way. Furthermore, once they had gone down the path of blaming the sub-postmasters, they refused to rethink, even when their own auditors told them that there was no evidence of theft in cases such as that of the poor postmistress portrayed in the programme. They went ahead and secured 736 convictions anyway. For that alone, several senior managers need to go to prison, starting with Vennells and her No 2.
How Vennells could possibly have been awarded a Damehood in the 2019 New Years honours list when this was all becoming known through the investigation is quite beyond belief. Even worse, when she stood down, in February 2019, she was made head of an NHS Trust, and a non-executive board member of the Cabinet Office ! She was already director of Dunelm and Morrisons and bizzarly, a C of E priest on its Ethical investments Advisory group ! All these appointments have since been since terminated.
The only thing she might be fit to run would be a prison library !
Surely this was another example of The Great And The Good looking after their own!
January 4, 2024
+1
January 4, 2024
Grey haired late middle aged middle class white male would’ve been hounded, rightly, into the gutter.
January 4, 2024
The Government may well have signed off – assuming we can trust them. Frankly the only person I believe is Mr Bates – what does he say? Lets have more dramas like this much better than any Public Inquiry which are costly and allows the great and the good to question the great and the good.
January 4, 2024
PPE next.
January 4, 2024
When is someone from the Post Office or Horizon going to be sanctioned for this.
All it needed was for someone to be sent to several post offices and sit there with a piece of paper and compare the entries against the computer.
The inconsistencies would have become apparent fairly quickly.
January 4, 2024
Had I been a sub-postmaster seeing these errors come up, I would have bought my own PC and set it up beside the Horizon one, and had an assistant enter every transaction done in Horizon on my PC in a spreadsheet. At the end of each day, I would have a complete record and a balance to compare with the Horizon one. If there were any discrepancies, I would have had the evidence to show the Post office auditors. If they would not believe me, I would have demanded that they sat beside me and entered the transactions and seee what results they came up with.
Also, we have never had an explanation as to how these errors actually occurred. Fujitsu must have analysed what was causing the errors, but why have we not been told ? They cannot all have been made by staff in that office in Bracknell making changes without the postmasters knowing what they were doing. That would be an even bigger scandal and most definitely a criminal conspiracy.
Reply That would have been difficult to do in a busy Post Office with few or no staff to help. The PO would still not have accepted the alternative version.
January 4, 2024
It’s a Victorian trust thing. People naively trusted the Post Office. People need to realise that such operations are now run largely by heartless incompetent place-people.
January 4, 2024
Same with the NHS and other public bodies, in court judges default to their side.
January 5, 2024
Agreed, Sir Joe. Perhaps they’re people who would describe themselves as ‘high-potential leaders who want to remove self-doubt, break through barriers, aspire to inspire, and grow the foundations needed for their future success’. I’ve taken that from the Common Purpose web site.
January 5, 2024
back in those days Joe Public could trust people in authority to be honest, have morals and do the right thing…..seems decades ago, perhaps before I was even born?
January 5, 2024
It may have been difficult (which I disagree with, dual entry is not that onerous) but a switched on Minister or Senior leader in the Post Office could easily have organised it.
You write I have consistently argued that it was exceedingly unlikely that there was a sudden outbreak of mass criminality by respected Post Office managers at the same time as a new computing system was brought in this jump of logic is not so hugely insightful that Ed Davey or Adam Crozier could not have thought of it.
Before consigning a number of honest people to jail magistrates, prosecutors, the Minister or the CEO could have checked.
This kind of thoughtless, accepting decision making hurts politics, the country and individuals.
January 6, 2024
NS, exactly!
January 5, 2024
I do take your point, but, given the high cost of the errors to the postmaster, it would have been worth the small expense of employing someone to sit there and copy the entries, for at least a sample week.
Having an alternative record to produce in court might well have caused the judge to accept that there was at least reasonable doubt.
But, most important of all, it would have satisfied me that the errors were certainly not mine !
January 4, 2024
A terrible story. But the worst aspect is the lack of criminal action now being taken against all those involved who knew people were being wrongly prosecuted and sent to prison â Post Office, IT, CPS, judiciary etc..
Who was in charge of the CPS at the time?
The fact that there are no such criminal prosecutions in the offing demonstrates another example of how we are moving to a Soviet style authoritarian system where the elites are above the law.
January 4, 2024
+100
Good points
January 5, 2024
Dame Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions 2013-2018, and no stranger to controversy. But of course she was awarded a gong too.
January 4, 2024
I followed this story through your blog. A friend recommended I watch the ITV series; I’m glad I did fantastic acting. Sunak should demand that The Post Office speeds up the compensation now, enough prevaricating, every delayed month should increase the compensation that might force them to act quickly. Sunak should just think, if that had happened to my parents, would I be happy with over ten years of delays?
January 4, 2024
It couldn’t have. Remember they ran a small pharmacy and the young sunak would’ve sat up nights reconciling their books.
January 6, 2024
SJS, I just canât get my head around the book-keeping audit balance. The post office has items to sell, people paid money in over the counter to pay bills or put into their savings accounts, if none of the stock was missing from the safe and no-oneâs savings books were unstamped then what was happening was the computer inflating the transaction price on each transaction? Was it creating false sales entries? In the history of the Post Office I wonder how many prosecutions there were? So if in five years this exploded to 500 cases just after a new system was introduced then it should have rang big alarm bells and resulted in a forensic audit, someone should have been sitting alongside Seema Misra. Hopefully now these people have cctv cameras because trust is gone.
January 4, 2024
Sir
As you say ” ….it was exceedingly unlikely that there was a sudden outbreak of mass criminality by respected Post Office managers…..”
Maybe criminality occurred elsewhere in the organisation ?
As a separate matter, many years ago, a friend was a sub postmaster. I think that he had paid to acquire his business, principally for goodwill. Eventually, he decided to voluntarily accept a sum of money from the Post Office in return for the closure of his sub postoffice. On reflection, he may have seen problems with the computer software and decided to get out.
It seems that, according to Hansard (15 October 2002, column 228) ……….
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo021015/debtext/21015-19.htm#21015-19_head0
… the compensation he received was intended to compensate him for the “loss of value of their business.” It therefore might have been expected the money he received would have been liable to Capital Gains Tax.
However, I believe that the Post Office required him to formally resign his position as a subpostmaster. HMRC then contended that the money he received was taxable as compensation for loss of office and was liable to Income Tax rather than Capital Gains Tax. I believe this significantly increased the amount of tax he had to pay.
In the end, I suppose he had a lucky escape.
January 4, 2024
Again, the oddity is that these sub-Postmasters are employees who pay money to start to be employed. A kind of reverse golden handcuff. Bernie Madoff was also trusted to take people’s money, but even he didn’t then make them then work for him with unlimited liability!
January 4, 2024
@Sir Joe Soap
Yep …… sub postmasters are apparently employees of the Post Office, but PAYE is not applied to their salaries.
I did not see my friends contract. As you say, it’s odd that a sub postmaster pays up front to be an employee but prepares Accounts as a self employed person and accepts the risks of the “business”.
January 4, 2024
When are the post office managers going to be named and arrested ?
When are the Fujitsu managers going to be named and arrested ?
When will Davey be stripped of his so called knighthood ?
When will Vennells be stripped of her so called damehood ?
Will you name the person who recommended Vennells for her damehood ?
Also when will this ridiculous honors system be abolished, because it is embarassing and turns this country into a world laughing stock.
January 6, 2024
Fennells covered up but wasnât there during the vast majority of the prosecutions.
January 4, 2024
The compensation should be generous, especially for gaol time wrongly served. It should be paid for by everyone involved in the Horizon software project, from the Post Office CEO and Directors of the time, through the Project Managers, Systems Analysts and Analyst Programmers down to the humblest coders. A judge should allocate this debt between the guilty parties. I am fed up to the back teeth with taxpayers picking up the tab for compensation when there is quite clearly a guilty party.
January 4, 2024
Compensation is of course necessary in all the aspects that you mention, however it is only the beginning.
There must be criminal negligence at the very least on the part of those who failed to spot the obvious i.e. “that it was exceedingly unlikely that there was a sudden outbreak of mass criminality by respected Post Office managers at the same time as a new computing system was brought in”.
Either they should have known (criminal negligence) or they did know (other charges apply). It just doesn’t cut it to call this mere commercial incompetence requiring an apology from the organisation, not the individuals – or calling it a “retraining issue” as so many of our so-called modern day suppliers like to do when they close ranks.
The Tories had better get ahead of this before the likes of Nigel Farage makes this his next crusade. Alison Rose should also have faced charges in my opinion and Nat West should have been heavily fined by the ICO for the publicly visible breaches of data protection regulation. Nigel forgot to call for that, perhaps he’s not PM material after all.
January 6, 2024
These people in the Post Office in Fujitsu thought nothing about all these people being put in prison, they simply didnât care when the subpostmasters lost everything. They turned away, if they faced losing everything it would be a different story.
January 4, 2024
What will it take to clear out all the criminals involved in this sham. They should all be prosecuted.
Government organisations have a bad habit of paying their dues, whether it is buying up homes or providing compensation for some HMG linked scheme.
The system is beyond corruption
January 4, 2024
Well done, Sir John.
I do find it interesting that instead of concentrating on, believing, helping or supporting their sub-postmasters, the PO in 2014 hired âRSA 2020 Public Servicesâ as consultants, who encouraged sub POs to become âCommunity Hubsâ of âsocial productivityâ linked to âsocial entrepreneursâ, and to âarticulate a common purposeâ (p10 of attached link).
https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa-report_making-the-connection_feb-2014.pdf
January 6, 2024
Interesting Barbara thanks for sharing.
January 4, 2024
Another holiday another disaster of an NHS service, unable to get access to care for an unwell child, to say that I am furious at the ongoing sub third world health system in this country would be an understatement. I hate our politicians for failing to deal with this, I hate our public sector for wasting so much money and delivering such crap basic service.
If the state cannot provide them please stop taxing me for the non existent service.
January 4, 2024
Indeed. My wife, desperate to speak to her GP, rang in early December. After an argument she was offered a phone call today – 3 1/2 weeks later. It didn’t happen. She rang the surgery and they said they had no record of it. She will allegedly now be called by a locum working from home. It’s way beyond a joke. The sooner Labour get in the better. Never thought I’d type those words.
January 4, 2024
Change between conservatives and Labour will not fix poor healthcare system. And SNP and Welsh government are even worse.
Edinburgh NHS has some notices for tourists… They have tens of thousands of tourists this time of year. If you are foreign you are reassured that emergency care is free. There is a small walk in centre staffed by nurses and paramedics, no doctors at all. Any minor injuries which don’t need an x-ray or prescription are supposed to go there, mostly the patients won’t know if they need an x-ray or prescription, and neither will a nurse. Everyone else is supposed to register as a temporary patient with the local GP’s and get seen there, which is of course fantasy as there will be many more patients needing access for that size of population than the small numbers of GP’s mostly trying to have a bit of Christmas holidays themselves can cope with. And so it is, we have communist nirvana, no actual care available for the mass of undifferentiated undiagnosed conditions. Patients in agony, but the NHS thinks it’s brilliant. Like bread shops in the USSR or tractors in Mao’s China. Crap crap crap.
January 4, 2024
Is she hard of hearing? Perhaps she was told January 2025?
January 4, 2024
Any criminal prosecution of those responsible for this scandal. Are the ones who were sent to prison going to be charged for their board and lodgings – as I believe is the unbelievable practice if you are wrongly convicted.
January 4, 2024
From being part-way through ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’, I gather the Post Office could bring its own criminal prosecutions rather than persuade the CPS there was a case.âIt was given this right hundreds of years ago.âIf I’m correct then if it still has this right then it should be removed as it has been abused.
As a computer programmer, I’ve had to go over several layers of management twice when problems were being ignored.âThe bad news wasn’t being passed up.âMy peers had dependants, mortgages, etc., and couldn’t take the risk.âThe upper management were always responsive and annoyed that the bad news hadn’t already reached them.âFrom that…
My guess is upper management at the Post Office thought the new computer system was spotting previously undetected fraud.âThey were being repeated assured by those below them, who were nearer the technical coal face, that problems weren’t there.âOver time, they became entrenched.âSomewhere below them were management who were highly technical, knew flaws could exist but perhaps hadn’t been found, and didn’t pass on the bad news.âDid not some of these people pervert the course of justice?
As for Alan Bates, why with a House of Lords stuffed with one-term politicians and other unworthys is there no seat for such a stubborn campaigner?
January 4, 2024
Over promoted salespeople in Fujitsu managing the relationship with the post office their client, and failing to pass on honest risk analysis from the people on the coal face.
January 4, 2024
Sir John
I received the monthly litter through the letter box today. Itâs called Wokingham Focus. Just as with this Conservative Government they set out to tell us how bad things will be under the alternatives, but neglect to say how they would do things.
Really Sir John, you voted to dump raw sewage in our rivers!
Just as with our daily dose of Conservative Government attempts at misdirection, you put a half truth out there and just enough will buy it and we get purgatory.
Oh⊠to have a honest set of Legislators working for us, as opposed to a self-indulgent crowd seek self-gratification while doing nothing.
January 4, 2024
Don’t worry. With a leader like the establishment lackey Davey, the Libdems are going nowhere. Reform is another matter.
January 4, 2024
Back in the old days around impoverished Wokingham villages, that pathetic missive would have been torn into reasonable pieces and pinned on the wall of the garden privy. These days its dropped in the recycling bin, the authors won’t fit in it sadly.
January 4, 2024
Sir John
When will all those affected receive proper compensation, and how much of it is to be dumped on this Conservative Government cash cow/money tree, that is there usual get out the do.. do.. method and how much of it will find its way to those responsible for their own neglect?
The NHS more money no results, the BoE tons more money more neglect, massive over spend and borrowing with no interest in cutting /controlling to fit income, just punish, punish and punish some more.
January 4, 2024
What a terrible, terrible disgrace. I recommend that everyone view the TV drama based on the true story of the desperate plight of sub postmasters who were robbed of their savings and their livelihoods because of a corrupted computer system called Horizon created by Japanese firm, Fujitsu, contracted by The Post Office. An award of severe damages to their victims is required.
January 4, 2024
In reality, the Taxpayer owned PO has been destroyed, seemingly maliciously by those that had over-site and just like the PO management they see there is always the sleight of hand called the Taxpayer that gets them personally of the hook. It makes you wonder why we have MP’s and Governments when none of them get to manage and take responsibility for anything.
January 4, 2024
In the Evening Standard – ‘Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer have both resisted backing calls for a former Post Office boss to lose her CBE over the Horizon scandal.’
Neglect rewarded
January 5, 2024
back to back defence of what should be indefensible.
January 6, 2024
Thank you for being one of the few that believed these people could be innocent of the disgusting charges levied at them. I worked for the Post Office for 18 years before it was part privatised and enjoyed the way the firm, then, looked after the staff on welfare issues and work conditions. I was on audit, cash account/wages/salaries, staff recruitment and training, in the Chairman’s Office so it was also a varied employer. I left when things started to unravel in the late 1980s with lack of care given to employees and people recruited in as cost cutters. It has obviously got even worse. I would like to see the people who have been in charge over the relevant years prosecuted for the way they have treated their employees and for accusing them of fraud when they were innocent. Something has to be done to the perpetrators of these heinous crimes against workers.
January 10, 2024
Its notable that the FCA who are supposedly responsible for regulatory supervision of the finance industry are escaping general criticism here. Its very much all stuff within their remit, fraud, false accounting, etc. And yet the FCA seem to be getting away with being asleep at the wheel again.