To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

The origin of the Horizon system was actually a belief that benefit claimants were on the fiddle – though I'm sure the PO was happy enough to believe the SPMs were too.

The ideological belief that any of the UK's ills can be laid at the feet of benefit claimants seems to be perennial.

So in 1992, Peter Lilley regaled the 1992 Tory conference with his benefit-bashing song:
"I've got a little list
Of benefit offenders who I'll soon be rooting out
And who never would be missed
They never would be missed

There's those who make up bogus claims
In half a dozen names
And councillors who draw the dole
To run left-wing campaigns
They never would be missed
They never would be missed

Young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list
And dads who won't support the kids of ladies they have ... kissed
And I haven't even mentioned all those sponging socialists
I've got them on my list
And there's none of them be missed
There's none of them be missed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/6967366.stm

And in the 1995 conference he announced the Pathway project to computerise benefit payments at the Post Office, which emerged as the Horizon software.

By 1999 the whole project was already known to be an IT shambles:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/icl-stumbles-on-pathway-to-hell-1092947.html

NB It's worrying to note that, just a few weeks ago, we had the announcement of another mega IT project involving technology which provides no transparency to the accused, and with potentially serious impacts on entirely honest people.

This time it's the DWP using artificial intelligence to surveil the bank accounts of everyone receiving benefits, whether there's any case against them or not.

DWP to surveil bank accounts of benefit claimants for fraud
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366560856/DWP-to-surveil-bank-accounts-of-benefit-claimants-for-fraud

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/03/uk-warned-over-lack-transparency-use-ai-vet-welfare-claims
Ministers have maintained a veil of secrecy over the system, which the transparency campaign group Big Brother Watch has described as “seriously concerning”. The DWP has refused freedom of information requests and blocked MPs’ questions, arguing that providing information could help fraudsters.

Even the FT is unimpressed with this new government IT project:

UK move to curb benefit fraud triggers privacy concerns
https://www.ft.com/content/31f548bb-e0d6-4167-9c09-ce4f4d590386

The Horizon system was also originally intended for use by DWP for monitoring benefits claims.

It got shoved onto post office after it went t*ts up with £700m spent

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/post-office-horizon-software-originally-aimed-at-claimants

And if Fujitsu staff could access it, how easy is it for an Actual Hacker from Anonymous or some state like North Korea etc?

The PO cared only about protecting the reputation of Horizon - they
wanted the Subpostmasters to carry on 'making good' the losses and
bolstering their profits; and they were working from a perspective that
all spms were 'on the fiddle'. If they had publicly admitted Horizon
was unreliable, they probably imagined spms would take advantage of that
by stealing money and blaming it on the computer. There was no trust
at all.

I think it was mutually beneficial to cover and help one another regarding the PO and Horizon.

I agree that they believed all SPM's were on the fiddle, I'm sure the government believe that of all self employed people too, small buisnesses that have struggeled to get by and make a profit and have folded. That's why there are no shops and smaller buisnesses, only if you are corperate, huge and have links to power.

Our high streets are, Costa's, Starbucks, Betting shops, Charity shops and Boots. There's nothing left anymore.

The Fujitsu Helpdesk's line (and again, we don't know if this is true) is that they knew the system was unstable and riddled with errors but they didn't know PMs were being prosecuted on the strength of it. Since the PO were not even requesting system data

I'm wondering if that "calls are recorded for training and quality purposes" adage might apply...

The system was so unstable that it could equally well have been Fujitsu's bungling attempts to correct those particular problems. It reads as though (and this is just an impression, I have no technical expertise) some of the branch systems got into a loop where data from one counter wasn't being updated to the other(s) and vice versa, and every time an update was attempted, the 'loss' would double as it was being written back and forth.

The Fujitsu Helpdesk's line (and again, we don't know if this is true) is that they knew the system was unstable and riddled with errors but they didn't know PMs were being prosecuted on the strength of it. Since the PO were not even requesting system data for prosecutions, it could be argued that makes sense at the lower to middle level of Fujitsu staff.

I don't know if it was intentional but found it interesting that some of those who had small problems or tried to alert that there may be a problem then had bigger and bigger losses until they were suspended and prosecuted.

Yes, Paula Vennells' Passive Voice sprang out to me, too.

Interesting article here about the Post Office's attempts to stop a Panorama programme showing that they knew sub postmasters' computers could be remotely accessed by them and Fujitsu but denied it hotly - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67884743

The wording of Paula Vennells' recent statement is interesting - "I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system." She noticeably refrains from accepting any personal responsibility, and it very much brings to mind the quote from Douglas in Cabin Pressure, "Masterly use of the passive voice".

The system relied on those checks and balances being undertaken within the Post Office and as we have seen, they were not.

The PO cared only about protecting the reputation of Horizon - they wanted the Subpostmasters to carry on 'making good' the losses and bolstering their profits; and they were working from a perspective that all spms were 'on the fiddle'. If they had publicly admitted Horizon was unreliable, they probably imagined spms would take advantage of that by stealing money and blaming it on the computer. There was no trust at all.

In my opinion, there are almost certainly other non-Horizon related miscarriages of justice that haven't come to light, based on the way the PO was abusing its ability to go straight to court.

Even then there must be some checks and balances and rigours to test the strength of a case??

Without horizon how many other miscarriage of justice just due to this internal system??

What allowed this to happen was that the Post Office didn't have to go through the CPS to prosecute - they could take that decision themselves. The CPS would likely have stopped the cases even getting to court due to lack of evidence.

Then, in court, the jury accepted the word of a trusted national institution that the computer system was flawless. In some of these cases, we are going back 20 years or more, to a time when the average person on the street might be less aware of the fallibility of computer systems.

As for compensation - personally I think all the money in the world could not compensate for being falsely imprisoned and forced to wear a tag.

Sir Ed Davey apparently ignored suicidal sub post master.

The problem is proper dont believe people who have been tainted with the criminal brush.

How can a woman be charged and criminalises and sent to prison without evidence?

That crucial link to horizon wasn't tested.

The courts are proving to be an absolute sham. Talk about privalidge and removal from everyday life!!
Even in cases like this with compensation the lawyers take most of it.

What compensation can be offered to the lady forced to give birth with a tag on??

Yes. I get the impression some of the investigators were on a power trip - the analogy drawn with a 1970s episode of The Sweeney captured it well. But you have to look at the wider culture that encouraged that attitude and failed to point out it was wrong. The interviews were taped - either no one was reviewing the tapes, or they didn't see anything wrong with the bullying tactics and assumptions of guilt.

The real accountability lies higher up the chain. It's safe to assume that if the likes of Bradshaw had come back from an interview and said "Actually, I think he's innocent and we need to look more closely at Horizon" they would have been shut down and been accused of not performing in their role.

@ItsBeenRaining that certainly needs to be looked into it.

The courts also failed didn't they.

That sounds likely sparks and yes, Rummikub they would be well aware that by spreading losses thinly and obscuring across many accounts, 🤞 they'd not be that noticeable or worth bothering the auditors with. I doubt anybody concerned considered the human cost. But human error, or greed, or people having a laugh, racked up some insane and noticeable errors: £700,000 loss attributed to a little shop with annual turnover of £34k? Many similar obscenities. Taking the mick to say the least.

Would they be aware of the consequences of adjusting those figures?

I thought I heard someone on R4 today suggesting that the bugs in the system caused such huge discrepancies that Fujitsu were using the manual out of hours adjustments to 'hide' them by spreading them around different post office accounts, a thousand here, a thousand there sort of thing. I don't know if that is just speculation or whether any evidence has come to light to support that.

Has anyone even asked the question whether this could be intentional.

They charged innocent people with fraud and the excuse is that it was errors in the system.

What if it wasn't, it is just as possible that these physical changes in the system were intentional, fraud, to make profits. And who would profit from these 'accidental errors'.

Now that doesn't bare thinking about.

Sunak and co didn’t really care did they ?

They really didn't. And after showing so very little interest in the 2021 court decision, they've suddenly decided it's all now so very urgent that they're planning a government intervention in judicial decisions – damaging the principle of judicial independence.

I posted this link on another of the threads, but I think it needs repeating. This government may be lurching straight from one dangerous wrong to another.

Can scheme to quash Post Office convictions work?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67940193
It will be some weeks before the legislation is presented to Parliament, but we have a pretty clear idea of what the headlines translate to - and why, on a much deeper level, it represents a constitutional leap into the dark, albeit for a noble cause.
[...]
The only realistic alternative to all of this was to find some way to speed up the Court of Appeals process.
The former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, told the BBC earlier this week that the courts could handle the workload.
There are, for instance, recently retired highly experienced Court of Appeal judges who could help run the cases in large batches.
Serving judges don't comment on Parliament and politics - but there is a lot of nervousness in the legal world from which they are drawn.
Constitutionally, Parliament and politicians have no business interfering with the decisions of courts - that is how power is separated and balanced in the UK. This plan tips that delicate balance.

Spot on. They're trying to hoodwink everybody into believing that this has only just come to light and they knew nothing about it previously. Not a bit of it; it's just that Alan and the others have bravely persisted for many years, at great cost to themselves, to the point that the politicians simply cannot ignore or deny it any longer.

They knew what was going on for years and could have, at any time, decided to urgently look into it, to make sure that justice was served. They don't care about justice; they just care about good PR for themselves and getting re-elected off the back of these innocent people's lives being ruined.

I honestly thought that despite its problems, here in the UK we had a fair impartial justice system that , in the main works and has done for many years. It’s supposed to be fair and impartial.

How naive. Corruption from these big companies, liars, cheats and Minister’s who didn’t listen. That’s MPs from all political parties.

The courts of justice overturned many convictions back in April 2021, as we saw on that programme.

That was almost 3 years ago. The government showed little interest in this until last week after the public outcry of a tv drama.

I don’t believe for one minute the government willing wanted to bring justice to those poor post office worker.

None of the political parties have came out well in this have they, particularly the current shower in office.

Sunak and co didn’t really care did they ?

I bet there thousands of ways in which the victims suffered during their lives, convictions affecting mortgages and sky high insurance premiums, travel, etc, not able to rebuild or move forward even, it's incalcuble the ways in which this must have affected so many lives, let alone the mental torture and deaths.

Whole lives ruined whilst those who covered it up were carrying on as normal, benefitting even.

It's disgusting and the length of time it's taken to even accept that this was unjust is, I have no words...

We should all be scared, what they can do to the little people and future generations, it's frightening.

It's akin to the justice in the 1600's with the ducking stools, a witch hunt designed to find victims to enhance profits, maybe it was always intentional.

Robbing bastards.

Yes indeed. Paula Vennells' reputation is in shreds too - but unlike Bradshaw she will have her privilege and money to protect her. Btw it seems that the money demanded from the victims as payment for non-existent debts - ie stolen from them - contributed to the PO's profits. So if her bonus was profit related that is stolen money she has benefited from.

Although she stated that she would return her CBE, this has no formal effect as only the monarch can revoke honours - so she could ask for it back tomorrow. And I am sure she is not the only one who has benefited.

The failure of the Government to act for years until forced by public outcry, is just beyond appalling.