To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

This has popped up periodically over the past couple of decades and it's astounding how the Post Office and Fujitsu (especially Fujitsu) have got away with this.

Their senior management should be be forced to stand up and personally apologise for what their inadequacy has done.

It makes me so angry when I hear what people have gone though, so unfair AND it's still going on as the government drag their feet regarding compensation.

I've just started watching on itv x heartbreaking story.

Not exactly. It was Nick Wallis who took it to Private Eye, although he’s always been very clear who broke the story. He found it independently though, after being picked up after a BBC freelance shift in a cab by the husband of a postmistress.

Yes, the refusal to even countenance the fact that they were part of (or at least strongly linked to or implicated in) the problem.

It really sticks in the craw, how truly audacious and self-unaware they are.

https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/19/new-bt-chair-left-a-trail-of-wrecked-lives-as-royal-mail-boss

Crozier was responsible.

This enraged me
The bbc and Savile, now this shit

I'm sure that some of those who have given evidence to the inquiry didn't know there was a problem, and at least one of those who was aware of problems appears to have been unaware of PO's prosecution spree. However, a lot of them seem to be suffering selective amnesia. The most embarrassing in some respects is the solicitor who sent a triumphal email when Seema Misra was convicted who now claims that he didn't write the email, he doesn't know who did and he never knew any of the people to whom the email was addressed.

The helpline was operated by Fujitsu. As you say, part of the problem was overt racism - "another Patel on the fiddle". Even when frontline support staff did escalate problems, they often weren't investigated properly. Two examples involving Ann Chambers (who gave evidence for the PO in the Lee Castleton case).

First involved a customer coming in to buy $1,000. Horizon recorded one half of the transaction (the foreign currency going out) but not the other half (the cash coming in). As a result, the subpostmaster's accounts showed a false surplus of around £500. Fujitsu picked this up and try to fix it by inserting a new transaction (something Post Office repeatedly said was not possible but was, in fact, routine). Following this correction, the subpostmaster's accounts showed a shortfall of $1,000 - the cash was now correct but the branch was now shown as having more foreign currency than it should. It should have been obvious that they had got the correction wrong, but Ann Chambers concluded that this was a genuine loss at the branch and informed PO.

Second was an issue where a subpostmaster was having a problem that was causing losses at one of his sites. Unusually, a trainer went to the branch to help. They found that the subpostmaster was not doing anything wrong and reported that they had seen the error happen. Next, auditors visited. Unusually, they also reported that the subpostmaster was doing nothing wrong and that they had also seen the error happen. This report ended up with Ann Chambers. After spending 1 hour 16 minutes investigating, she closed the case saying that there was nothing wrong with the system and that the problem was user error.

Part of the problem is that the bonuses for both auditors and investigators depended on the amount they recovered from subpostmasters, so they were incentivised to find shortfalls and not to investigate them properly. From the evidence available, it seems that Post Office investigators had long thought that many subpostmasters were fiddling their accounts, so the "evidence" from Horizon simply backed up their existing belief. Indeed, from the evidence given to the inquiry, it seems that at least some of the investigators still don't accept that the subpostmasters were innocent. One particularly nasty example had to be repeatedly stopped from making accusations against an ex-subpostmaster's husband without any evidence.

Can't the public purse recover the insane wages given to these incompetents at the top?

Thanks 😱

Private Eye have been reporting on this story for well over a decade, prior to that Computer Weekly flagged it back in 2011. Was always surprised how little traction the scandal had in the main stream press.

You can read their report here, it is utterly infuriating reading

Private Eye Report

Def not. A lady stabs herself bd a man walks out in front of a bus

Horrifying. They knew from the start that there was an issue with Horizon but chose to ignore it . The people in charge of this fiasco should be put before the courts

I agree, everyone should watch this and justice really needs to be done.
Have signed the above petition.

The Radio 4 podcast linked above is really good. The journalist who made it has added new episodes over the years as events have moved on. I listened to the whole thing a few weeks ago and was absolutely incensed. I knew about this before, but the more you know about it the worse it gets. Not sure what stage the public enquiry has got to, but looking at the coverage of that, it was a long line of former senior PO directors and managers saying 'I had no idea there was any problem' - really?

Was it Fujitsu operating the Horizon helpline, or the PO? Either way, something seems to have gone very badly wrong there, as those were the people telling the subpostmasters that nobody else was having any problems when quite obviously they were. I can't remember if it's in the podcast or an article I read but there was outright racism there as a former helpline staff member reported that some of her colleagues would answer the phone, mute the call and call out to the room (big open plan room) 'I've got another Patel on the line!' or words to that effect, and many of them would laugh and cheer. And then of course the call centre operative would fob the caller off, as we know. Where was the management? What kind of culture did they have there that this overt racism was not picked up and dealt with? Why didn't they notice or care that they weren't sorting out so many problems? Why didn't PO staff responsible for monitoring that contract take them to task over it?

(Racism also clear from the fact that subpostmasters from ethnic minority groups were much more likely to get custodial sentences, apparently.)

Also, why on earth didn't senior PO staff and the judiciary notice that the number of prosecutions of subpostmasters for dishonesty had gone through the roof? As I understand it, the Royal Mail set up its own police force hundreds of years ago, before the country as a whole had any organised police, so that they could investigate thefts from the mail, which were and are common. The culture is that they are investigating theft, which is obviously a problem for a service handling parcels and letter post that may have valuable items or information. However, when also given the task of auditing subpostmasters they behaved as if they were still investigating a lightfingered postman or a gang stealing parcels. No thought given to the fact that subpostmasters were running their own small businesses and discrepancies could be down to mistakes or (as we now know, of course) computer problems. It's scandalous that in the 21st century they are able to prosecute without going anywhere near the police or Crown Prosecution Service.

I watched the whole thing last night on itvx.

It was compelling and horrifying. How it was allowed to happen. The poor people who lost their savings, their livelihoods, their health and in some cases their lives is beyond understanding.

The whole business was the most appalling scandal, made even worse by the long delay in getting justice for those affected.

But what amazes me is that the system was ever allowed to go live when it had this appalling flaw. Surely this should have come to light during testing?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1739099206/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

This is also very good - for those looking for something to read on it.

For anyone who wants a quick recap with key info the Eye is pretty good

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf

That’s fucking awful if ITV have kept Adam Crozier out of it because he was their CEO after leaving Royal Mail.

Shame on them.

And PE got it from Computer Weekly I think it was that first reported it. It is appalling and like so much that is criminal in this country was not investigated even when ministers were aware that it was the Horizon system and not their constituents that were to blame. Private Eye has kept on reporting on it for over a decade. It really should be required reading to alert the public to all the scandal that goes on daily by our so-called leaders.

Private Eye reported on this for years before it all broke. For some reason it just wasn't picked up in the main stream media. There were too many reputations by association at stake and a general thinking that it just couldn't be happening on this scale. The IT company lied and lied in criminal prosecutions. I remember reading in PE a good few years ago that this would go down as the biggest injustice in British criminal history. They weren't wrong.
The establishment and vested interests kept on literally destroying lives to protect themselves and rewarding those that implemented the conspiracy.

Oh, absolutely.

First they should face proper justice, then the shame that they have so purposefully earned.

Dreadful. Bloody computers. Very frightening for the people involved.
So glad they all got together in the end though.

The ex CEO should be stripped off her CBE or whatever she got.

This was such an under reported story. People have died or taken their own lives without the truth coming out. No one has taken on our local PO since the owners retired (they were operating in the midst of this, not accused, city centre branch). What was a 10 min walk is now half an hour to our nearest. The shop sits empty with a sign on the front and has done for two years, yet is on still on the franchise list. No wonder no one wants to take it on.