To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

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There is already a thread about this on the Telly Addicts forum here

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4970440-mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-mon-to-thur-itv-9pm-tv-pace-no-spoilers

However this seems like such an important subject that I thought I would draw attention to it on AIBU.

The first episode aired tonight but the whole series is available on itvx.

Most of you will no doubt have heard about the Horizon scandal, but whether you have or you haven't this program is compelling. It will probably make you furious but it deserves as wide an audience as possible.,

So over 230 sub postmasters were jailed.

How many were actually procecuted ?

I've seen varying ammounts from 700 to 900.

That's quite a lot of wayward sub postmasters, surely someone must have thught this was strange in itself.

All I can say is I hope Paula Vennells's has got a robust constitution for all the disgust that is aiming her way.

I wonder too how many judges must be hanging their heads in shame for this miscarriage of justice.

I’m sure there are examples of blatant racism - is that being ignored as it happened in the past??
I don’t like that we are only focussing on the ceo -surely the software manufacturing company lies and lied -I bet there were a ton of staff who knew their stuff was corrupted.
and the police and lawyers????

When it does finally come, even full compensation will feel like it’s not enough when it’s taken so many years of people’s life and obviously loss of life. I really hope it happens soon.

@Shoppingfiend I agree. I don’t like the focus on one person. It would be an easy way out for the government to sidestep responsibility too.

Thank you, that’s interesting, I wasn’t sure of the chain of command, but knew she’d have had a boss and someone else was responsible above her that was in the shadows.

As much as I agree there are nameless people in the shadows here, and multiple people culpable. There is no way round the fact this woman was a key enabler here in making it happen. She could have resigned, but she didn’t. She stayed in, enabled it. Lied. Then took 400k pay off and a cbe as a thank you.

In Feb 2015 there was a Parliamentary committee evidence session on the Horizon mediation scheme . In the first half there were questions to five individuals including Alan Bates and representatives of the Communicatiin Workers union and the NFSP. Later they questioned Paula Vennells, Angela van den Bogerd and Ian Henderson (Second Sight, forensic examiner)

The NFSP rep, George Thomson was very clear that he didn't think that there was a big problem and said that it affected very few. He was worried about damaging the brand 'if we are not careful, we damage the brand, we damage the franchise and we cost my members’ ability to sell the franchise'. He said 'the difficulty the Post Office must have is that some of the people are chancing their arm'. Later he was told by the chair that he was 'quite out of order' when he claimed that some were 'spinning a yarn' subsequently mentiontioning Michael Rudkin and his wife . It's worth noting that Michael Rudkin has recently been offered £600,000 compensation.

Transcript But it's well worth watching the whole session on Parliamentary TV.

Breaking news. Tom Witherow at the Times is reporting that the public inquiry has obtained covert recordings of senior staff, including Paula Vennells. An inquiry source says there are around 80 tapes and they could be "damning".

Good!

I cried through most of it, it was harrowing

so many destroyed lives

i finished it last night and took ages to fall asleep as I kept thinking about it

so so awful

I'd like the CPS to investigate whether there was a criminal conspiracy between PO and Fujitsu.

Once Horizon was implemented, hundreds of hitherto (some for decades) upstanding sub post masters were suddenly "exposed" as thieves and false accountants. At the same time, these people were complaining that Horizon was giving them deficit figures that made no sense (certainly in the case of tiny village post offices, implying that they had stolen more than they could possibly have taken at the till in the first place). Fujitsu and the PO were telling these people they were the only one complaining about Horizon (a blatant lie), whilst knowing something was not right because of the number of complaints, and indeed had a technical crew making corrections and adjustments that the sub post masters had no notice of. There is evidence that at least one woman was criminally prosecuted by the PO, when the PO knew they had no evidence against her. She won't be the only one. They took her money knowing she didn't owe it. There's so much evidence not shown in the dramatisation about what a mess the Horizon system was, and how the PO and Fujitsu denied this, whilst continuing to prosecute what they must have known to be dubious prosecutions, with the intent of getting the sub post masters' own money out of them and using threats of incarceration in order to do so.

I mean, we are warned continually about scammers. But this is, in effect, scamming.

So many destroyed lives and yet so much decency and courage too.

The PO have clung on to the flimsy justification for all this time that a great many sub post offices used Horizon perfectly fine and without issue for years, so this was 'proof' that the system wasn't intrinsically broken.

However, aside from the fact that a huge amount of things that are irreparably damaged do routinely (wholly unreliably) work some of the time, I'm wondering how many more issues have gone under the radar.

How many as-yet-unidentified SPMs had issues whereby the same faults that Horizon caused happened to be to the tune of much lower amounts, and so they either ignored it as 'I must have entered something wrongly' and/or they just put in the £20 here and there themselves to balance it off? They would have known that they would probably have been blamed and shamed for incompetence and/or attempted fraud; raising the alarm was hardly a neutral act.

Considering how many of the SPMs who did go public about it were originally threatened and gaslighted into believing that they were the only ones experiencing the issue, I absolutely cannot accept that the lack of far more people reporting Horizon issues is 'proof' that there weren't far more people going through it.

I disagree. Whilst there are indeed plenty more people who should face trial and consequences, she took the shilling and happily defended the indefensible so as to protect the 'honour' of the post office - which just so happened to earn her a huge payout and a CBE into the bargain.

She had the power to stand up and acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that there were serious issues and demand that they all be thoroughly, properly investigated. She could have proven herself blameless in determining to get to the bottom of it, as soon as the problem came to light, and seeking a resolution and justice for everybody; instead of being the rightful object of people's fury, she would have been applauded by the 'little' majority.

Of course, she would have lost a lot and fallen drastically out of favour with the high-up people, had she done so, but this is the price you have to pay for following your conscience and standing up for what is right. She could have done the honourable thing, but instead, she chose to take the money and to please the corrupt elite, and throw countless innocent people under the bus to pay for her greed.

One thing amazes me. Given how many PO and Fujitsu staff must have known the system was shit and causing problems how on earth did they think that they could weather the storm by doubling down on bullying the SPM?
Surely there must have been senior managers who realised this was like some mad pyramid scheme and guaranteed to collapse eventually. Sure some maybe thought if they toed the party line until they left they'd be home free but where are the senior managers who knew and were queasy about it all? The clips of witnesses in the ITV documentary shows them all having very selective amnesia - like we don't think they are lying to save their sorry arses. Shame on them.

Just watching episode 1, what an absolutely disgraceful scandal, those poor people.

@FatherJackHackettsUnderpantsHamper

With a corrupt system and ability to enter postmasters accounts unknowingly how much corruption was possible.

So we know the computer system could bankrupt postmasters, could it work the other way, whereby some sub postmasters were credited instead ?

All accounting needs to be looked at from beggining to end, as to where the money went.

Absolute shambles.

This could be the tip of the iceburg.

Exactly... my husband was a sub post master and we have just chatted about this. The biggest error he had was about £50 so just took it in the chin..You got no help with phoning the help line.

Although some of those affected were employees at the Crown post offices. From memory I think the young woman Tracey who was about 19 when it kicked off for her was an employee in a Crown Post office? Her life was ruined by all this as well.

I read Nick Wallis's book and that was enough for me.

Institutions will fight tooth and nail to protect the institution at the expense of any of us little people involved. Running through a few we all know about. Thalidomide. Hillsborough. Infected Blood. Various NHS scandals. Assorted Police Forces, Stephen Laurence, Daniel Morgan, Spy in the Suitcase to name but a few. Information about all of these extracted reluctantly, inch by inch, til truth could no longer be denied. Paula V will use the excuse of collaborators through the ages, I was only following orders, not my fault. The Post Office lawyers asked the judge to recuse- remove - himself from the trial as he was biased against the Post Office! Utter hubristic delusion, I'm so glad he declined to do so. Like everyone else, I can't even articulate the contempt I feel for all the conspirators. It was a conspiracy. They should all be arrested and imprisoned. And Paula is probably still feeling fully entitled to an eventual seat in the House of Lords due to her 'extensive business experience and sterling work in the community'. Makes me want to spit which is something I don't do.

I've got a question which must have been answered in the programme but I've missed it. If, at the end of the day, counting up takings, if I was missing a few thousand I'd match transactions until I located the loss. I don't understand how such large losses could show with nothing to back them up. Its like me saying to one of you, well you owe me 10k and expecting you to suck it up unquestioningly. What did I miss?

It was really upsetting watching the ITV drama and even more so the real documentary afterwards. Utterly tragic and heartbreaking, the pain and misery caused by The Post Office, Fujitsu and initially the Justice system. It's difficult to fathom the number of people that must have been complicit in this and couldn't or wouldn't speak up. I hope there is more damning evidence to come out in relation to Paula Vennells and Fujitsu. Sadly no senior people in either organisation will take responsibility, they've probably already got scapegoats lined up.

someone told me about this today will look it up,

Take some very deep breaths first @Mamabear2424 , you wi.l be fizzing with anger by the end of it.