To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

[5foot5]

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.,

Stephen Bradshaw is experiencing shortfalls in his evidence that he is unable to explain....

They're taking a 10 min break.
Link here (I'm sure it will have been linked before), in case anyone can bear to watch:
www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk

Slippery jobsworth. Someone else wrote that email he sent from his account. His bosses never told him there were problems with the computer system. It was Maureen in casework, it was the lawyers

He's copying Johnson and Sunak - blame everyone else and/or pretend memory loss.

Actually a minor miracle it all came to light

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/64464/post-office-scandal-mr-bates-law

Indeed. Perjury and obstruction of justice do work.

The PO and Fujitsu were almost justified in their hope that it would never properly come out.

I’m worried though that they’re just going after the low level people. The investigators and such.

They need to go after the big fish at the top.

As usual the people at the bottom will be made scapegoats.

And it’s the tax payer that will be footing all the compensation.

Im guessing that Fujitsu will get away scott free , they pay nothing and gain more contracts..

Stephen Bradshaw comes across very poorly indeed as a witness. He has admitted to lying on the historical witness statements on the grounds that he was told what to sign, even though he didn't believe it. Yet he was accusing sub-postmasters of lying and fraud. The irony.....

Does anyone know what post office investigators get paid? It is probably too much.

But I still have an uncomfortable feeling watching this. He is one of the 'little people' and his reputation is being trashed - yet it is ultimately the fault of the PO for placing him in a position of responsibility which he was manifestly unsuited for? Are the people with real accountability - those at the top of the PO, Fujitsu, the Government - going to face real consequences too?

Agree with both above, he is a far from charming man but also pretty low on the ladder. He's an 'only following orders' merchant isnt he. There are many far more culpable than he.

Still, however low on the chain he was, he should have at least investigated, given that was in his job title.

He wriggled out of the bonus question saying that it wasn't a bonus but became part of his pay. All those culpable should have to pay bonuses back for perpetrating what was ultimately money received through fraud for the PO.

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.

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.

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 ?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The courts also failed didn't they.

@ItsBeenRaining that certainly needs to be looked into it.

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.

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??

Sir Ed Davey apparently ignored suicidal sub post master.

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

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.