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.,

New charges can always be created. The law is an ever changing thing.

Quite right.

That's the problem when those who are still in power are dishing out the punishments.

Yes that was interesting wasn't it, that those who questioned being stolen from ended up with larger ammounts being stolen from them and if they didn't agree to this blackmail they were taken to court.

How lovely for the thiefs to have the full backing of the criminal courts behind them to continue pillaging new victim's accounts.

You coudn't make it up.

Yes, but retrospective legislation to criminalise behaviour that was legal at the time is rare and is prohibited by the European Convention on Human Rights.

I don't think the behaviour was legal at the time, was it? Surely perjury at the very least?

You were suggesting changing the law to convict people.

The police have been investigating two Fujitsu employees for perjury for some time. They have been interviewed under caution but no arrests as yet. The inquiry has now widened to look at possible charges of perverting the course of justice and fraud.

That Stephen Bradshaw -we see another Fraud Investigator with zero training in fraud, the law, or investigative procedures. Another character that started as a counter clerk and ended up in postions of such authority, a significant role, that was a key part of prosecuting and destroying the lives of others. Gleefully taking his bonus and high fiving the rest of his sordid little team,

Julian Blake (lead counsel) keeps giving him a shovel, and instead of smacking himself in the face for a wake up call, he just digs a bigger hole. If he had the slightest whiff of investigative training (or a modicum of common sense) he would see the bear traps being laid, one after the other. He was taking zero responsibility for his actions despite the mountain of evidence thrown at him showing his culpability.

His latest witness statement, the one for the enquiry. "There were no concerns." and "I have no other reflections about this matter." and my favourite. "I do not wish to bring any other matters to the attention of the Chair." Well I think Mr Julian Blake decided otherwise.

"The investigation was conducted in a professional manner at all times." But he tells us that his previous statements produced at court back in 2012 were not really his, he was given them and told to to sign them. Very professional Mr Bradshaw, very professional indeed.

I have yet to see evidence showing me that the Investigation teams at POL were not staffed by unqualified clowns.

Seeing that Stepehen Bradshaw being interviewed, did remind me of the Nuremberg trials. Starting with the lower echelons first.

Hopefully they won’t just make these people the fall guys though.

Still a horrible little man nonetheless

I don't know much about running a business but surely even for tax purposes they must have known they were stealing money as don't they have to know where every penny comes from or goes out to ? They must have had to say " Oh look money breeds ." It's almost like money laundering .

A business like Post Office is dealing in huge amounts of money - almost £1 billion per year. They deal with a lot of clients whose products can be bought or paid for at branches - utilities, DVLA, insurance, Camelot, etc. Some of the figures in the accounts of large businesses will be estimates. There will be errors made that make it impossible to say where every penny came from or went. The requirement is to keep accounts that are reasonably accurate, to safeguard the assets of the business and to take reasonable steps to prevent and detect fraud and other irregularities, not to track every single penny.

Richard Taylor, Post Office Director of Communications, has been suspended after tapes emerged of conversations in 2020 and 2021 (i.e. after the courts had ruled in favour of subpostmasters) in which he suggested that the campaigning subpostmasters were probably thieves, that the judge had found that there was no evidence Horizon had caused discrepancies (on the contrary, the judge was clear that Horizon did cause discrepancies) and that the quashed convictions of subpostmasters was getting too much media coverage.

Nick Wallis says that he has been told off the record many times that many in Post Office still think the subpostmasters got lucky, that the judge was trying to make a name for himself and that there was clear evidence that Bates et al were trying to deflect from their own personal failings.

I'm not surprised that many in Post Office are in denial, particularly those who were closely involved. If they genuinely believed they were doing the right thing, they won't want to admit to themselves that they were instrumental in ruining the lives of innocent men and women. However, their continued presence in Post Office stops the organisation moving on and doing the right thing.

Taylor should be sacked, but many more need to go. I agree with those that say there needs to be a complete clear out of the Post Office board, senior management and many in middle management.

Good grief, it just keeps getting worse. Thanks for that info and all your other posts, @prh47bridge.

I worked as an auditor for a big chartered accountancy firm in the 1980s. I haven't worked in that field since then, but would be surprised if anything has changed in this one respect - auditors of large companies and other organisations check very few transactions indeed. They rely on the design of the accounting system. A good system, well run and adequately staffed, should make it difficult to get something wrong and those errors that do get through should be picked up and put right quickly. Fraud and theft should be very difficult to commit. Any organisation big enough to have its own internal auditors would normally be expected to need a lot less work from the external auditors.

The trouble is that many organisations are not well run and their accounting systems are not well designed and operated. The Post Office seems to be an outstanding example of this.

Also, auditors are not truly independent and that compromises their ability to tell the truth. In theory they are working for and reporting to whoever owns the business, not the directors, but they are appointed and re-appointed by the directors, who are responsible for preparing the accounts and therefore for any errors. If the auditors criticise the directors they could lose the audit, and audit fees are enormous.

Very rarely - in the case of a scandal as big as Mirror Group Newspapers pension scheme being robbed by Robert Maxwell without the auditors raising the alarm, for example - a big firm faces some sort of disciplinary process, strung out for years, ending with a fine for the firm which is a drop in the ocean of their massive profits. Then they just carry on as before.

I believe the external auditor for the Post Office for many years was Ernst & Young. PWC have the job now. Will E&Y face any sort of legal action or did they manage to cover themselves? There's usually some let out.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/14/a-tragedy-is-not-far-away-25-year-old-post-office-memo-predicted-scandal

I'm watching a local TV programme about water. I sincerely hope that directors of our water companies are taking note of the unfolding PO horrors and are beginning to cast around in the hope that they too have installed a computer system which they can blame for their greedy, grasping incompetence. If we're calling such people to account, may the water companies be next in line.

For those interested in how the legal system got it so wrong, this article from David Allen Green is an interesting read - How the legal system made it so easy for the Post Office to destroy the lives of the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses - and how the legal system then made it so hard for them to obtain justice (substack.com)

Does anyone know why Tony Blair's evidence isn't visible on the inquiry website? He is listed in the dropdown of witnesses but a search returns a blank. The BBC definitely said he had given evidence.

Look for Anthony Blair. His witness statement is at https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/file/896/download?token=knA1N1zT

There is a precedent for the auditor being stung for its collusion. The Enron scandal brought down accounting firm Arthur Andersen:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen

Thank you, I have found it now. Thanks also for the link to the judgement, which I have started reading.

@prh47bridge mentions:
Nick Wallis says that he has been told off the record many times that many in Post Office still think the subpostmasters got lucky, that the judge was trying to make a name for himself and that there was clear evidence that Bates et al were trying to deflect from their own personal failings.

This is reflected in the BBC's account of how the Post Office tried to suppress their reporting. Each time one of their tactics failed, the PO escalated.

Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Horizon whistleblower
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67884743

The Post Office's lobbying did secure them a further meeting, this time an off-the-record briefing with the programme's then-editor. Such meetings are viewed with suspicion by many investigative journalists as they can be used as a tactic to hamper inquiries and publication.

So it proved in this case. The Post Office took the opportunity to smear some of the sub-postmasters Panorama was planning to feature in its programme, hinting at potential motives to steal from the tills.

In one case, it falsely claimed it had documents showing a postmaster was guilty of theft. But it said it would only show them to the programme team if they promised not to share them with anyone else - which meant Panorama would not even be able to discuss them with the postmaster who had been accused.

Panorama refused.

Thanks for that link, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/14/a-tragedy-is-not-far-away-25-year-old-post-office-memo-predicted-scandal

One of the (many!) chilling things reading it is where the Post Office set up a circular argument.

The PO got convictions in a few early cases by assuring the judge there was nothing wrong with Horizon. They then used these cases to say there was nothing wrong with Horizon, it was always SPMs being dishonest... as proven by the fact SPMs had been convicted.

How is Keith getting away being so quiet on this despite being on top of the civil service justice tree while this was going on?

That article above also has the horrifying detail that, shortly before 1999, the law was changed so there would be an assumption that computers were "reliable" unless proven otherwise - ie the burden of proof was reversed so a defence had to prove an accuser's machine was unreliable. (Not exactly easy when it's someone else's computer and you don't have access.)

Turns out this was lobbied for by... the Post Office.

That law is currently still in force. God help us all under AI:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/12/update-law-on-computer-evidence-to-avoid-horizon-repeat-ministers-urged

Keir, not Keith.

Most of the prosecutions were by Post Office. The CPS could have taken over, but the long standing convention was that CPS didn't interfere in Post Office prosecutions. However, it now seems that a significant number were conducted by the CPS. Given the volume of cases handled by the CPS, it is unlikely Starmer was aware, but it means he potentially has questions to answer. But I'm not surprised the focus is more on Ed Davey. He was a lot closer to it and definitely has questions to answer. His refusal to apologise is, at best, foolish.

Three cases were brought by the CPS when Starmer was DPP. So it is very likely that he nothing about them.

Why do people call Starmer "Keith"? Is it supposed to be an insult?