Heroes: A Very English Scandal 

 

‘I’m guilty ’til proved innocent in the public eye and press’ 

The funeral’s very quiet because all his friends have fled’ 

 
I has planned to avoid specific coverage on the Post Office (‘PO’) Horizon scandal but it has become, and rightly so, such a cause celebre that it shouldn’t be ignored. 
 
It is widely described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in our history. Which, along with contaminated blood scandal, is an accurate description. But, what it fails to highlight is that it is typical of how current government and economic policy allows this to happen. 

In ‘Right for the UK‘ I highlighted the pernicious influence of thinktanks and the shadowy billionaires and corporations that finance them. Government has effectively become puppets whose strings are pulled by those in the shadows. Policy is dictated by them, and designed to benefit them. The post office and Fujitsu, who supplied the ‘faulty’ Horizon software have shareholders to answer to. From their response to the issue, their priorities appear clear; shareholders and profits are more important than ‘little people’, whose lives they were quite happy to ruin. 
 

‘shareholders and profits are more important than ‘little people’, whose lives they were quite happy to ruin’

 
To help my own understanding, as much as anyone else, I will try and explain the saga. 

The Horizon system was effectively an electronic cash register and the backend system that was supposed to comprise a network of the entire PO system. 

The system was meant to save operators time and effort, allowing them to manage their accounts at the push of a button. Put simply, Horizon was meant to collate all the transactions over the course of a month and calculate how much cash was still expected to be in the PO’s coffers. 

What went wrong was that the system was simply not able to fulfil the requirements. The PO knew as this as early as 1999, when trials run in preparation for the launch revealed ‘severe difficulties being experienced by sub-postmasters’. 

One member of the development team, David McDonnell, who had worked on the Epos (Electronic Point of Sale systems) side of the project, told the legal inquiry that ‘of eight [people] in the development team, two were very good, another two were mediocre but we could work with them, and then there were probably three or four who just weren’t up to it and weren’t capable of producing professional code‘. 

As early as 2001, McDonnell’s team had found ‘hundreds‘ of bugs. A full list has never been produced, but successive vindications of post office operators have revealed the sort of problems that arose.  

One, named the ‘Dalmellington Bug’, after the village in Scotland where a post office operator first foul of it, would see the screen freeze as the user was attempting to confirm receipt of cash. Each time the user pressed ‘enter’ on the frozen screen, it would silently update the record. In Dalmellington, that bug created a £24,000 discrepancy, which the PO tried to hold the post office operator responsible for. 

Another bug, the Callendar Square bug – again named after the first branch found to have been affected by it – created duplicate transactions due to an error in the database underpinning the system: despite being clear duplicates, the post office operator was again held responsible for the errors. 

Irrespective of the numerous bugs, the system still fell short of acceptable standards. In 2015, for instance, the PO told the House of Commons inquiry: ‘There is no functionality in Horizon for either a branch, Post Office or Fujitsu to edit, manipulate or remove transaction data once it has been recorded in a branch’s accounts.’ This was untrue, and the PO admitted as such 4-years later during a high court case. 

Staff at Fujitsu, which made and operated the Horizon system, were capable of remotely accessing branch accounts, and had ‘unrestricted and unaudited‘ access to those systems, the inquiry heard. 

Now the blame game is starting.  

This week in the official enquiry, Stephen Bradshaw, the PO investigator, was asked about a trial where the defence requested the disclosure of evidence about wider problems with the Horizon system. Julian Blake, counsel for the inquiry, highlights various documents showing that Bradshaw was asked for information but gave little or nothing in response. Bradshaw repeatedly says that he relied on the PO’s lawyers to decide what should be disclosed., telling the enquiry, ‘I’m a small cog in this‘. 

Asked if he ever had concerns when he realised the lawyers were refusing to hand over more documentation about wider problems with the Horizon system, Bradshaw couldn’t/cannot remember! Instead he repeated this being as an issue for the lawyers, even though he was the disclosure officer in the case! 
 

‘Bradshaw seemed little more than a bully, happy to continue denying that Horizon was the problem’

 
Listening to the evidence Bradshaw seemed little more than a bully, happy to continue denying that Horizon was the problem. There were instances where the accused were told they could avoid a jail sentence if they kept quiet about the accounting system’s faults. 

Bradshaw denied calling one female suspect a ‘bitch‘, but admitted to accusing another of telling a ‘pack of lies‘ during what he conceded were ‘not nice‘ interviews. 

The entire time he was bullying people into submission he was aware that the system was at fault, but kept up the pretence as he had not received orders from the top to stop the prosecutions. 

In one document shown to the inquiry, Bradshaw boasted of pushing for a post office operator who had made claims against Horizon to be charged with both accounting fraud and theft, as leniency ‘would give credence to the current campaign by former sub postmasters‘. 

Bradshaw is endemic of this mindless corporatism, a rather spineless individual making up for his own shortcomings by picking on those that can’t hit back. 

Bradshaw isn’t the only wiggling on the hook. Our exalted PM told us that ‘Everyone has been shocked by watching what they have done over the past few days‘. Trying is best to fool us that this is the first he has heard of the scandal.  

He continued saying, ‘Obviously it’s something that happened in the 90s.’ Whereas prosecutions of innocent postmasters happened up until 2015, five-years into the coalition government; the years in which the Post Office allegedly mounted a full-scale cover-up of the injustice it continued to mete out. Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells was awarded a CBE in 2019.  
 

‘a rather spineless individual making up for his own shortcomings by picking on those that can’t hit back’

 
The scandal highlights just how easily the corporate executives were able to pursue, demonise and destroy completely innocent people, justifying it by telling us that technology should always be trusted over humans.  

Secondly, the ease with which they have been able to escape any accountability themselves for doing something far worse than anything they wrongly accused their most junior underlings of. This goes beyond Vennells, and includes a whole host of senior figures from the PO, Royal Mail and Fujitsu who were involved in or stood by the long-term policy of pursuing and privately prosecuting postmasters. Added to this are the successive ministers from the Gordon Brown administration onwards who were made aware of the problems and either didn’t really listen or chose to believe the Post Office.  

The scandal highlights much of what is wrong in British business. The bosses are untouchable, they seems to be only able to move upwards, moving onto lucrative opportunities elsewhere. Whereas the workers can be wronged with impunity, imprisoned for thefts they didn’t commit. This sorry saga often described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history. One which has ruined hundreds of lives, yet not one person has ever even been charged, instead they seem to have been promoted. 
 

‘The scandal highlights much of what is wrong in British business’

 
Even during the official inquiry the PO continue to hamper proceedings. Last summer, on the eve of a crucial evidence session from a former Fujitsu engineer, the Post Office suddenly found 4,767 documents it had neglected to disclose, so the witness’s appearance was dramatically called off. There are frequently multiple significant documents that lawyers believe the Post Office and Fujitsu are not disclosing, as well as other evidence. 

In a somewhat feeble attempt to show cooperation with the inquiry, the current CEO of the PO has been running a bonus scheme to reward executives for cooperating! Isn’t that what they are supposed to do? 

As to the compensation offered, well…..I read of the  81-year-old former sub-postmaster, Francis Duff, who  finally received £330,000 compensation for having lost everything during the scandal. Unfortunately, the official receiver (part of the Department for Business) immediately clawed back £322,000 of it to cover bankruptcy and owed income tax. He couldn’t afford to heat his home last winter. 

Another point that seem to have been overlooked, is that whilst the PO has been slowly compensating  some, but not all victims, 2-years ago, they asked the government to step in to pay the bill or else it would be insolvent. The government agreed. Which seems strange when the PM only learned of the saga after watching TV last week! 

What should seem strange but isn’t, is the fact that you and I are now paying for the corporate, greed, lies and corruption of both the PO and Fujitsu.   
 

‘you and I are now paying for the corporate, greed, lies and corruption of both the PO and Fujitsu’

 
Fujitsu appear to be non-stick, despite clearly being at fault for much of the Horizon debacle, they continue to be awarded government contracts worth billions. 

In recent years their continued involvement in important IT schemes has raised concerns at Westminster, and ministers have tried to prevent Fujitsu getting more official work but this proved ‘impossible‘ despite its ‘woeful’ performance. 

This should be investigated and quickly. There is clearly something very wrong if a supplier found to be guilty of ‘woeful’ performance continues to receive contracts. Someone, somewhere is up to no good! 

Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, has suggested that if the statutory inquiry into the saga, finds the ‘scale of the incompetence is as we might imagine‘, ministers would want to ‘secure proper recompense on behalf of the taxpayer‘, from Fujitsu. 

‘It’s absolutely right that there should be justice across the piece, yes for the sub-postmasters, which we’re talking about today, but frankly also for the taxpayer. This has cost and will cost a fortune.’ 

If Fujitsu is found to be at fault, it should face the consequences, Chalk added, in a sign ministers could launch legal action against the Japanese company. 

Fujitsu continue to be richly rewarded for delivering failure. Earlier this week, the Guardian revealed that the company’s UK arm had paid out millions in salaries and share bonuses to directors last year, after reporting £22m in profits thanks in part to major government contracts. 

New analysis of corporate filings suggests that Fujitsu also made a £2.6m farewell payment to the head of its UK & Ireland division in 2020. 

The PM who, after being made aware of the problem after watching TV has arisen from his indifference and is all over the situation, announcing that hundreds of PO operators in England and Wales could have their names cleared by the end of the year under blanket legislation to be introduced within weeks. 
 

‘Someone, somewhere is up to no good!’ 

 
Those whose convictions are quashed are eligible for a £600,000 compensation payment, or potentially more if they go through a process of having their claim individually assessed. Given that there has been 983 convictions, 700 of which were privately initiated by the PO, we are all going to have to dig deep. 

‘I see destruction and demise, corruption in disguise.’ 

 

Another cracking preamble from Philip, published in full – anyone else not heard of ‘sponge cities’? – to accompany an forensic appraisal of the Horizon scandal; and boy, what a scandal. Yet, apparently Sunak only realised last week that there was a big opportunity for electioneering (er, ‘became aware of the scandal having watched an ITV documentary’?….Ed)

‘

I had planned to not go into detail with the PO story, but, after highlighting the creeping, insidious influence of thinktanks and their sponsors, this seemed to endorse what I meant. The country is run by those in the shadows for the benefit of big business and vested interest.

Another example of this is our failing water industry. Increased sewage pollution, urban flooding and water supply interruptions are the result of a decade of failures by the Conservative ministers.

A recent report highlights how the repeated failure of the Tories to implement rules to create “sponge cities” has led to much more visible sewage pollution, more flooding and increasing instances of water being cut off for householders and businesses, they say.

Alastair Chisholm, the director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, said: “These rules should have come in in 2011. They were canned by Eric Pickles in 2015 and we have had 13 years of delays. This has been kicked down the road and what is going on now is the result of that.”

“Over 30 years on from water privatisation, with widespread urbanisation and agricultural intensification, a fresh approach – including potential reform of water regulators – is needed”.

“With levels of trust in water companies impacted by repeated reports of pollution and profiteering, both public and water practitioners want more transparency and assurance that companies are acting in the interest of society and the environment.”

Sponge cities are urban zones with multiple areas of greenery, trees, ponds, soakaways, pocket parks and permeable paving to allow water to drain away. They also include measures to store rainwater and runoff, such as widespread use of water butts.

Increased runoff from rainfall overwhelms water company sewage systems, which have not been maintained and improved by water companies as a result of under-investment. The extra water increases the likelihood of raw sewage being discharged, while hard surfaces in towns and cities increase the risk of flooding.

In its latest business plan, Thames Water says by 2015 London had seen the biggest decrease in plant cover in front gardens of anywhere in the UK, with five times as many front gardens with no plants compared with the preceding 10 years.

But the Conservative government has repeatedly failed to implement rules under schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which mandated developers to install sustainable drainage systems in new developments.

Ministers have argued the requirements will be too costly for developers, although I am sure that the fact that at least 10% of donations received by the Tories since 2010 came from property developers, real estate tycoons and others connected with the construction industry, had no impact on this.

Wherever there are problems we are finding vested interest. Government acting as a proxy for the few at the expense of everybody else.

People are getting fed-up, disillusioned by a “system” that continually fails them. This is why populists thrive, they provide scapegoats for the disillusioned, and convince them that they represent the people……….more of this next week.

Lyrically we start with the Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield and “Nothing Has Been Proved”.  To finish we have “Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz. Enjoy!

@coldwarsteve
 

 
 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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