mr bates vs the post office

I find it difficult to believe that he personally pushed Horizon onto the Post Office simply to maintain some sort of supplier relationship with Fujitsu/ICL.

Evidence to the inquiry, which I find plausible:

What Tony Blair knew, and why the unfit Horizon IT system was green-lit

2) Tony Blair was aware Horizon was a disaster that didn’t work. He was also told in no uncertain terms (in a message from a Fujitsu Big Boss carried to him by the British Ambassador to Japan) that if the UK govt biffed Horizon, it would cost hundreds of jobs, and do huge untold reputational damage to the government and to Britain’s standing in Europe.

The message subsequently came from Number 10 that Blair did not wish to can Horizon, therefore a way to make it work had to be found. Blair didn’t know it, but he had ordered his team to make the impossible happen. With disastrous consequences.

Obviously there’s sunk cost fallacy at play as well.

he message subsequently came from Number 10 that Blair did not wish to can Horizon

I think its plausible that Blair received a message from Folks in Japan about the difficulty that binning Fujitsu/ICL off a contract would cause and I find it plausible that Blair said “Find something that we can announce this is going to work on, otherwise we all look stupid” But beyond that?

As the blog says: He couldn’t have known what shit POL and Fujitsu would get up to, or how unfit the system was, or any of that stuff. But this does go to the heart of inquiries like this doesn’t it?  At some point some-one senior enough in either of those two organisations should’ve said…”Wait, what the **** are we doing here?” That they didn’t or felt like they couldn’t is partly why we have these sorts of ‘rummaging through the ashes’, no?

Most events this awful are the result of a cascade of failures and mistakes, some actions deliberate and unforgiveable, some made simply for convenience without assessing the likely consequences.

Blair had advice that the system was a dog, but chose a politically convenient fudge on this occasion. We don’t always reward our politicians for reversing a bad decision.

He had no hand in the way the Post Office picked the ball up and ran with it after that, which is where things turn really bad. That was pure bad faith, corruption and cover-up.

Unfortunately the problem with public inquiries is that the public are not much interested in complex root cause stuff. They want a totem like Paula Vennells to boot off into the wilderness, rather than having to unpick the structural weaknesses and small failures that helped create the right circumstances for a scandal.

He had no hand in the way the Post Office picked the ball up and ran with it after that, which is where things turn really bad.

It’s another stone to the governance pile though, which is an adjacent issue that needs to be looked at.

People can form a queue behind me to throw rotten tomatoes at Blair, but honestly I find it difficult to believe that he personally pushed Horizon onto the Post Office simply to maintain some sort of supplier relationship with Fujitsu/ICL

The excellent BBC podcast covered this. I think ( and it was a while ago that I listened to it) they said it became a diplomatic issue with the Japanese ambassador meeting Blair and saying that the project cannot be allowed to fail as, if it did, it would be seen as British Gov allowing UK division of Fujitsu to fail. From recollection of the podcast, Gordon Brown wanted to pull the plug on the project but Blair decided it should go ahead to preserve those diplomatic relations.

“politician” blames Toby Jones for not making his drama sooner.

they said it became a diplomatic issue with the Japanese ambassador meeting Blair and saying that the project cannot be allowed to fail as, if it did, it would be seen as British Gov allowing UK division of Fujitsu to fail

This isn’t just about the Post Office. Nobody was keen that other Fujitsu involvement in major national government IT projects was scrutinised. Fujitsu are a major player in the Atlas Consortium, which was responsible for the introduction of the MOD’s Defence Information Infrastructure, a project which overlapped the Horizon rollout. Guess what? Late, at least £3bn over budget and falling far short of the initial specification contracted for.

I’m sure nobody who’s ever been involved in government procurement will be surprised to learn that the Atlas Consortium (still including Fujitsu) was subsequently awarded the lucrative contract in 2015 to “transform the DII”, presumably into something nearer to what had been specified before the specification was revised downwards to match the bodge that Atlas delivered.

“politician” blames Toby Jones for not making his drama sooner.

That is marvellous, what is even more marvellous is that spoof ex-MP Henry Morris has doubled down with “duh! you do know he’s an actor” tweets and is currently subject to an internet pile-on where idiots are rushing to hammer him for not recognising a spoof account when he sees it.

I’m just waiting for Sandford Police to announce they are investigating whether Morris has broken any laws in his condemnation of Rosie Holt and the spiral will truly be complete.

Oh, and

How can you tell when a politician is lying?

Their lips are moving.

I have to say that my experience in the health service is that politicians of all ilk are inveterate believers in a) magical thinking about the benefits of technology, particularly when it comes to saving money and b) that innovation is best encouraged from the top down.

that innovation is best encouraged from the top down.

I’d agree, many a difficult conversation with a nerd from Abbey Wood about a piece of kit that wasn’t asked for, or simply was ineffective.

But yeah, on the whole user-centred design and function is the last stop on the train, if you’re lucky.

But yeah, on the whole user-centred design and function is the last stop on the train, if you’re lucky.

If you leave it purely to the end user you can end up with “we have always done it like this and just need to do it a bit quicker”.
Have had several solutions posing as requirements documents where I have had to ask “why?” and they are just wanting an ugly manual workaround automating vs asking for the actual problem to be fixed(one of my favourite cases was a team wanting to calculate some fields so had been working around by exporting, which allowed calculations, and then reimporting. They asked for the export/reimport to be automated vs asking for the ability to have calculated fields).
Its where good BAs or their equivalents come in but those are insanely rare.

I have to say that my experience in the health service is that politicians of all ilk are inveterate believers in a) magical thinking about the benefits of technology

Well, you say that but they assured us after Brexit that ‘technology’ would guarantee seamless trade and no need for border enforcements or checks and that all worked out fine.

Oh… hang on a minute….

I’d agree, many a difficult conversation with a nerd from Abbey Wood about a piece of kit that wasn’t asked for, or simply was ineffective

Same experience, sometimes involving  colossal wasting of taxpayer money. For kit specced by civil servants without proper user consultation, that just didn’t work.

Towards the end of my army career I came close to being posted to a defence procurement job at Abbey Wood. I managed to swerve it, but mates didn’t. What they told me about the waste, overuns, duplicate effort, indifference to users etc. made me very glad I dodged that bullet.

Post Office minister statement just now. I don’t know whether I understood it rightly but it appears that the main reason that a blanket overturning of guilty verdicts is not desirable is because some guilty people may “get away with it”.  Unbelievable nastiness- even from a Tory. 

To be fair, and based on commentary I heard on the radio just now, that’s a concern raised by some of the SPMs too. It is not beyond imagination that some small % of the SPM community were dipping the till. It’s not totally ludicrous to imagine that once people realised how messed up Horizon was they could have used the confusion to take advantage. It’ll be really hard in all the noise to know that. And the genuinely innocent have concerns that it possibly leaves a smudge of doubt over them still, which they don’t want.

But the alternative, of retrying every case on the basis of ageing memories, lack of proper evidence either way, time and cost, etc., I’m inclined that the risk and the slight cloud has to be overall worth the outcomes. I mean, in our Beyond All Reasonable Doubt version of justice there are loads of ‘innocent’ people out there that really did it, so it’s not an entirely untried concept.

This exactly. If a number of guilty sub postmasters  get cleared that is just the price that has to be paid because of this huge miscarriage of justice.  Better a few of the guilty get off than hundreds of the innocent who have had their lives ruined need to wait a day longer than needed for justice.

Huge admiration for Alan Bates and all the others  who fought again and again to get these wrongs put right.

Related, but seemingly so obvious I can’t se why no ones mentioned it yet, question? Why did the system never error in the SPM’s favor?

Even if we assume that anyone finding a positive error would report it rather than commit fraud by pocketing the cash. Surely those in charge would be keen to fix it so the risk of loosing that money wasn’t there?

Going by my experience in the NHS, leadership roles tend to go to people who say “yes”, rather than the awkward buggers who tend to call things out.

They also have a massive tendency towards institutional blindness because of this quality. I suspect that the Post Office was much the same.

@theotherjonv just listening to David Davis on the News Agents podcast, part of the issue is the prosecuting authority (the PO) has been opposing the appeals, so they’re tripling down on their assertion that they’ve done something wrong.

I know that the executive doesn’t interfere with the judiciary, but in this case I would argue the PO has repeatedly demonstrated and continues to demonstrate (IMO) they lack the integrity to hold the authority to prosecute, so if they want to retain it they allow the appeals to go unchallenged. But even if that happened their process is examined in depth and changes made as required to ensure they can’t do this again.

Going by my experience in the NHS, leadership roles tend to go to people who say “yes”, rather than the awkward buggers who tend to call things out.

They also have a massive tendency towards institutional blindness because of this quality. I suspect that the Post Office was much the same.

My very short, in comparison to yours, own experience with the same organisation recently are aligned with that.

I’ve seen more leadership acumen, values and integrity in 20yo NCO’s from council estates than some senior leaders I’ve had the displeasure of having to work with.

part of the issue is the prosecuting authority (the PO) has been opposing the appeals, so they’re tripling down on their assertion that they’ve done something wrong.

assume you mean tripling on down on their (PO’s) assertion they’ve done NOTHING wrong, but in that case I agree. Which makes it even more important to the wrongfully accused / convicted that they don’t just get a blanket acquittal and really want to see the actual truth come out. Despite, in many cases, that delaying their acquittals and compensation to the extent where some are dying or at the very least not being of an age or health to enjoy what the compensation brings them.

Which sounds daft – just suck it up and move on while you still can – but there is such integrity in these people that it is humbling. 

I can’t se why no ones mentioned it yet, question? Why did the system never error in the SPM’s favor?

It did sometimes generate a surplus, but when the SPM’s reported a surplus, it was transferred out to a Post Office suspense account in order to balance the branch’s books:
“The Defendant operated one or more suspense accounts in which it held unattributed surpluses including those generated from branch accounts. After a period of 3 years, such unattributed surpluses were credited to the Defendant’s profits and reflected in its profit and loss accounts.”
Well worth a read if you are morbidly curious:
https://www.benthamsgaze.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Bates-and-Ors-v-the-Post-Office-Ltd-2019-EWHC-3408-QB.pdf#page=260

a nerd from Abbey Wood

Bath?

It’s not totally ludicrous to imagine that once people realised how messed up Horizon was they could have used the confusion to take advantage. It’ll be really hard in all the noise to know that. And the genuinely innocent have concerns that it possibly leaves a smudge of doubt over them still, which they don’t want.

The signal to noise ratio is far too low to be able to really sort out the genuine bad ones fiddling the system from the unfortunate ones caught in this unholy mess.

No, not Bath.
MoD procurement has very large base at Filton; referred to as Abbey Wood.

No, not Bath.
MoD procurement has very large base at Filton; referred to as Abbey Wood.

Cheers Frank, aye it’s where procurement mostly live along with project teams who manage equipment. It’s a mix of CS, military and civilians. They do some great work, but they also do some horrific work. But I would say that as a non-commissioned scumbag.

But even if that happened their process is examined in depth and changes made as required to ensure they can’t do this again.

it sums up the Post office management present and past that their “leadership” last year actually had part of their bonus based on dealing with the fallout from this.
Their current CEO got 50k for his hardwork on the matter although he did have to pay it back after the inquiry chair pointed out a)it was still ongoing and b)he hadnt been asked to confirm the PO had in fact provided ““all required evidence and information on time”. Awkwardly this claim was made in their annual report which probably broke a few more laws.

My very short, in comparison to yours, own experience with the same organisation recently are aligned with that.

I’ve seen more leadership acumen, values and integrity in 20yo NCO’s from council estates than some senior leaders I’ve had the displeasure of having to work with.

20 years in the civil service can confirm the same.

Finally managing to get watch this, bloody hell.

Legislating to overturn a load of convictions en masse is probably the one way to sort out this horrific situation, and I certainly can’t think of any better solution. But it’s also going to set a worrying precedent from a constitutional perspective. After all, if parliament can legislate to say that somebody found guilty by a criminal court was in fact not guilty, then why can’t parliament legislate to find that someone found not guilty by a court was, in fact, guilty…?

When you combine that thought with the way that this government has systematically sought to criminalise the act of peaceful protest and has very publicly undermined the decisions of juries that have decided to acquit, there has to be a risk that all this could be misused in the future as a weapon to criminalise groups of people that the government wishes, for reasons of political expediency, to scapegoat. I guess that would never happen in the UK, right?

I would argue the PO has repeatedly demonstrated and continues to demonstrate (IMO) they lack the integrity to hold the authority to prosecute, so if they want to retain it they allow the appeals to go unchallenged. But even if that happened their process is examined in depth and changes made as required to ensure they can’t do this again.

Mrs S and I were just discussing this. They need to lose that right to prosecute without CPS oversight 

Just watching the documentary on the Beeb about it right now.

It’s obvious that some laws were broken but it wasn’t the Post Masters doing it!

Appalling.

Siome of this stuff beggars belief.

” As early as 2003, a judge in a case where the Post Office was suing a sub-postmistress ordered the Post Office to employ an IT expert to investigate Horizon – something any responsible institution would have done years before. When the IT inspector raised serious concerns, the “delusional” Post Office told him he was mistaken, but abandoned the case against the sub-postmistress. Yet it continued to prosecute others, boasting of deterring sub-postmasters from “jumping on the Horizon-bashing bandwagon”.

“The National Association of SubPostmasters (NASP) has 6,727 members. During the Post Office purge, more than 900 were accused of misconduct, though only 736 were prosecuted. Did it not occur to anyone that, in an organisation whose members were traditionally regarded as pillars of the community, a ratio of one sub-postmaster in seven turning to crime – and, as more and more were sacked, fined or jailed, the offences proliferating in spite of these severe deterrents – was not a credible situation?”

https://reaction.life/postmastergate-britains-dreyfus-case-post-office-scandal/

But it’s also going to set a worrying precedent from a constitutional perspective. After all, if parliament can legislate to say that somebody found guilty by a criminal court was in fact not guilty, then why can’t parliament legislate to find that someone found not guilty by a court was, in fact, guilty…?

A few people have raised this, and it’s a valid point. If we were up in arms about the government deciding Rwanda was safe, we should be equally concerned at them deciding who is and isn’t guilty.

I can’t see a quicker way to resolve this for the victims, but i don’t trust this shower not to try and sneak something through in the legislation.

Having watched the whole thing last night, at times it felt that the PO self serving bloody mindedness was a metaphor for the government screwing over public services despitevall the evidence. Probably just me

I would argue the PO has repeatedly demonstrated and continues to demonstrate (IMO) they lack the integrity to hold the authority to prosecute, so if they want to retain it they allow the appeals to go unchallenged. But even if that happened their process is examined in depth and changes made as required to ensure they can’t do this again.

Mrs S and I were just discussing this. They need to lose that right to prosecute without CPS oversight 

I don’t know if I agree. The ability for organisations like the PO, RSPCA to bring their own prosecutions is and has been there for good reason. I’m all for enquiries and lessons learned and making sure that stuff like this doesn’t happen again, but the failings here are not in the ability to bring the prosecutions but down to actual humans (I use the term advisably) who made decisions to prosecute, to withhold / manipulate evidence, to drop cases if they got a bit tricky, and so on to suit their agenda. The issue isn’t down to ‘The Post Office’ but specific people who absolutely should be held accountable.

But I also accept that the organisations themselves bear accountability for their people, the boards and governance in the end should be stopping this, and while the people will be different then PO and Fujitsu can’t be left unscathed by it.

It’s not totally ludicrous to imagine that once people realised how messed up Horizon was they could have used the confusion to take advantage. It’ll be really hard in all the noise to know that. And the genuinely innocent have concerns that it possibly leaves a smudge of doubt over them still, which they don’t want.

You’ve got to remember that a verity of bugs in horizon have been found, which were the basis of the convictions. From transactions doubling to stocktake shortfalls increasing daily/weekly/monthly. So identifying one of these bugs in transaction logs should be possible. But this data has been hidden from the prosecuted post masters.

PO also know how much cash has been delivered to the offices and also how much cash has been withdrawn or used in transactions. So if these figures match (as is Jo Hamiltons case) no wrong doing can be found. Again data not provided to defendants, but the independent auditors did find cases like this.

If we as postmasters took cash or stamps/stock out of our safes it would be pretty obvious and traceable, equally if we digitally deposited it in to our own account tried to hide it digitally some way. If we miss sell a single stamp we know about it at the end of the day! We did a monthly stock take last night and  we’re a few £ up, I know that I should be within that figure for the rest of the month and it also gives me a little buffer if we miss sell a stamp between today and the next weekly stock take when figures can be rectified.

Most wrongdoing convictions you hear of outside of the horizon issues are postal item thefts, staff stealing items to put on eBay or whatever. Again theres are easy to spot once PO are altered to them, but more difficult to prove than cash theft as warrants are quite often required – which is why is so shocking that PO went after so many PM’s for cash theft, all while knowing it was the system and not the individuals. It’s in the paper’s today the bonus were given out to investgatiors? for convictions so this could have have had significant impact as they were easier to catch and convict than a physical thefts of post.

I don’t know if I agree. The ability for organisations like the PO, RSPCA to bring their own prosecutions is and has been there for good reason.

No, it’s been there for historic reasons.

We manage well enough without it in Scotland where the Procurator Fiscal decides if there is a case. Yes, some still got through but by having someone objectively review each case before it went to court many more unsound cases were thrown out.

I don’t know if I agree. The ability for organisations like the PO, RSPCA to bring their own prosecutions is and has been there for good reason.

Yes. I think it makes sense to retain them but it definitely needs review, as a parliament committee did a couple of years back.
That there is no central tracking or quality monitoring seems a major issue. Without that the only people who really know how many cases are being done by someone is them which removes the ability to go “hmmmm,how many of your staff are criminals?. Have you thought about reviewing your hiring rules?”
They made some recommendations but they have been ignored to date.

Of course a large part of the reason that they’re having to think about legislating to sort this problem is that the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system during their time in power.

We manage well enough without it in Scotland where the Procurator Fiscal decides if there is a case. Yes, some still got through but by having someone objectively review each case before it went to court many more unsound cases were thrown out.

How has been been proved? The case which seems to be referenced is one in 2013 where the proverbial was starting to hit the fan and it was beyond clear Horizon was fatally compromised.
Its not helped by Scotland lagging behind in reviewing the cases but this computer weekly article (who being the first to start reporting tend to have a good grasp of it) reckon the number of cases, proportionally, are about the same.
“The Scottish Post Office network is about 10% of the size of the network in England and Wales, and the number of prosecutions is similar proportionally.”