So, this post office palaver then

[AndyCr15]

where all the money actually went

I guess this is the bit I didn't really understand. How did it go for so long without anyone working it out?

Essentially you have three data points that need to balance.

1- Your takings (Cash)
2- Your stock (Stamps etc)
3- Your sales records

For example, in the simplest terms -

You start the week with 10 stamps worth £1 each
You sell 5 stamps
You have £5 at the end of the week.

All is good. What I think was happening, some terminals with dodgy connections were corrupting either the sales or the stock holding (well, one corrupts the other, but one would be the source of the issue)

So it might come out as -

Start with 10 stamps
You sell 5 stamps but the system thinks you sold 7
You have £5.

You're now £2 short and have to put that £2 in yourself.

I realise that's hugely simplified and it's easy for me to sit here saying 'why did no-one run a manual log and see where the money/stock wasn't matching up, but if I was losing a couple of k a week, I'd invest the time, no?

And of course, I'm making out it's the Subpostmasters fault and of course it isn't, and I have every sympathy for them. It just made me wonder how it went on so long with no-one working out where the stock was going?

(**EDIT** Mind you, in the example above, you then still have 2 more stamps than the system, so I guess it can't be as simple as this... but at the same time, something wouldn't add up and it should have been possible to find what it was? I guess the glitch could have recorded sales wrong, but corrected stock holding right.)

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I guess this is the bit I didn't really understand. How did it go for so long without anyone working it out?

Essentially you have three data points that need to balance.

1- Your takings (Cash)
2- Your stock (Stamps etc)
3- Your sales records

For example, in the simplest terms -

You start the week with 10 stamps worth £1 each
You sell 5 stamps
You have £5 at the end of the week.

All is good. What I think was happening, some terminals with dodgy connections were corrupting either the sales or the stock holding (well, one corrupts the other, but one would be the source of the issue)

So it might come out as -

Start with 10 stamps
You sell 5 stamps but the system thinks you sold 7
You have £5.

You're now £2 short and have to put that £2 in yourself.

I realise that's hugely simplified and it's easy for me to sit here saying 'why did no-one run a manual log and see where the money/stock wasn't matching up, but if I was losing a couple of k a week, I'd invest the time, no?

And of course, I'm making out it's the Subpostmasters fault and of course it isn't, and I have every sympathy for them. It just made me wonder how it went on so long with no-one working out where the stock was going?

(**EDIT** Mind you, in the example above, you then still have 2 more stamps than the system, so I guess it can't be as simple as this... but at the same time, something wouldn't add up and it should have been possible to find what it was? I guess the glitch could have recorded sales wrong, but corrected stock holding right.)

I believe it was just the financial record side they kept and not stock specifically. (well they did but on a daily basis it was a cash reconciliation)

Eg you have a till balance of £10, the system thinks you have sold 7 stamps for £7 but really you sold 5 for £5
The system asks you to enter your till balance, you say £15, it says "error!"
You check and you see its says you should have a till balance of £17, you recount and get £15 so you go *** no disguised swearing *** it, I will say £17

The next day you sell £5 again. The till again gets it wrong, today thinking you sold 8, so you balance is now supposed to be £10+7+8 = £25 according to the system. But you have £10+5+5 = £20
So again you say £25 even though you have £20.

Bear in mind many post offices are actually probably handling a lot of cash.
So now instead of correctly adding the deposit of £100 someone just made, it doubles that.

I suspect by the time most sub postmasters thought oh this isnt going to fix itself the problem was large, and the ability to at least track it was beyond them.
I am sure a decent accountant would have done it, plus many other professions used to accurate data recording, but how many of the sub posties would have had that available.

I would bet as well, someone was recording the number of times a till float was incorrectly entered. That flagged a visit, and when they visited, surprise surprise the till balance was wrong.

The charge of false accounting would be correct, they did lie about the balance. The root cause was of course covered up.
But the court case would be rather simple. Mlord we visited because we had concerns about teh balances, on checking we found there was a significant difference and the had been lying about the till balance, we suspect for many months.
Hard to dig yourself out of that one!

 

[Slackworth]

no money was lost, it all stayed in the system, it just looked like it had been lost in the accounts the actual money was given out in change, paid into the bank etc

Yes 100% agree that no money was ever "lost" - but at the same time, the PO were gaining huge sums from people trying to "balance" their books. Even if the IT people within PO & Fujitsu were happy to shove it under a rug, their finance people should also have raised the point that tens of thousands were coming into the business that previous to Horizon going live were not.

My other half works in a senior finance role in a building society and she says if similar patterns of what happened in the PO scandal started to happen there, they would be made to freeze further transactions and investigate immediately.

 

[Mr Badger]

I guess this is the bit I didn't really understand. How did it go for so long without anyone working it out?

Essentially you have three data points that need to balance.

1- Your takings (Cash)
2- Your stock (Stamps etc)
3- Your sales records

For example, in the simplest terms -

You start the week with 10 stamps worth £1 each
You sell 5 stamps
You have £5 at the end of the week.

All is good. What I think was happening, some terminals with dodgy connections were corrupting either the sales or the stock holding (well, one corrupts the other, but one would be the source of the issue)

So it might come out as -

Start with 10 stamps
You sell 5 stamps but the system thinks you sold 7
You have £5.

You're now £2 short and have to put that £2 in yourself.

I realise that's hugely simplified and it's easy for me to sit here saying 'why did no-one run a manual log and see where the money/stock wasn't matching up, but if I was losing a couple of k a week, I'd invest the time, no?

And of course, I'm making out it's the Subpostmasters fault and of course it isn't, and I have every sympathy for them. It just made me wonder how it went on so long with no-one working out where the stock was going?

(**EDIT** Mind you, in the example above, you then still have 2 more stamps than the system, so I guess it can't be as simple as this... but at the same time, something wouldn't add up and it should have been possible to find what it was? I guess the glitch could have recorded sales wrong, but corrected stock holding right.)

What I took from the dramatised version was:

The Post Office didn't seem focused on finding out where the supposed missing money might be, as they took it as a fact that any discrepancy was down to theft or incompetence for which the sub postmaster was held accountable.

Postmasters repeatedly sought help because the figures produced by Horizon did not match reality, but they were just fobbed off and told that no one else had a problem and the system was robust.

When problems escalated and formal investigations started, the investigators did not try to find what had actually happened or provide any support for the Post Masters. Instead they proceeded on the assumption that the figures from the Horizon system were always right and the sub postmaster was stealing.

Even though some sub postmasters were able to produce paper records showing that the figures from the system did not match reality, the Post Office was not prepared to even consider such evidence.

 

[Mr Badger]

Yes 100% agree that no money was ever "lost" - but at the same time, the PO were gaining huge sums from people trying to "balance" their books. Even if the IT people within PO & Fujitsu were happy to shove it under a rug, their finance people should also have raised the point that tens of thousands were coming into the business that previous to Horizon going live were not.

My other half works in a senior finance role in a building society and she says if similar patterns of what happened in the PO scandal started to happen there, they would be made to freeze further transactions and investigate immediately.

But were they gaining unexpectedly huge sums?

If the system was all over the shop then perhaps some figures were up and some were down, and the people in charge at the Post Office were seeing what they wanted to see - proof at last that money was missing because sub postmasters were on the fiddle.

 

[AndyCr15]

Even though some sub postmasters were able to produce paper records showing that the figures from the system did not match reality, the Post Office was not prepared to even consider such evidence.

Ahh, I didn't know this, thanks. I realise you can't get everything into a dramatised TV show though.

 

[Trifid]

I guess this is the bit I didn't really understand. How did it go for so long without anyone working it out?

Essentially you have three data points that need to balance.

1- Your takings (Cash)
2- Your stock (Stamps etc)
3- Your sales records

For example, in the simplest terms -

You start the week with 10 stamps worth £1 each
You sell 5 stamps
You have £5 at the end of the week.

All is good. What I think was happening, some terminals with dodgy connections were corrupting either the sales or the stock holding (well, one corrupts the other, but one would be the source of the issue)

So it might come out as -

Start with 10 stamps
You sell 5 stamps but the system thinks you sold 7
You have £5.

You're now £2 short and have to put that £2 in yourself.

As I understand it (I haven't watched the documentary) but it is also used to pay out benefits? So there isn't necessarily a physical audit trail of stock and takings to follow but would take someone doing some very detailed auditing of their transactions to back up the data from the system.

 

[glenimp617]

Here's a question. We've only ever heard of people being short. Has anyone actually been up, and if so, have they kept quiet?

Maybe the bug only went into negative?

 

[tonys]

Here's a question. We've only ever heard of people being short. Has anyone actually been up, and if so, have they kept quiet?

Maybe the bug only went into negative?

If they where up do you think the Post Office would let them keep it?

 

[jpaul]

the compensation is 1Bn yeh - probably significant even in fujitsu's annual accounts,
haven't heard if Fujitsu/ICL have set up similar successful systems in other countries, was this an exception.

As ever these televised parliamentary committees are a bit of a circus - not sure why we don't have solicitors performing the interviews versus wanna be
witch find generals MP's, trying to appeal to their constituency and show some modicum of utility to the State - with Captain obvious questions.

 

[glenimp617]

If they where up do you think the Post Office would let them keep it?

I meant more of the fact they may have believed the system was really faulty, rather than the postmasters spending pretend money.

If it looks good, less likely to report it kinda thing.

Maybe the system failed both ways round is what I was asking, and on those days would it have cancelled out the others. They did say the IT staff logged in and manually changed the figures, so maybe it did and that's why they were going in and changing it.

 

[Werewolf]

I guess this is the bit I didn't really understand. How did it go for so long without anyone working it out?

Essentially you have three data points that need to balance.

1- Your takings (Cash)
2- Your stock (Stamps etc)
3- Your sales records

For example, in the simplest terms -

You start the week with 10 stamps worth £1 each
You sell 5 stamps
You have £5 at the end of the week.

All is good. What I think was happening, some terminals with dodgy connections were corrupting either the sales or the stock holding (well, one corrupts the other, but one would be the source of the issue)

So it might come out as -

Start with 10 stamps
You sell 5 stamps but the system thinks you sold 7
You have £5.

You're now £2 short and have to put that £2 in yourself.

I realise that's hugely simplified and it's easy for me to sit here saying 'why did no-one run a manual log and see where the money/stock wasn't matching up, but if I was losing a couple of k a week, I'd invest the time, no?

And of course, I'm making out it's the Subpostmasters fault and of course it isn't, and I have every sympathy for them. It just made me wonder how it went on so long with no-one working out where the stock was going?

(**EDIT** Mind you, in the example above, you then still have 2 more stamps than the system, so I guess it can't be as simple as this... but at the same time, something wouldn't add up and it should have been possible to find what it was? I guess the glitch could have recorded sales wrong, but corrected stock holding right.)

The other thing is that remember the Post Office used to pay out a huge percentage of all the pensions and the like, and acted as a banking point for many.

So a lot of the missing money was things like "money paid in by customer" or "money paid out", which means there was no physical item to match up it was all accounting and the Horizon system was meant to replace the old systems that actually left things like a paper trail that the Postmasters kept and could not be altered remotely.
You can account for stamps because you have, or don't have the physical stamps.

So if the system messed up and didn't register a pension payout, that was say £100, if it messed up and resent the same payment in that could mean it being £50 out, and given how much money the post offices were paying out weekly, or things like the number of weighed/franked items they dealt with the actual "shop" side of the average post office was relatively small change.
Back in the early 00's you'd routinely see a line of OAP's outside the likes of the local post office on a Thursday because that was the day the pension was paid out, and even a small one might be handling 10k+ in cash with ease.

 

[Sythe79]

So if the system messed up and didn't register a pension payout, that was say £100, if it messed up and resent the same payment in that could mean it being £50 out, and given how much money the post offices were paying out weekly, or things like the number of weighed/franked items they dealt with the actual "shop" side of the average post office was relatively small change.
Back in the early 00's you'd routinely see a line of OAP's outside the likes of the local post office on a Thursday because that was the day the pension was paid out, and even a small one might be handling 10k+ in cash with ease.

Even then, you either expect 1000s of pensioners to be complaining they didn't receive their money, or cash in and out stubs not to marry up. Any half decent audit would have figured out something was wrong with the system, especially back then, when everything else apart from the system was physical.

 

[AndyCr15]

even a small one might be handling 10k+ in cash with ease.

Definitely this makes it much harder, but I would expect there would be some kind of report 'Pension paid out today' or something? Yes, it would be a huge pain, but a manual log could probably still be kept? Again, I don't know as I've not worked in a Post Office and I'm probably massively oversimplifying things too much, I just can't get around this is all maths at the end of the day and when 2+2 tells you that you should have 5 you could usually see where the maths doesn't add up?

I also appreciate the system could be so bad, it simply doesn't provide you with reports and any kind of trail to follow up (as I think you mentioned already).

 

[Hades]

Definitely this makes it much harder, but I would expect there would be some kind of report 'Pension paid out today' or something? Yes, it would be a huge pain, but a manual log could probably still be kept? Again, I don't know as I've not worked in a Post Office and I'm probably massively oversimplifying things too much, I just can't get around this is all maths at the end of the day and when 2+2 tells you that you should have 5 you could usually see where the maths doesn't add up?

I think the bugs were affecting the reports. For example I think there was a fault with the debit process. E.g. a postmaster withdraws some money for a customer (let's say £50). The debit process hangs and then fails. The postmaster tries again. After a few tries it works, the postmaster gets a receipt and hands over the money to the customer. But what the postmaster didn't know was that the failed debits actually worked. So the postmasters account had £100 debited but the postmaster only has receipts for £50 and only handed out £50.

At the end of the day the postmaster checks what has been paid out to all customers and enters that amount in some kind of reconciliation screen. But it doesn't tally with what the account holds. The account is showing the wrong figures and the postmaster has to make good the shortfall with their own money (as per their contract).

To me this bug looks like a case of poor error handling around something like a database lock. The transaction should rollback when it fails, but it doesn't. Then when the next transaction works both transactions are committed. I assume this is just one example of the many bugs that they had.

Edit: I'm not sure in my example why a reconciliation of the cash wouldn't show the issue. So I'm sure the problem must be more complex than my simple example.

 

[AndyCr15]

I assume this is just one example of the many bugs that they had.

And I guess this could be a huge problem. I still feel like the withdrawal issue could have been identified and then investigated, but if there are bugs all over the place, that would make it really hard to narrow down and prove.

 

[Slap]

Justice is srarting to being served...So happy for all the victims.

 

[Nasher]

The people who covered this up and doubled down by handing out prosecutions need to be put on trial TBH. They must have broken at least one law. All the profits they made from it confiscated.

The whole outsourcing/contracting within government is so corrupt. MPs sit on their boards most of the time so there are big conflicts of interest. Civil servant aren't allowed to do that, but somehow MPs are. It's like having Dave in purchasing also working in sales of the supplier he is buying from.

 

[Mr Badger]

The people who covered this up and doubled down by handing out prosecutions need to be put on trial TBH. They must have broken at least one law. All the profits they made from it confiscated.

The whole outsourcing/contracting within government is so corrupt. MPs sit on their boards most of the time so there are big conflicts of interest. Civil servant aren't allowed to do that, but somehow MPs are. It's like having Dave in purchasing also working in sales of the supplier he is buying from.

I'm not a lawyer, but based on the facts that have been established so far and the accounts from the sub postmasters of how they were treated, it seems likely that a range of criminal offences have been committed. It will be interesting to see if it can be established exactly when Fujitsu and the Post Office first knew that the Horizon system was not as robust and secure as should be required to rely on it as the sole evidence to proceed with formal action against a sub postmaster. My guess is that this was quite early on and that the people calling the shots just buried the truth and dug themselves in deeper and deeper to protect their bonuses the brand, at the expense of hundreds of innocent people getting their lives ruined.

 

[Mr Jack]

I'm not a lawyer, but based on the facts that have been established so far and the accounts from the sub postmasters of how they were treated, it seems likely that a range of criminal offences have been committed.

As I said above, I'll be surprised if anyone gets convicted of anything. Beyond reasonable doubt is a hell of a hurdle to jump, so unless there's a memo someone which literally says "I know the Horizon system is faulty but I get paid every time we get one of these chumps convicted so I'm going to lie to the court about it!" I don't think they'll manage to nail anyone for it. Too much time has passed, too many people involved, and too few records to convict anyone from the Post Office. Successful prosecutions against anyone from Fujitsu seem even less likely (and, tbh, I don't think it's clear anyone at Fujitsu did anything that's worse than making a product with flaws which isn't a criminal matter).

We'll see, and I hope I'm wrong, but I think the chances are slim.