So, this post office palaver then

[aVdub]

The Post Office unlawfully claimed £934m tax relief for its compensation payments, and now faces an unexpected £100m tax bill​

The Post Office’s own tax disaster

The Post Office has claimed a £934m tax deduction for its compensation payments to the victims of the Post Office scandal. That’s outrageous – and also unlawful. The consequence is that the Post…

www.taxpolicy.org.uk

 

[SexyGreyFox]

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?

Also remember an investigation team came into Jo Hamilton's Post Office and found there was nothing wrong but still took her to court.

 

[Mr Badger]

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.

Proving beyond reasonable doubt for everyone involved is one thing, but organisations can't just go around committing wholesale perjury etc. without at least some senior decision makers being held to account. If the physical evidence has conveniently disappeared, then hopefully more people who have inside knowledge of events happened will find their conscience and do some whistleblowing about who decided what and when.

 

[Mr Badger]

Also remember an investigation team came into Jo Hamilton's Post Office and found there was nothing wrong but still took her to court.

Was she the one who did a plea bargain to admit a lesser offence to avoid being prosecuted for theft and going to prison, then it later turned out that the Post Office had no evidence to threaten her with the theft prosecution in the first place?

 

[tonys]

Was she the one who did a plea bargain to admit a lesser offence to avoid being prosecuted for theft and going to prison, then it later turned out that the Post Office had no evidence to threaten her with the theft prosecution in the first place?

Yes I think so

 

[fez]

If this whole affair doesn't change the way we deal with the amoral scumbags that run corporations in this country, nothing will. This is inevitably going to be another case where no one responsibly suffers any consequences of note despite ruining thousands of lives. All because they sit behind a company.

If we ever want a fairer society, people need to start facing criminal charges and life ruining consequences when they are found to have intentionally engaged in awful behaviour. Thousands of bankers should have been behind bars after 2008 and as an industry they should have been scared of their own shadow for the past 15 years. They all know that they can get away with borderline murder as long as they do it while working for a company they can just plead ignorance and pass the buck.

 

[tlrBeta]

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.

I'm curious though - ignoring the morally correct, if Fujitsu built this to spec, custom build I assume? When it came to testing, the post office no doubt signed it all off.

I appreciate its bugs that caused the system, but is there any legal recourse for them to pay up?

 

[Trifid]

I'm curious though - ignoring the morally correct, if Fujitsu built this to spec, custom build I assume? When it came to testing, the post office no doubt signed it all off.

I appreciate its bugs that caused the system, but is there any legal recourse for them to pay up?

Reading wiki, the pilot users were picked up in fraud allegations. The test criteria and debugging logs in the early system were clearly lacking.

"At least two subpostmasters using the system were accused of fraud, but protests that the accounting problems were a "glitch in the system" were ignored."

 

[ubersonic]

I appreciate its bugs that caused the system, but is there any legal recourse for them to pay up?

It's known for a fact that Fujitsu knew in 1998 that the system was so badly coded that it would be easier to rewrite it from scratch than fix it, not only did ICL/Fujitsu UK do an internal report that included such wording as "Whoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming" but as a result of that Fujitsu sent three high up programmers from Tokyo to the UK to go over the software. They knew for a fact that it was a **** show and chose to give it to the Post Office anyway, then lied and defended it when errors began to rack up.

The difficult part legally is that, we all know that they did that because they would have decided that any financial repercussions from it being crap would be lower than the financial penalties of missing their delivery date and having to pay a competent team to rewrite the software, that's obvious. But actually proving that in court is not so simple despite how obvious it is.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

Was she the one who did a plea bargain to admit a lesser offence to avoid being prosecuted for theft and going to prison, then it later turned out that the Post Office had no evidence to threaten her with the theft prosecution in the first place?

Yes absolutely disgusting.
At the very least the people who interviewed her and still took her to court should be up on a charge.

 

[Matt-Page]

Watching today's questions briefly to me seems Fujitsu should also take a large proportion of blame for this fiasco. They were aware of bugs that would cause the financial shortages/discrepancies in the Horizon system. Also evidence of covering up/amending data and statements to strengthen prosecutions against Sub-Post Masters.

I am still staggered that this happened.

 

[Mr Badger]

Watching today's questions briefly to me seems Fujitsu should also take a large proportion of blame for this fiasco. They were aware of bugs that would cause the financial shortages/discrepancies in the Horizon system. Also evidence of covering up/amending data and statements to strengthen prosecutions against Sub-Post Masters.

I am still staggered that this happened.

Indeed. Covering up serious problems with the system was bad enough. But it's mind blowing that for literally years Fujitsu and especially the Post Office continued to carry out this aggressive campaign against sub postmasters, spending huge sums of money on legal action etc. in the process, when they knew it was fundamentally based on lies.

 

[JonRGV250]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1749760693182599644

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse..

 

[kPATm]

Not sure if its been mentioned but Fujitsu also set up the governments new Emergency Alert System that comes over our mobile phones. And AFAIK that didnt go to well either

 

[Hades]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1749760693182599644

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse..

Wow. I'm lost for words although by now I'm not exactly surprised.

 

[Mr Badger]

Wow. I'm lost for words although by now I'm not exactly surprised.

Anyone can make an honest mistake. Well, unless you are a sub-postmaster, obviously.

 

[Mr Badger]

Post Office plan to sack Horizon IT reviewer kept secret, documents reveal​

"Documents showing Post Office top bosses secretly decided in April 2014 to sack forensic accountants who had found bugs in their IT system have been obtained by the BBC.
A Post Office board sub-committee, codenamed "Project Sparrow", took the decision with the full knowledge of the government."

"Details of the Project Sparrow discussions were not disclosed in evidence to sub-postmasters as they challenged the Post Office through the courts in 2017-2019."

As more information comes out it really does look worse and worse for the Post Office. And (shock horror) maybe the government too. Surely the people who made these decisions to double down on the cover up can't just get away with it...?

 

[Rroff]

Not sure if its been mentioned but Fujitsu also set up the governments new Emergency Alert System that comes over our mobile phones. And AFAIK that didnt go to well either

Nope never even got any of the alerts on my phones LOL. IIRC my dad was the only one out of my family to get one.

 

[dowie]

As I said above, I'll be surprised if anyone gets convicted of anything.

The two Fujitsu "expert witnesses" might, they're on the record for what they've said in court.

I suspect you're right re: post office staff themselves, what can be done re: senior management is to enact clawback provisions for bonuses. There are time limits for these and so the government needs to reserve the right to act before they hit the limit for being able to claw back the bonuses... whether they're competent enough to do that is another matter. Could be a farcical situation where in a few years some they could be like "ooh we would like to clawback the bonuses using the mechanism literally put in place for this sort of thing but we've let too much time pass".

 

[dowie]

Damn, these people just come across as completely thick, she was asked to complete a witness statement and asked a load of questions and seemingly ignored or was confused by direct questions and ended up submitting just two and a half pages, not answering the questions... Obvs they're not impressed with it but even asking her about her professional background is causing a struggle for her re: remembering basic dates etc..

See just a few minutes from 00:02:15 re: his first question about this witness statement:

She's like an overpromoted dinner lady or something, no doubt there are plenty of local council employees, NHS admin people and various non-fast track civil servant types just like this daft bint.