No I’m not talking about this newsletter
Or am I?
Hope you are doing well. Apologies for not being around of late. I have been watching the Inquiry, but not writing about it.
Yesterday Henry Staunton (former Chair) and Al Cameron (former CFO) revealed yet more about the executive dysfunction at boardroom, shareholder and senior management level within the Post Office. The Press Gazette’s John Hyde wrote some of it up here:
Post Office lawyers still ‘defending the indefensible’, former chair tells inquiry
There were so many other amazing lines coming out of Staunton’s evidence I have collated a few more reports from other news outlets further down this newsletter.
IT Capture
This week the government released a report into the Post Office’s former Capture system, in which investigation agency Kroll said “We consider that, based on available evidence, there was a reasonable likelihood that Capture could have created shortfalls for sub-postmasters.”
You can read Karl Flinders report for Computer Weekly here.
I have been in contact with one former Post Office employee who worked on Capture during its development. He contributed to the Kroll investigation and has concerns about its conclusions, telling me:
“Capture could not either practically or logically cause ‘cash shortfalls’. This issue was control: the user had no control over the figures that Horizon generated, and no way to reconcile the figures if there was a discrepancy. The opposite applied with Capture. The user entered the data, all of the data, and had all of the data still available in the event of a discrepancy and the fallback of using a manual balance if all else failed.”
My correspondent points out the Kroll report does not seem to answer the question “Where did the money go?”. He notes:
“Capture was basically a spreadsheet and whether or not the software in the office was corrupted it could not impact on the integrity of the data being entered or change the actual cash position of the office. If the office was in balance then a manual balance would show this. Capture could not lose an office money or produce a shortfall. This is practically and logically absurd… I do have an issue with the idea that purely by using Capture actual physical money disappeared as a result of something the software did and this caused the problem.“
Whilst this is an important point, it fails to take into account the stupidity and incompetence of the Post Office investigation unit, something my correspondent readily concedes.
What I suspect happened was that if a Postmaster “failed” an audit, Post Office investigators could suspend them from their post, withhold access to their counter and data, and then bring a routine private prosecution.
They likely never bothered to find out where the money went and just used Capture’s figures as evidence of wrongdoing without checking it was working properly or reconciled against the Subpostmaster’s manually generated data.
Whatever went wrong, the familiar human misery you can see in this Sky News report stems from the actions of a callous, authoritarian organisation with a habit of abusing its power.
Click on the above link and then scroll down the text of the article (which is mainly about Staunton’s evidence to the Inquiry) until you get to the video, which is about Capture.
Here’s a BBC article on the Capture report.
Keegan’s relationship with the truth
… and here is a very interesting BBC piece on Michael Keegan, former boss of Fujitsu UK. He has now admitted having four meetings with Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells, some of which included discussing the Horizon IT system.
Whilst complaining about a Sunday Times article in 2022, Keegan told the press complaints body IPSO that he had only met Vennells once (in 2014) and that he did not discuss or give her any assurances regarding Horizon’s capabilities.
Now, according to the BBC report:
“Mr Keegan has confirmed to BBC News he had four meetings with Ms Vennells during his 13 months as chief executive of Fujitsu UK, from May 2014 to June 2015.Two of these were face-to-face meetings and the other two were telephone calls.“
Lawyers for Keegan said that he only remembered having one meeting. Keegan was caught out by an FOI request to the Post Office, which unearthed evidence of a possible six meetings between Keegan and Vennells, though it appears two were cancelled.
Crucially, according to the BBC, “one conversation, in 2015, between Mr Keegan and Ms Vennells followed Fujitsu being approached by BBC Panorama about its investigation into the Post Office and the flawed Horizon IT system.”
One wonders what Keegan told her.
Forensic eye of the Neidle
Heroic tax-expert-turned-journalist Dan Neidle has been working with former Subpostmaster Chris Head to highlight yet another serious problem with the Post Office’s compensation procedures. It concerns the lack of legal advice provision with one of its “take it or leave it” offers to Subpostmasters who were experiencing shortfalls.
Dan reports:
“Postmasters previously offered derisory compensation by the Post Office are being given a new opportunity to claim under an independent appeals process. The Post Office has written to them offering the choice of appealing, or accepting a £75k flat payment. It’s one or the other – a difficult decision for which postmasters should receive detailed legal advice. But they’re being offered no help with legal costs, and few postmasters will be in a position to afford a lawyer. Many will take the path of least resistance and simply accept the £75k – which in some cases will be much less than they should receive.“
Big Al reveals more
Yesterday, Alisdair Cameron, the former Post Office Chief Financial Officer, blamed the government and an “excess of lawyers” for delays on handing over proper compensation to Postmasters. Cameron said the Post Office still had no idea whether compensation for Subpostmasters should be
“a negotiation between lawyers or… a genuine attempt at remediation, that people feel at the end of it that they’re satisfied, justice is satisfied, we can move on, and that they’ve been properly compensated for everything that’s happened to them.“
Cameron said the idea of doing right by Subpostmasters was “quite badly” hampered by “legal advice” and the “bureaucracy of the schemes”. There’s a surprise.
More media
Henry Staunton’s evidence was such a blockbuster, there are any number of lines you can pull out of it, which is exactly what my journalistic colleagues did:
Former Post Office chair warns of fresh Horizon-style scandal in the making – Guardian
Ex-Post Office chairman claims colleagues said ‘not an ounce of racism in me’ – Eastern Daily Press
Whistleblower told Post Office chairman ‘there is a class, race and gender divide at the top’ – The Independent
Post Office bosses ‘thought they had done no wrong’ in Horizon IT scandal – Daily Mirror
MoneyGram
Goodness me. I nearly completely forgot to tell you about my contribution to this week’s Post Office news. Earlier today I wrote a piece on the MoneyGram disaster. In short, the Post Office has ceased to trade with MoneyGram, a company which Post Office customers can use to send money abroad. One Subpostmaster told me “these transactions were a pain but they were one of the very few that paid a decent remuneration.”
And now it’s gone. Read all about it here.
Thanks
Many thanks to all the new secret emailers who have joined since the Inquiry started and a special thanks to the kind souls who offered to help with my daughter’s housing crisis. It was all solved quite rapidly last week and she’s now living with her friends in a cool new place. But thank you.
Apologies for the monster newsletter. I am going to do my best to get you a weekly secret email whilst the Inquiry is live, though as I am going to Denmark, Belfast and Poland in short order from Friday next week, that might prove tricky but I’ll do my best.
Enjoy watching Chris Brocklesbury, the Post Office’s – “Chief Transformation Officer” at the Inquiry today. Here is the live link – don’t forget that by clicking on the settings wheel which appears when you hover over the screen, you can watch the evidence from the start on double speed, which will be very helpful for catching up with the first hour I’ve missed whilst writing this!
Very best regards
Nick