Post Office Scandal

Reporting the Post Office Horizon IT Scandal

Post Office Scandal

Reporting the Post Office Horizon IT Scandal

Second Sight’s final report

Nick Wallis

Wed 24 July 2024

12 comments

1 min read

Ron Warmington and Ian Henderson of Second Sight

Earlier this year I published Second Sight’s Interim Report, which was first published on the Post Office website on 8 July 2013 and removed several years later.

Second Sight’s far more critical final report, formally known as “Briefing Report – Part 2”, was not published on the Post Office website when it was delivered to the Post Office on 9 April 2015.

In fact, the Post Office issued a (ludicrous) rebuttal report and (ludicrously) tried to stop Second’s Sight final report from being given to its shareholder, the government. This delayed access to justice for hundreds of Subpostmasters.

As soon as I got hold of Second Sight’s “Briefing Report – Part 2”, back in 2015, I published it on my ropey-looking ancient blog. In those days, no one was that interested.

Given Second Sight’s final report has been mentioned both by former ministers Jo Swinson and Margot James in recent days, I thought it would be best to republish Second Sight’s “Briefing Report – Part 2” on this blog, and this time, I’ve made it searchable. See below.

Do have a read – if you are a student of this scandal, it’s worth it.

Second Sight Briefing Report Part 2 searchable Download

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Second Sight

12 responses to “Second Sight’s final report”

Were some Subpostmaster discrepancies down to internal fraud? – Post Office Scandal

August 26, 2024 at 10:03 am

[…] network. In a podcast I hosted last year (Ep 34: Where Did All The Money Go?), Second Sight’s Ron Warmington and former Subpostmaster Mark Baker counted up at least 14 ways the Post Office, Subpostmasters and […]

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marg geo

July 25, 2024 at 1:06 pm

Just ”scanned’ the forensic report by Second Sight, how impressive an investigation this is….amazing, if only many of those with bad memories under questioning at the inquiry had exhibited a fraction of this due diligence, much of the scandal could have been corrected.
I read with amazement at the start of the report the only deployment of the word ‘moral’:-

”The risk of adopting this possible solution was described as:
“RISK- This has significant data integrity concerns and could lead to questions of
“tampering” with the branch system and could generate questions around how the
discrepancy was caused. This solution could have moral implications of Post Office’
changing branch data without informing the branch.”

Using the term to deflect criticism and blur evidence of chronic lack of integrity and immorality the Post Office staff adopted to sabotage attempts by anybody, especially Second Sight, would be hilarious if the consequences of doing so were not so devastating on so many innocent people’s lives.

It’s a shame reports such as this refer only to ‘the Post Office’ instead of naming (therefore shaming) those individuals who gave replies and responses being recorded throughout.

Need to go get fresh air to deal with the anger I am left with……………………….

Thank you Nick for keeping us up to date ……………………….for sure this is a Hollywood film and you could write the script…………………………………….even worse than the Nixon scandal temporarily forgotten the name of that film…..

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Ghislaine Bowden

July 25, 2024 at 1:00 pm

I agree wholeheartedly with the above comment about what would have happened without the integrity and professionalism on Messrs Henderson and Warmington. I would add to that people such as Kay Linnell and of course Lord Arbuthnot. It reminds of something Alexei Navalny said in one of his final speeches. I am paraphrasing but it was words to the effect that evil things will continue to happen if enough good people do nothing.

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1. Bob Lawson
  
  July 25, 2024 at 9:22 pm
  
  “I am paraphrasing but it was words to the effect that evil things will continue to happen if enough good people do nothing.”
  
  I admired Navalny, shed tears for him. He was on a suicide mission… But the words are, effectively, those of John Stuart Mill…
  
  {John Stuart Mill, who delivered an 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews and stated: “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”}
  
  My thanks to “openculture” from whose site I copied and pasted the quote. I never had any memory for words without music, and a pretty poor one for songs… Navalny must have had, though… Your use in this case is apposite…
  
  Reply
Edward Stephenson

July 25, 2024 at 10:42 am

I worked on a 28K Honeywell machine, using octal notation, from 1969 to 1972, on an ICL 2900 mainframe using hexadecimal in a Virtual Machine Environment (VME) from 1979 to 1982 and then again on the same ICL machine from 1990 to 2006, after Fujitsu bought out ICL. I think it quite likely that Horizon was/is based on the 2900 architecture, or a later derivative, in which case I wish Fujitsu staff the very best of luck trying to debug hexadecimal code from a virtual machine. As for the PO’s assertion that no remote access is possible, that is complete fiction and if it has not already been shown to be so, I do hope that Enquiry lawyers drill down into Fujitsu and expose the truth. And again, when drilling into Fujitsu, if there is any evidence of fraudulent activity in the Bracknell basement detrimental to the SPM, I hope that is fully exposed.

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1. Alan Kerr
  
  July 25, 2024 at 7:57 pm
  
  In our training as postmasters we were told to not turn off the Horizon in the evenings. It was to be left on so Head Office could apply updates overnight. It is unsurprising that Head Office could also make changes to data during these processes.
  
  Reply
2. Bob Lawson
  
  July 25, 2024 at 10:33 pm
  
  You worked on computers back then. Fascinating times… In 1977, I was introduced to bar codes on a course (engineering???) anyway… I thought they were a magical idea… The following year, a mate was leaving the armed services, was going to install checkouts with conveyor belts… We were accustomed to the cashiers punting your groceries down a chute, gravity handling the job. Oddly… I can’t remember a conveyor failure inconveniencing since 1977, but bloody bar codes…? Unexpected item… wait for a colleague… and discounted items for which the system attempts to charge full price (or fails to recognize) “my” mechanical stuff is wonderfully reliable, now… (thanks, possibly to CNC…)
  
  Reply
Roger Greenwood

July 25, 2024 at 8:57 am

“We regard this as unfair.” Plain english, simple, hard to mistinterpret. Page 7 of 96 so not hard to get at least this far. No wonder it was supressed/hidden/ignored.

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Big Chris

July 25, 2024 at 8:24 am

Excellent and timely reminder of how certain people were operating in a mode of non functionality when it came to processing logic.

Delusional, irrational nonsense. Simply stated
Post Office = Right
Others = Wrong
Any criticism = False
Truth = False.

But from the 2015 report to the farce of the trials there was further absurd reasoning based on the false logic.

The PR Guy continued the preposterous irrational reporting.

Those charged with overseeing the Post Office continued to support the implausible and inconsistent executives.

Lawyers continued to Grabbitt and Runne based on incorrect and irrational information while failing to disclose. The word sparrow considered top secret.

Completely senseless and unreasonable to continue to cover up and then throw limitless resources at fighting the victims, the skint little people in the Courts.

The legal profession undermined. A joke until Fraser came up with the punch line.

A farce that reminded me of Rowan and Martin’s laugh in and the late, great Sammy Davis Jnr as the Judge.

I doubt Lord Neuberger would’ve found it funny though.

Recurse the Judge!

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Deb Tanner

July 25, 2024 at 6:12 am

Thanks so much for that, Nick. Am trying to imagine how much worse this would all have been without the brilliance and tenacity of Messrs Henderson and Warrington. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

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1. Tony Collins
  
  July 25, 2024 at 9:48 am
  
  Absolutely agree.
  
  Reply
Tony Dobson

July 24, 2024 at 11:15 pm

Well done Ron and Ian 👏👏

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Second Sight’s final report

12 responses to “Second Sight’s final report”

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