On a different note Tim Parker shows the same level of understanding as Vennells and Perkins. He wanted to make it clear that there were other major issues on his mind in his role as POL chair. He was also “robust” in refuting a possible implication that his 1.5 days a week dropping to 2 days a month was not adequate time to perform the role. So for me the obvious corollary is that he believes he had enough time, so must have felt that it wasn’t important in his role as chair to understand the Swift report and to hold the executive team to account, nor to ensure that the board was fully briefed to allow them to do the same thing.
So again we have a non-exec who didn’t feel that the possible miscarriage of justice of several hundred people was worthy of their attention.
On the positive side he is my personal leader in the weirdest hair of the inquiry stakes.
Having read details of TP’s high level positions for a number household name companies it was not surprising that his wide experience lead to the job at POL.
He started his answers today by stating that the business was very large and complicated - however it appears this wasn’t a full-time role, and I think he was/is chair for several other companies at the same time! Indeed, he has spoken about the need to delegate some of his work at the POL.
One has to consider, whether he was chosen because he couldn’t deliver the full coverage the role required because he was busy elsewhere - and therefore it was easier to manage what he knew.
I’m going to sit and listen to more of TP later – only caught 20mins or so a.m.
My primary takeaway (again) was the non arm’s length relationship between SHEX and POL e.g. why was SHEX prior to TP’s appointment already posting misgivings about PV? The role of the chair (with feeds from shareholders) is how governance works in quoted plc-land. He stated neither SHEX or the departing Perkins advised him of any reservations around PV – it’s nest of vipers time.
I see some of the SHEX team are due up shortly, and that should be interesting – they appear to have behaved like parents watching little league on Saturday mornings, where there’s a lot of noise from the touchline.
It’s very apparent that POL needed(s) an exec chair – and I note TP mentioned that the numerous small events of the prosecutions should have been aggregated as an issue, highlighting that briefing papers weren’t drafted with this aspect to the fore. Did nobody on the Board have an enquiring mind?!
Up to a point. The SPMs case was that there had been a series of wrongful prosecutions and that the Post Office lawyers and management team were obstructing investigations. So maybe you rightly challenge the people. You bring in an external lawyer (Swift) and he tells you there are major issues, then you rely on the people under challenge to tell you not share it with the board and to get “independent” legal advice to tell you to not have any more investigations.
I’ve caught up a bit with TP’s testimony and hadn’t appreciated the specifics of the Swift Report, pretty damming as things go. So, the Swift Report drops POL’s trousers and reveals some bare facts, and POL’s internal lawyers then pull up the trousers, as to reveal the report would arm the SPMs with high calibre ammunition.
All very bizarre when it’s been suggested that things are very awry, yet things get hidden. Nothing like a true search for the truth then.
The point of this line of questioning is many fold:
were requirements of legal disclosure met prior legal action against a SPM
were the PO aware of Horizon problems.
Now GW took the later line. To me GW explained his version ok. It’s very easy to be cynical.
It’s very clear that the implementation of Horizon was old fashioned. The effect is that the implementation is muddled. What modern programming languages do is to include exception mechanism which help ensure that normal processes only occur in the right circumstances. I suspect that with Horizon it’s all very muddled. This means that system fault situations are not necessarily failures as non technical people might understand (hence GW having to change the submission) but special cases that need attention of some kind. Overall every transaction between remote system and server needs to be properly processed or marked for investigation, including interrogating/re synchronising with the remote branch system. This is where it is clear the design of Horizon is not fit for purpose.
It is clear that the PO did not possess the skills to understand how flawed the Horizon system is. No one should have to live with such a muddled system.
Just finished listening to the whole of TP’s a.m. testimony and like others at the Inquiry, it’s staggering (again) that the Swift Report wasn’t shared with the Board**, the PO Minister and ShEx/UKGI, as how could TP and POL look UKGI in the face at the next round of funding and say, we cannot tell you about what we’re potentially exposed to (as would be evident from the report), but please give us another £500m or so. On this basis, it could be a long wait.
And TP’s musings on the fact the GLO was good for all concerned in addressing things to an outcome is such a serious indictment on the actions and integrity of POL’s Board.
As JB KC has observed on several occasions, where POL should have turned left, they always turned right.
** to me, there’s an interesting legal question around the responsibilities of board members and their obligations under the Companies Acts here e.g. how can you discharge your responsibilities, especially on fiduciary and legal compliance matters, when you aren’t given full access to information (noting access to the report was supposedly offered). This is grounds for resignation, so as to remove yourself from potential contamination and, in the worst event, prosecution.
The obvious answer to this question is that these board members were getting a very nice little earner for doing next to nothing. They almost certainly had no idea what the “companies act” was and thought that as they were part of the civil service they were immune from it anyway.
Except they weren’t civil servants, Post Office Limited was a Limited Company. At the time we’re discussing Chair Tim Parker was a serial CEO and Chair in the corporate sector. CFO Alasdair Cameron had been a partner at Andersens and Deloitte’s, Finance Controller at Centrica, Finance Director of British Gas and MD if a subsidiary. Jane McLeod CLO had held CLO posts at 2 large financial institutions before POL. With the exception of the civil servant who sat on the board as shareholder representative these were standard large medium/large corporate types.
The latter is a tad OTT IMHO, as it’s my understanding some members of the board were concerned, hence why POL were asked to flag the potential for SPM settlement claims with their insurers, and board members (as individuals) have insurance protections too against claims of malfeasance – and if it’s proven they have operated outside stipulated governance and processes, access to this can be severely restricted, bearing in mind Companies Acts offences are criminal not civil.
The government in the UK has a very poor history when operating commercial entities, and this whole saga exemplifies this, and perhaps many of the reasons why this is the case.
Plus, as @Eoink has pointed out, POL’s board changed over time, as far more experienced heads were externally recruited – albeit, the question hangs as to why there was such a high level of turnover of senior people within the business this, in part, answered by the need to bring better working practices in to POL, as they were clearly behind the times.
Listening to TP’s p.m. testimony (more a Q&A session with JB KC!), while some may consider TP to be detached, he’s right when he says you have to trust and rely on those around you, especially those in senior positions. As one of my booses said to me ‘I’ve hired you to make me look good!’ i.e. ‘if I don’t look good, it’s goodbye to you’. No pressure then.
One big takeaway from all this, is that it’s best never to ask a lawyer for guidance and an opinion, as they’ll rarely agree and in their sphere of operation there are always reasons not to do things, lest you open yourself up under rules of disclosure.
As I suggested above I think that misses his major error of judgement. The (totally vindicated) claim by JFSA was that the Post Office legal team had been wrongly prosecuting people, his external legal advice was that there were major problems, and he asked the people under challenge for the way forward. “Here people, this report is really damning about your behaviour, what should I do with it?”
They found what Nick Wallis called “the best legal minds money could buy” to tell them to stop their investigations and then briefed him.
I don’t think Parker was part of the inner circle which to my mind was clearly in denial and circling the wagons, I think he was just bad at his job.
agree - the internal legal team were, in essence, asked to set terms to review themselves (no conflicts there then!).
With hindsight, the review should have been wholly independent – but, as TP alluded to yesterday, how could they explain and justify that to UKGI/HMG. Simply speaking, they became stuck in the legal goop, with differing views (from supposedly highly learned parties) and, it seems, an absence of moral direction, which was surely to reveal the truth?!
Has JB KC interrogated Neuberger and Grabiner yet (?)…I’ll have to have a look.
Shoot all the lawyers would appear to sort things…
I listened to much of the testimony from the UKGI bods a few days back (highly qualified people with extensive business experience). The level of bureaucracy (read as’ summarising and filtration’) above the PO was illuminating and, at the same time, highly worrying.
One of the questioning lawyers cut to the chase though, when they asked what weight these people, as the designated overseers of POL, gave to the potential miscarriages of justice being meted out by POL i.e. with the inference that the well-trodden defence of the unknown/hidden scale of the issue isn’t really a defence when the trumping aspect of miscarriages is being suggested. A point very well made.
agree - the internal legal team were, in essence, asked to set terms to review themselves (no conflicts there then!).