Watched. Good, but too short. Just 30 minutes.
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It is amazing to watch the many examinations of Fujitsu, POL, and the politicians
Time for the victims to have a say, knighthoods to the leading KCs and some other counsel
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How about time for those responsible to have their own day in court…?
From both POL and from Fujitsu. Following Orders doesn’t cut it.
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Of course there wasn’t any money actually lost because they were accounting software errors but when the PO forced SPMs to make up the shortfall, that resulted in substantial cash surpluses. This shows up in the POL accounts, but the extra money was paid to The Treasury apparently.
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I thought Jo Swinson was quite impressive to be fair.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe tomorrow should be interesting.
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I agree.
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I listened to some more. Baroness Neville-Rolfe struck me as switched on. Today it was Margot James who basically was too busy doing other things to spend much time challenging her civil servants who just fed her the POL line.
Tomorrow is Vince Cable and then Greg Clark. Not sure I will bother listening to them.
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I might listen to Cable, I’m just about caught up after a few days away, it’s a depressing repeated theme that ShEx seemed happy to parrot the POL line and ministers weren’t focused enough on the issue to find a way through the induction and lies.
The interesting input today was that she felt the Post Office team perceived themselves as victims.
Edited to correct the above statement, she felt the Post Office portrayed themselves as victims, not quite the same thing.
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Yes , when she talked about leafy, middle class post-masters she stirred up a bit of rage on You Tube .
I thought she and Jo Swinson were were credible witnesses
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She was interesting
You gotta Speed It Up
I expect people know this, but in case not, did you know in YouTube you can change the Playback Speed by clicking on the Settings cog at the bottom. I find it quite easy to follow these enquiries at 1.25, and have been known to go to 1.5
Also pressing letter L on keyboard jumps 10 seconds (do this when they start to read out a document reference). Right arrow jumps 5 secs.
(Hope some of you have a BF song in your head now)
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I’m coming to the summary view in all this that ‘they got there in the end’, but there were so many failures and shortcomings along the way that pinning blame on specific parties is going to be very challenging, other than those who have ‘dropped themselves in it’ e.g. a couple of the investigators IIRC. Obviously, PV’s behaviours and actions give rise to many questions.
Listening to BNR was interesting in that she was caught in the vice between MPs making representations (no smoke without fire) and ShEx, who appeared overly-focused on their risk registers and presentational styles, than severely questioning what was going on inside POL, even though ShEx had an NED on the Board. Here, it seems ShEx was restricted by the terms of governance given to them, which spawned a bureaucracy of paperwork which, firstly, obscured the seriousness of the issues and, secondly, left ShEx at the mercy of POL’s briefings.
The contrast between BNR and Perkins, both career civil servants, both with a modicum of private sector experience, was stark to my ears. As BNR said (obviously with hindsight…but also reflecting on the amount of smoke which was apparent in the media/from MPs), when you have an issue which you’re not sure about (and she recognised miscarriages as highly important/impactful), getting an independent view is vital. Unfortunately, POL’s Exec management tried to do things ‘on the cheap’, burning-up a General Counsel on the way, with a skewed moral code on what they were fundamentally looking at (miscarriages, forced prosecutions with threats et al). The aspect that POL also got itself in the legal porridge where it couldn’t undertake deeper investigations, as these might, under disclosure rules, be food for an SPM’s defence, is truly bizarre to the layman, where the ‘truth’ is surely the goal being pursued?!
It’s dizzying stuff – and while it’s been informing to hear the former Ministers and PS’s, it’s also worrying that work pressures seem to have got in the way of someone getting their teeth in to this earlier.
Compare the control & oversight structure above POL to a quoted plc of size, and there are glaring differences e.g. the plc would have brokers and analysts interrogating data and reports, sniffing out issues. The Board would be (almost) directly accountable to shareholders, with Board members careers ‘on the line’ in many instances, so I’d say the level of accountability and responsibility is far higher. Things still go awry in plc-land, but the construct and accountabilities are far more straightforward.
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The evidence seems to be that the much-quoted “operational independence” clause in the Post Office Act was a myth, to quote Jason Beer there was no “inflexible rule, less still an inflexible rule of law” which prevented ministers from getting involved in Post Office matters enshrined in the Postal Services Act or anywhere else. (See below.)
So it appears that SHEx lied to a series of ministers telling them they hadn’t got the right to do what they were in post to do.
When a majority shareholder appoints a NED to a board to represent their interests there is a clear accountability, and that is not to represent the company’s interests and lie to the shareholder. Going in to this I thought Shex were a minor player, watching Callard it seems he was a key part of the problem.
I read the Inquiry’s TOR back when it started, I’m pretty sure Sir Wynn can give a report based on the evidence he has read and heard, not bound by the Beyond All Reasonable Doubt requirement of criminal cases. As such I think his report has a good chance of being more damning than some of the “honourable men ©️ Mark Antony” at the top of POL and the legal companies will hope for.
Jason Beer (Q) and Ed Davey (A), from the Inquiry transcripts.
“Q. Your reflection, with the benefit of hindsight, shows, would you agree, that there wasn’t an inflexible rule, less still an inflexible rule of law, that prevented you from beginning involved was there?
A. No, there wasn’t because, as we are no doubt about to
go, when I had the second letter from Mr Bates, I didn’t
have any advice on that but I decided I was going to see
him. So I exercised that flexibility then.
Q. More than that, there wasn’t an inflexible rule of law
that prevented you, as the Minister, from becoming involved in operational matters, was there?
A. That is true, it wasn’t completely inflexible, as clearly was the case because I met Mr – I asked to see Sir Alan in July. But the advice I was given was that it was not a matter for a minister because it was an operational matter. In asking to see Sir Alan, I was effectively going over the advice.”
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The NED was clearly conflicted at times, especially then legal matters were being discussed about the SPMs et al, given the worries that HMG (inc. ShEx IIRC) could be open to FOI requests, which constituted a disclosure risk. This is but one part of the legal porridge, which even JB KC has had to acknowledge, as I understand things. In effect, this made the NED captive to POL.
I know life can be complicated, and BNR’s approach was admirable in that she didn’t care for the briefing and positioning papers (and all their ‘considerations’), she just wanted to meet Second Sight and get messaging from the horses’ mouths, rather than via the filtration of POL and ShEx. Her accountability to the democratic process via being answerable to MPs and, ultimately, the House, had to be her trumping guide here.
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I totally agree, she is one of the few people who hasn’t come over as totally naive, incompetent or malign, even with Callard mis-briefing her she did her job professionally and competently.
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On this point, it mustn’t be overlooked that while HMG (as sole shareholder) have the the right to replace the whole Board, equally they have to stand back from day to day operational matters, as it’s simply impracticable to micro-manage this way plus, POL as a limited company, is bound to be managed in line with the Companies Acts, with all the responsibilities these impose on the Board et al. Doubtless, one of the considerations involved here when drafting was to avoid any contention of HMG/the Ministers (even ShEx) acting as ‘shadow directors’ i.e. effectively exhibiting influence without legal position. I suspect the drafting had to manage-in all manner of considerations, including some political angles …and it seemed to my eyes that some of the papers & briefings submitted to the various Ministers were contaminated by potential political considerations (in the widest sense), rather than highlighting the core of the issue.
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Or to put it less politely, the Board and the shareholder’s representative provided intentionally misleading briefings to their shareholder.
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Things certainly read this way.
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The clips I’ve seen all point that way with BNR and JS seeming to be fairly credible .
Haven’t seen VC yet
Listened to VC today (as dental issues meant had to stay in and sit for a bit!). Another case of there were so many issues to deal with, and I didn’t see the correspondence coming in, as there was so much of it that it went direct to the parties concerned. Some revelations about governmental process as well, which make Yes Minster sound like a paragon of efficiency!
VC came across well though IMHO, in that he said he had the equivalent of an ‘open door’ policy, and only Andrew Bridgen used this to raise SPM issues.
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