Not quite sure how to respond helpfully (it’s a big subject) but will try anyway
In terms of complexity, they habitually carried foreign exchange of various types and this was pre euro days so many European ones plus dollars of various types (doubt they still do that but don’t really know) and paid out huge sums in benefits (pensions, unemployment benefits etc etc now mostly paid by direct credit), would receive cheques for passing on to for example HMRC, receive cheques for paying into customer accounts 20 years ago that would be quite voluminous, they took cash in from business customers who had a lot of cash customers themselves and there were also lots of odd bits and pieces like lottery tickets. So stocks consisted of lottery tickets in a variety of types, different foreign currencies, sterling cash, cheques and probably all kinds of other things I don’t know about - so when there was a sale of foreign currency the system had to record the uk cash in, and the foreign currency out, the commission charged, the exchange rates adopted and correct all the stock balances.
Oh, I think another issue was that some codings were different lengths for different items within a category - eg if NatWest had an 8 digit code but hsbc (Midland then) had a 7 digit code and transactions had 16 and 15 digit codes then the system would read some items as being the wrong transaction with the wrong bank as it would mistake when the break should be - but I might be making some of this up
I seem to remember something about it being the worlds largest single point of sale system when it was introduced which if useful is a huge complexity
I have heard recently that one of the issues was one sided entries, another was that the system just refused to allow / record an entry at all, a big problem was internet intermittency so that only part of a batch of transactions would be correctly recorded (and there were few if any batch checks to enter the reliability of data). This is possibly a bit garbled (sorry!) as it is based on my knowledge of a specific claim, having read the Wallis book and seeing all kinds of stuff on Twitter by Nick Wallis and various former subpostmasters
Not sure if that answered your question
Just thought of something else - someone who the PO accepted they had probably made bankrupt was offered 75% of the costs of removing the effects of bankruptcy. So they seem to be institutionally mean and trying to get out of offering full compensation now (this was in the last couple of weeks)
The version I found is 861 pages! Have you found the 2024 statement or an earlier one perhaps? I found by googling Paula Vennells witness statement 2024 uk. I really can’t face reading her full statement at 800+ pages
Argh sorry just realised you are probably
talking about McLeod
Yes, after reading the substantive half of it I can see why she won’t turn up, it’s dry descriptions of how she did everything in good faith. Beer would expose her and trying to claim some of that with a straight face with Jo Hamilton looking directly at her would be challenging.
The NFSP ceased being a union in 2014 as the SPMs were neither employees nor workers under the terms of the relevant legislation, and it was thrown out of the TUC.
Tim, appreciate the post, thanks. Your fifth para is an interesting one, re posting entries. Sounds like double entry wasn’t part of the cross check et al. I appreciate transactions were complex, I just wondered whether the post office was itself complex. Although very differing transactions and levels, what one sub postmaster transacted, was much the same as the next. I wonder if upscaling, as you described “largest point of sale”, both overwhelmed management at many levels and controls were never put in place to track the data and variances in any way adequately. As a one time internal auditor for a couple of large financial organisations, the errors in batch processing doesn’t surprise.
I’ll read the book as well, so much appreciate your response.
The miscarriage of justice is one thing, shocking though it is/was; being inept and incompetent with a sensible, prompt and genuine compensation is, imho the greater scandal, based on the fact that it must be the case, that beyond reasonable doubt, errors occurred.
The time has passed for prevaricating, even if a few non-genuine cases are inadvertently included.
Covid money was all too freely given out - yet subpm, wrongly convicted, are forced to wait !
They seem actively to be trying to avoid that so I think it is a deliberate attempt to avoid full compensation. That said I am never involved with the argy bargy of settlement negotiations so I don’t know what typically goes on. I think this one is different though - I understand that there is no global negotiation and individual items receive offers. So if you have say loss of a house calculated at say £150k, loss of earnings £400k, horizon shortfall £120k they will make separate offers for each one. Which is very odd. But if you don’t like the offer you can go to independent mediation (I think - not there yet with my client)
I’m not sure MacLeod can add much more TBH – yes, she can expand a lot, but by the time she was there, the die was cast and she was only one cook in a kitchen full of external legal advisers, 4 QCs, as well as the investigators like Deloitte. Plus, her tenure embraced material changes at Board level (new Chair in Sir Tim Parker) and the birth of new C’tees and Groups to monitor and patrol litigation matters – plus UKGI (HMG) became increasingly curious, which generated issues around ‘legal privilege’ and FoI requests. A right porridge in simple language — and, it seems, the SI has found more information of interest which wasn’t shared in court(?).
From a business operational standpoint, her comments bear out that POL was a poorly organised business, apparently low on accountability, had no effective risk framework embedded in it (e.g. no notification processes for emerging risks), and had only a small IT team, which meant that it had minimal oversight of how Fujitsu was operating, the latter effectively given the operational responsibility for the system.
At one point she reports words to describe POL (post separation) as ‘a 300 year-old start-up’. There’s also strong suggestions that monetary and budgeting drivers overly dictated actions. Couple all this to the revolving-door of the executive and higher-management teams and the recipe for issues is writ large. In many respects, MacLeod’s statement reads as a defence document for PV, in that there was such a lack of awareness around key facets of the business, it could well have been PV didn’t know and/or they were flagged far too late (the puff of smoke had become a raging fire) – albeit this doesn’t excuse the approaches taken by POL and their media stance, plus the assertions made in parliament.
I think that’s why her presence would have been valuable. There were multiple aspects to the scandal, the prosecutions and bullying into plea bargains based on the assumption that a system could have no bugs, the bare faced refusal to accept the issue and pay anything more than nominal compensation, then the massive spend on defending the GLO and the refusal to accept the outcome.
For the third she was the General Counsel, although if any exec in the Post Office accepted accountability she was accountable for their legal position she paints herself as quite passive and trusting of the external advisers. A key question for Sir Wynn is whether the execs were as naive, unquestioning and blind to the issues as they are claiming or whether they were in fact ruthlessly trying to protect the brand and are now dissembling. So in my view a key accountable participant in the third phase of the scandal should be examined by Counsel to test the veracity of her evidence.
Like the GC’s before her, she was a financial & commercial services lawyers having little/no experience of litigation and was simply a conduit between the external advisers/QCs and Board/the sub-c’tees et al. Another lawyer in the POL team was engaged far more directly – but all the meaningful determinations were based on external opinions, including the decision to seek the recusal of LJF.
As we all know, there are issues piled sky high on top of other issues in all this. As you say, it’s utterly befuddling how the PO Executive and Board held fast on the assertions that Horizon (v1.0) was robust when corporately they had little knowledge of its workings by dint of having a small IT team and, worse, no independent corroboration to found such thoughts (how PV’s actions in getting the RMG’s share Prospectus amended will be seen will be one of many matters of interest).
IMV, it’s all another object lesson in life that where things look wrong and/or matters are open to debate, the last thing you want to do is to reach for lawyers, instead of negotiating your way out of the problem maze.
And, let’s not forget, when asked whether the Board/Exec knew about the increasingly large number of SPM prosecutions, one answer was the data was given in reports, but more as memo-notes (if my ears are reliable) i.e. nobody shouted it all out, although this may been due to the much heavier-weight issues POL was dealing with. A house built on foundations of sand.
That’s their perspective. We had a business to run and turn into profit, personally I think the heaviest issue they had to deal with was wrongfully prosecuting hundreds of people and ignoring the issues around that for over a decade, and that should be drummed into every board, ruining people’s lives is much more of an issue than your P&L account.
Absolutely – it was complete ignorance of the risks (soft and hard) in their business model. Both MacLeod and Cameron, as incoming people with wider experience, have made it clear that basic controls were wanting (at best). It’s not much of a defence for an Executive to say words to the effect ‘I didn’t know we were doing that’. An omnishambles and then some.
Like a football club manager whose side is letting in goals without realising they’re playing without a goalkeeper.
Watching the clips on You Tube is a horror story , in the end it will be the senior staff at the PO who have robbed the PO , not some poor post master.
What a shambles
Why is it taking so long for these people to be compensated for this debacle. Lives have been lost people have been bankrupted and others served time (or at least been convicted). The government and the PO should just admit they’ve fcked up and let these people get on with their lives.
I’m not a British citizen but I think you folk should be hammering your local member to end this injustice.
My guess is what will happen is that the report will be made and then go to the Director Of Public Prosecutions to decide if criminal charges will be brought
It will take time - and maybe they will do time .
The senior PO executives seemed to have a collective amnesia , and come over as profoundly worried
Excellent point - it seems that iiuc, compensation is being dealt with by the PO itself, who are reported to have a mentality that claims have to be calculated by claimants, proved and then individual offers made. Some reports that PO still doesn’t wholly buy into the system faults and some of the SPM were after all, on the take. After the length of time, if some were on the take, the majority were not. It also seems to be the case, that for quite a few years, individual SPMs, did not have knowledge that others were affected by the errors. That might suggest, using the errors as cover for the odd fraud, was not so likely, who knows!
I commented above, make lump sum, not rely on claims, based on a simple formula of number of years wronged. @TimOopNorth also outlined some info he understood in a fairly recent post, responding to a question I raised with him.
When I worked for a major general insurer , we believed a claim settled quickly was a cheaper claim, set a generous formula and it will work out far cheaper in the long run - saving a fortune in interest and admin.
It seems clear that they still cannot accept that every SPM was an innocent victim
