The Post Office Scandal

You missed out the fourth reason, Sluffy.

You are actually 99.99999% TWERP.

Anyroad twas another interesting day today at th'Inquiry with another appearance of one of POL's prize twerps. It started with another self-incrimination warning to Rod 'I don't know/remember' Ismay.

Jase the Ace seemed in good spirits but, if anything, he seemed to be enjoying skewering Mr Ismay a bit more than perhaps he should. The hapless Ismay wasn't bright enough to realise that when he was asked to write a whitewash report he was actually being asked to write a whitewash  report and thought it was a feather in his cap when Alice Perkins (Mrs Jack Straw) said well done or words to that effect.

Two days have been set aside for the questioning of Mrs Straw. That should be fun.

I'm afraid, Sluffy, the simple fact is that you have been losing the plot for quite some time and, in all probability, are now beyond hope of reason or redemption.

The parade of overpaid, over-promoted pudding heads and liars is set to continue for a few weeks yet whilst the Inquiry demonstrates, all too clearly, that the brightest and the best are not always to be found at the top of the greasy pole.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/eleanor-s-letter/

A handwritten note to the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) from his Principal Private Secretary, Jeremy Heywood in May 1999, concluded:

‘Gov. ministers are in a terrible position to decide multi million £ IT projects like this; and the Post Office management have shown themselves to be completely inept'.

‘Horizon has been a disastrous project from beginning to end’


It seems like Post Office management at the time weren't so inept that they didn't know they were being sold a pup but it was teaching assistant, Eleanor Shaikh, that uncovered this. What a gal!

Dear God Bob, I hope you've got more cards in your hand than your continuous and childish name calling and a disclosure of a handwritten note TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO talking about the implementation of a new computer system at the Post Office.

Let me show you a few of my cards...

In 2015 Baroness Neville-Rolfe, on behalf of the government, told the incoming Post Office chairman Tim Parker to properly review the Horizon situation. He did so, commissioning the former First Treasury Counsel (top government lawyer) Jonathan Swift QC to investigate.

So as LATE as 2015 the government of the day still was unaware of the scandal and the devastation being wrought on individuals and the family's of the SPMs.

Swift, who is now a judge – Mr Justice Swift – wrote a wide-ranging Review in which he largely (and as it transpires, wrongly) sided with the Post Office on most things.

So the report WRONGLY sided with the POL position.

Swift nonetheless raised very strong warning signs that potential miscarriages of justice might have taken place. He is particularly concerned at the Post Office’s switcheroo tactic of charging Subpostmasters with theft and false accounting and then offering to drop the theft charge in exchange for a guilty plea to false accounting.

What happened to the report the Post Office chairman commissioned?

On legal advice from the Post Office’s General Counsel Jane MacLeod, the Review (and the as yet unknown “follow-up work” engendered by the Review) was not even shown to the full Post Office board.

So as LATE as 2015 the Post Office Board didn't know about the scandal either.

This “significant error of judgement” by Tim Parker (Post Office Chairman) was picked up in 2020 by the Post Office’s Senior Independent Director Ken McCall and reported to the government by the UKGI’s director on the Post Office Board, Tom Cooper. Cooper says McCall felt it would be wrong to take any action against Parker because it would be “disproportionate”.

It's 2020 by now, Bates has won the High Court case, the scandal is at last been made public.

Cooper tells his colleagues in government that he hasn’t asked McCall “to put any of this in writing or come in to meet Ministers or officials to discuss, but this is an option.”

As a result of Cooper’s email, Sarah Munby, the Permanent Secretary for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy wrote to Tim Parker in October 2020 saying:

“We understand that you were advised at the time by the Post Office’s General Counsel that for reasons of confidentiality and preserving legal privilege the circulation of the report should be strictly controlled. Nevertheless, given the background of parliamentary interest, the fact that your review was commissioned by the Minister responsible for the Post Office and the potential significance of the recommendations made by Jonathan Swift QC, we consider it was an mistake not to have ensured that the whole board had an opportunity to see and discuss the detail of its findings and agree what any next steps should be. With hindsight, this information should have been seen by the board and we are disappointed that it wasn’t.”

So the government is basically saying here that the Chair of the Post Office was given bad legal advice from the Post Office’s General Counsel Jane MacLeod, AND due to it the Post Office Board was unaware of the scandal as such because they HADN'T SEEN the report that REVIEWED THE HORIZON SITUATION!



So Bob does it really seem that various political led governments had been conspiring to hide the Post Office scandal to the devastation to the life and family's of the sub-postmasters for at least SIXTEEN YEARS continually up to that point or is the report from Swift showing that -

1 - The government had no idea of the scandal ongoing.
2- The Swift report (wrongly) sided with the POLs position.
3 - The new Post Office Chairman (wrongly) didn't share the findings of the report to the Post Office Board.
4 - And that he didn't do so not because he was intending to cover it up but because he received bad legal advise from the Post Office’s General Counsel Jane MacLeod.


Do these FACTS really fit into your conspiracy theory that the various political governments since May 1999 and the Post Office Boards during that period had full knowledge of the scandal and were actively and knowingly suppressing news of it?

Or maybe they support my contention that the government didn't have much clue about it all until around the time it blew up in the High Court and the PO Board were similarly in the dark about it also?


Whilst you ponder on what next of the childish names you will undoubtedly call me - and deliberately avoid and ignore responding to me in any meaningful or grown up fashion on the FACTS I've placed before you, I would like to remind you that ALL the copied text from above comes from your beloved blog by Nick Wallis that you follow so avidly and that the Swift Report was unearthed by your beloved "gal", Eleanor Shaikh, with a Freedom of Information Request - meaning all of this knowledge and these FACTS should have been fully known to you.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/secret-2016-post-office-chairman-s-report-not-shared-with-po-board/

Sluffy wrote:Don't you deal in facts anymore?

And finally the ANALYSIS on this by Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law and Professional Ethics at Exeter University.

Analysis

Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law and Professional Ethics at Exeter University has read the Review and says the points made about remote access seem to be “a bit of a show stopper both for its impact on potential appeals and on the Bates v Post Office litigation. Did Parker understand that Bates was run on the basis there was no remote access? It seems likely, and unless the views of Swift on remote access were strongly countered, this raises a significant question over that litigation and Parker’s Chairmanship.”

Moorhead describes McLeod’s advice not to disclose the Review to the board “very concerning” adding “either the GC got the law of privilege wrong or she had a conflict of interest and should not have advised in these terms. The matters in the review were highly material to her client, the Company, and she had a professional obligation to ensure the relevant people knew of them. The report should have been disclosed to the Board.”

Swift’s references to Brian Altman QC (brought in to advise the Post Office on disclosure in 2013) also intrigues Moorhead. The Post Office has so far refused to release the Altman Review of October 2013 which appears to contain some kind of test for disclosure to already criminalised Subpostmasters.

Moorhead says the references in the 2016 Review to Altman are a “reminder of how important he was or might be to this saga. It provides an interesting contrast to the position Altman took in the Court of Appeal [in 2021] which was that they did not know how documents which should have been disclosed were not.”

The 2016 Chairman’s Review (The Swift Report) is of considerable significance to this scandal, and is perhaps the most important document to be unearthed this year.

(Bates v Post Office High Court action started 2017)

Seems to me based on the Swift Report that neither the government nor the Post Office Board knew much about the scandal (up to a year at the very earliest) before the start of the High Court case.



Kia ora

The Post Office's Spin Doctor, Mark Davies, has been in the hot seat this morning. They gave him a different job title but it seems evident that that is what the job was.

It turns out that he used to work for Jack Straw. 

He couldn't remember who tipped him off that there was a highly-paid job going at the Post Office.

I do hope that enough time is set aside for the lawyers representing the wronged SPMs to get their teeth into Mr Davies.

Cat got your tongue Bob?


Anyway from todays Inquiry, featuring Mark Davies POLs PR boss.



Minutes of a POL Board Meeting held July 2013 in which the POL CEO Paula Vennells tells the Board that there is not a problem with Horizon.

Still think the politicians and POL Board were covering up the scandal from as far back as 1999?

FOURTEEN YEARS LATER Vennells is reporting to the Board that everything is good - ie nothing too 'cover up'!

11:00

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/crgyyedx4lzt


Was Vennells knowledgeable about the scandal at that point and acting like a 'gatekeeper' keeping the facts away from the POL Board and/or the government?

I don't know but...

Emails show Davies saying Horizon cleared by report
published at 11:56

The inquiry is now seeing emails from July 2013 between Davies and Paula Vennells, who was the Post Office's chief executive at the time.

The emails show Davies saying the Horizon system has been cleared as a result of the Second Sight report.

Blake questions Davies on this conclusion, to which Davies says it was because preliminary findings showed there were no systemic issues.

...I would have hoped Vennells would have acted on her legal advisors (both internal at POL and external legal advisors contracted by POL) rather than whatever her 'spin doctor' would have advised her.

Was Post Office strategy being driven by communications team?
published at 12:29

Counsel for the inquiry, Blake, continues to press Davies on on whether Post Office strategy was being driven by the communications team under his helm.

He pulls up a number of email exchanges he says show Davies attempting to divert attention away from the Second Sight report, adding that the former executive has decided the emphasis should be on the lack of training and support sub-postmasters received rather than the Horizon system.

In response, Davies says he does not agree and that the lack of support and training raised in the report was "concerning" and "really, really shocking".

Communication was my "bread and butter", he says, adding that he was also a senior executive looking at the broader picture.

Maybe she did though...!

Ten Bobsworth wrote:The Post Office's Spin Doctor, Mark Davies, has been in the hot seat this morning. They gave him a different job title but it seems evident that that is what the job was.

It turns out that he used to work for Jack Straw. 

He couldn't remember who tipped him off that there was a highly-paid job going at the Post Office.

I do hope that enough time is set aside for the lawyers representing the wronged SPMs to get their teeth into Mr Davies.

Seems you still really DO believe the politicians had their hands all over it from the very start, don't you?

Fwiw Sue Gray used to work with Boris - and she wrote the report that ended with him being issued a fine by the police and ultimately ending his career as the Prime Minister.

Just because Davies knew someone doesn't mean he took part in a secret conspiratorial government cover-up as you seem to be implying here.  Sue Gray certainly didn't - did she?

You now seem to be applying guilt simply by association in respect of Davies?

Guilt by association, also known to many as the “association fallacy,” can be defined as guilt that can be ascribed to someone not because of any evidence, but because of their association with an offender.

More often than not, this term can be used in a legal context, but sometimes it can also be used casually.

https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/guilt/understanding-guilt-by-association/


It is sounding to me anything but a government conspiracy but a scandal derived initially from POLs ignorance of the fact that Horizon could be accessed remotely, compounded by rank bad legal action from within the Post Office at subsequent court cases that followed (non-disclosure, tainted expert witness), and thereafter lack of any meaningful leadership to drill down to the bottom of exactly what was going on - hence the belated need for the government to compel the POL to initiate the Swift Report - and even then that was then compounded itself by the report generally siding with the POL, that nothing was done to follow up the concern contained within the report that the POL may not have been acting legally in gaining their admissions of false accounting, and finally capped off by further bad legal advice not to circulate the report to the POL Board members.

Did Davies know about the scandal?

I don't know, he's seems to be holding fast to the draft report stating there was no systemic problem and defending his actions based on that alone.

Certainly that was how it was reported to the POL Board in 2013 as the minutes of the meeting clearly shows.

Top marks to Bob for resurrecting the word twerp above 

Just to throw this bit in...

It's been a combative morning
published at 13:55


Peter Ruddick
Business reporter at the inquiry

I have been following every day of the latest phase of this inquiry very closely. Certain days have been more eventful than others. I am struck by how combative this morning has been.

At one point, Mark Davies admitted "regret" about how "assertive" he had been in his responses to journalist queries.

Julian Blake, counsel to the inquiry, was then very assertive in his questioning.

When Davies objected to use of the word "spin" in order to describe a press release he had drafted, Mr Blake dropped the word and instead accused him of outright lies.

Why has the morning been so combative?

Perhaps because lawyers for the inquiry are suggesting that Davies was not just responsible for the press strategy but for the overall corporate response. A response that was - they argue - more focused on reputation management than on uncovering the truth.

Does this really sound as though the POL Board were aware of a cover-up?  Was Davies sent in undercover by TPTB (The Powers That Be) to single headedly suppress any knowledge of the scandal dating back to 1999?  Was all this the greatest ever conspiracy since who shot President Kennedy, as Bob believes it is?

I rather think the evidence is revealing a mammoth ongoing cock-up of not knowing initially what the truth was, then actively not finding out about it when things started to crawl out of the woodwork, to in the end being in complete denial of the whole scandal, rather than a Twenty-Five Year cover up by these mysterious TPTB as Bob seems to believe in with the politicians from Tony Blair onwards having their 'hands all over it'!

Sluffy wrote:Did Davies know about the scandal?

I don't know, he's seems to be holding fast to the draft report stating there was no systemic problem and defending his actions based on that alone.

Certainly that was how it was reported to the POL Board in 2013 as the minutes of the meeting clearly shows.

To answer my own question, it seems by January 2015 he DID!

Davies asked if the Post Office was 'muddled' over remote access
published at 15:04

We see several emails dating back from January 2015 which shows some internal confusion about the remote access issue.

A pre-prepared answer to this question by the media team is shown to the inquiry followed by an email that details how Horizon can be accessed remotely and Blake asks Davies if by the end of January 2015, was it all a bit muddled with regards to remote access?

Davies says no, at which point Blake asks what was the position then?

Davies responds by saying that remote access was possible in some scenarios.

It therefore begs the question of him apparently not revealing this fact thereafter to either Second Sight or BBC's Panorama.


Davies says he can "only apologise" if he misled on remote access
Published at 15:13


Blake asks if on the 9 April 2015, it was unclear to Second Sight that remote access was possible, based on intel from the Post Office.

Davies responds by saying we're obviously in some "deep technical area here".

The response you gave before, Blake pushes back, was that it was "possible in some circumstances".

"We have the point being raised by Second Sight here."

"And now to the response you gave Panorama in June 2015, where the email explicitly states the Post Office cannot edit amend or otherwise alter branch data."

Were those words chosen carefully, Blake asks, because you knew Fujitsu could?

"All words were chosen carefully, Davies retorts, noting there might be errors in this email.

"I never set out to intentionally mislead at any point ever. Now if there's a mistake, I can only apologise."

Fwiw Bob, the Counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake, seems to be of the belief that the government was not involved in any cover-up but rather the exact opposite in trying to find out the truth about Horizon!

Davies defends efforts to remove spotlight from Horizon problems
published at 16:29

Blake then asks Davies how "right" it was to try to remove the spotlight from Horizon, when "that spotlight is being shone by the company's sole shareholder, the government".

"As a comms team responsible for managing reputational risk, it was understandable that I and the team reduce the way it was perceived in the headlines," he responds.


Doesn't seem the Counsel to the inquiry shares your belief of a TWENTY-FIVE YEAR GOVERNMENT COVER-UP conspiracy theory then does it?

Is he just another TWERP too?

The day's proceedings began with Mark Richard Hansel Davies (that's what he said his full name was) swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Fat chance of any of that from Davies who seemed to have been shooed in to the Post Office to do precisely the opposite.

The day ended with the Inquiry Chairman bringing the proceedings to an unexpected and  juddering halt. If Sir Wyn was weary of Jack Straw's former adviser's dissembling he would have been just one of the thousands that tuned in to the Youtube coverage.

Another day and another charlatan but there's lots more to come yet.

Today is the turn of Patrick Bourke the Government Affairs and Policy Director at Post Office Ltd and the day the official inquiry into the scandal heard that Mr Bourke also wrote a briefing for ministers that said it was impossible to tinker with sub-postmasters’ branch accounts remotely - when he’d received evidence that the opposite was the case.

Patrick Bourke wrote and edited the briefing on 13 January 2015 which said there was "no functionality" which allowed the Post Office or Fujitsu to edit or remove transaction data.

"There is no functionality in Horizon for either a branch, Post Office or Fujitsu to edit, manipulate or remove transaction data once it has been recorded in a branch’s accounts," he wrote in the briefing.

It said it was possible to do "transaction corrections" but said they would always be "fully visible" to sub-postmasters.

What else did Bourke say?

Patrick Bourke wrote in a briefing for Post Office boss Paula Vennells that the issue of the safety of sub-postmasters’ convictions "pales into insignificance" compared to the organisation's "social purpose".

Referring to Alan Bates and the Justice for Sub-Postmasters’ Alliance group, he wrote in the September 2014 briefing: "We cannot accommodate the self-indulgence of a number of malcontents."

Mr Bourke said he now regretted a "poor choice of language".


Did he know he was telling lies to the government?

Yes he did!

But Mr Bourke accepted before the inquiry that he was aware it was possible for Fujitsu to insert "balancing transactions" without sub-postmasters’ approval or knowledge.

He accepted he had seen reports detailing one such transaction since 2010, and was aware that the Post Office had not explored how many times they might have been used before then.

He said he was aware of the Deloitte briefing but told the inquiry he had not read its contents.

Mr Bourke, who in 2015 was government affairs and policy director at the Post Office, also left out any mention in the briefing for ministers of issues raised by "tainted" expert witness Gareth Jenkins.

The inquiry saw evidence that just five days before the briefing was completed, he received an email from Post Office criminal lawyer Jarnail Singh that Mr Jenkins was aware of bugs in Horizon which he had not mentioned when sub-postmasters were prosecuted.

On 8 January 2015, Mr Singh wrote: "The difficulty here is made worse by the fact that Gareth Jenkins, an employee of Fujitsu, has been making statements for use in criminal proceedings which made no references to the very bugs which it is understood he told Second Sight about.

"People were prosecuted and pleaded guilty following the receipt of his statement which implied no bugs had been found."

Yet in his briefing for ministers five days later, Mr Bourke wrote: "No evidence has been identified by Post Office...to suggest that the conviction of any applicant to the scheme is unsafe."

Mr Bourke accepted that with the benefit of hindsight, he ought to have included the information about balancing transactions, software bugs and a discredited witness in his briefing for ministers.

"In retrospect, that was not the right call. And if I had my time again, I would have included it in this briefing," Mr Bourke said.

Still believe the government knew all about the scandal from day 1 and did a cover-up job lasting nearly TWENTY YEARS, Bob?


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp0g0vq9m95o


To be fair to you Bob, Bourke also said this -

However, asked whether Richard Callard, the government representative on the Post Office board, would have been aware of the issues about Mr Jenkins, Mr Bourke said that given how well known it was that they could not proceed with prosecutions due to problems with the expert witness, he couldn’t imagine that he would not have been informed.

But surely Callard would simply point out that Bourne had advised him that there was the was " "No evidence has been identified by Post Office...to suggest that the conviction of any applicant to the scheme is unsafe." as per what he had wrote in his briefing note to Ministers.

Today's witness was another that the Post Office seemed to have recruited through the Twerps r us employment agency.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp0g0vq9m95o

Bourke by name, berk by nature.

Have you given up reading my posts as I basically posted out in full AND provided the link to the BBC article that you have just linked to!!!

No need to reply because I know from past experience you don't read anything that challenges your opinion as to how the world should work.

Have you not learned yet that world doesn't work the way you want it to and no amount of calling people childish names will change it to how you think it should be.

Kia ora.

Sluffy wrote:Have you given up reading my posts as I basically posted out in full AND provided the link to the BBC article that you have just linked to!!!

No need to reply because I know from past experience you don't read anything that challenges your opinion as to how the world should work.

Have you not learned yet that world doesn't work the way you want it to and no amount of calling people childish names will change it to how you think it should be.

Kia ora.

I stopped reading your foolish meanderings quite a while ago, Sluffy.  I only read this one because it was short.

I do read yours Bob.

In fact I read mostly everyone's, I mean what is the point of having a forum if all you do is listen just to the voices that agree with you and blank those that don't - what do you achieve from doing that apart from make your already closed mind remain closed forever?

There's no fool like an old fool, Bob.

Closed Mind

Not willing to consider different ideas or opinions.

https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/closed%E2%80%93minded#:~:text=%3A%20not%20willing%20to%20consider%20different,closed%2Dminded%20refusal%20to%20listen

Lesley Sewell is not one of the more familiar names in the Post Office saga, so today's proceedings at th'Inquiry didn't seem too promising.

Geordie lass, Mrs Sewell must have thought her boat had come in when she landed a highly paid job at the Post Office having spent the previous 25 years at the Northern Rock before it capsized on the rocks. Out of the frying pan and into the fire you might say if you weren't too bothered about mixing metaphors

Five years later, after it seemed that like Susan Crichton she had been cold-shouldered by the ruling gang at POL, Lesley  was also on her way out. Unlike most of the cold fish that have emerged during the proceedings, Mrs Sewell seemed genuinely upset by the whole shamozzle.

The proceedings wound up with focus on Paula Vennells seemingly harrassing Lesley Sewell by phone and text 5/6 years after Mrs S had left the employ of POL. It resulted in Mrs S blocking POL's CEO but we were left a little in the dark about what PV had hoped to gain by all this.

Maybe we'll find out more next week.