Anyone just watched Mr Bates v the Post Office? *GNHQ tweaked the title*

Google 'fujitsu donation Tory Party' for some interesting articles about links between the two. I see there is a BBC article on the News website explaining at length how the PO tried to suppress a Panorama about Horizon including allegations that expert interviewees were threatened with legal action.

And I commend this article and most of the reader comments from The Conversation:

theconversation.com/post-office-scandal-what-the-lack-of-action-tells-you-about-britains-polarised-politics-220958?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2012%202024%20-%202846828857&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2012%202024%20-%202846828857+CID_6675fbfd2d8a9c90f1c646f31141f111&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=Post%20Office%20scandal%20what%20the%20lack%20of%20action%20tells%20you%20about%20Britains%20polarised%20politics

Thanks Grantanow

I can't understand why, given that quite a few of the Postmasters/mistresses have paid back money which wasn't actually owed, that the auditors didn't find a discrepancy i.e. too much money in the PO coffers.

OurKid1

I can't understand why, given that quite a few of the Postmasters/mistresses have paid back money which wasn't actually owed, that the auditors didn't find a discrepancy i.e. too much money in the PO coffers.

The short answer to Where Did All The Money Go is that it was either disappearing out of branches due to customer fraud or staff theft or repeated mistakes benefitting a customer OR it was disappearing out of ancillary (IT and non IT) Post Office (and non-Post Office) systems due to fraud, mistakes outside the branch and non-Horizon computer error OR it was disappearing out of Subpostmaster pockets and into the Post Office’s bottom line due to Horizon-generated discrepancies which showed up in Subpostmaster branch accounts.

It is important to remember the Post Office had no real control over its internal accounting systems for the duration of its Horizon-related prosecution spree (cf the 2013 Detica report) and so it didn’t know where money was going, nor could it properly account for where it came from. Suggesting that double-entry accounting would have revealed an obvious positive entry corresponding to an obvious negative entry assumes the Post Office systems worked and the people operating them knew what they were doing. They didn’t, and even if they did, they were not going to give any visibility of them to Subpostmasters or their legal representatives.

^The really, really short answer is that any money the Post Office was credited which it couldn’t make sense of ended up one of many internal suspense accounts^.

^It is therefore perfectly likely that the Post Office took money which rightfully belonged to its Subpostmasters and used it to bolster its bottom line. This was part-admitted by Post Office CEO Nick Read in a parliamentary committee meeting in January 2021:^

Chair: But you have to do a profit and loss account, do you not, Mr Read, with money coming in and money going out? If victims were putting money into the Post Office, surely you know that money came in from somewhere. Did it just go to your bottom line?
Nick Read: It went into a general suspense account.

What Mr Read didn’t tell the Committee was that after three years (according to one source I have spoken to), if entries in the suspense account were not identified and/or claimed, the cash was swept into the Post Office’s P&L account and counted as profit. Trebles on the back of Subpostmaster misery all round.

www.postofficescandal.uk/post/podcast-where-did-all-the-money-go/

In the 1990s the government invited companies to bid to computerise the Post Office. The Horizon bid came bottom in 7 out of 11 categories according to a National Audit Office report. But it was the cheapest.

Apologies Chestnut! I came across this just now myself.
Scary isn’t it?
“Pay peanuts and get monkeys” comes to mind.

TerriBull

I agree, that £600,000 depending on how individual victims have been affected, in some cases especially where custodial sentences were applied, seems less than adequate.

In the series the widow of the man who stepped out in front of the bus, was given 24 hours to accept some sort of compensatory offer and if, I remember rightly, forced to sign a grubby non disclosure agreement, thus exonerating the PO from any liability. At times it seemed the poor victims were dealing with the mafia rather than a previously respected public body.

👏👏👏

I think any primary legislation should annul any PO nondisclosure orders so that the victims could talk to the media and sue.

There should be a thorough examination of bonuses and incentives to prosecute.

At the lower level it seems that "investigators" were paid for prosecutions, but it is more important that the bonuses awarded to highly paid executives should be scrutinised.

I'd like to know who gave instructions to the "helpline" staff to tell each postmaster "you are the only one who's had any problem with Horizon"

This blatant lie was repeated over and over again and so someone must have ordered the call centre staff to say this, knowing it was untrue

Looks like the Post Office have been fiddling their taxes as well to the tune of millions.

Late I know, but watched it today, a fine use of media, well done ITV.

I don't know why I am even shocked. That poor woman!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68857142