David Davis: 'I don't care if it bankrupts the Post Office' don't challenge the Postmasters
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 6 янв 2024
- "There should be no challenge. The appeal is made and it basically goes through on the nod."
Neither the Post Office nor judicial system should challenge appeals by Horizon scandal victims seeking to overturn wrongful convictions says Sir David Davis, Conservative MP and former Brexit Secretary.
---
📻 Listen to Times Radio - www.thetimes.co.uk/radio
📍 Subscribe to our channel - / @listentotimesradio
🗞 Subscribe to The Times www.thetimes.co.uk/subscribe/...
📲 Get the free Times Radio app www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/how-...
We need to ask ourselves why it has taken a TV company to bring this outrage to forefront when it has been going on for 20 years. Where was the Press ? where were the news programs ? .Its a utter shame on those responsible for this .
Private Eye magazine has been on it for years. Also there is a series still available on BBC sounds.
The BBC did cover it but the rest of the media did not pick up the baton. It’s a disgrace
This is the way the UK does business. Inquiry that take years to delay. Then committee set up, to decide what to do with the findings, delay. Then the 1st inquiry was done wrong, or did not have all the information, another inquiry, another committee. Not to mentions all the court cases and appeals. In the end, everyone is dead. I am sure there is a yes minister scene on this.
Bloody right , this should have been front and centre in the british media , they should have been forced into acquittals and handed out compensation long ago .
The public should have been mobilised and thats what the media does or can do when it suits .
they did, "postmaster steals pensioners money" i doubt there's been a retraction!
The Post Office auditors need to go to jail too. Land Registry is another big scandal.
How deep does the rabbit hole go?
@@fredfred2363 The Crown.
Why?
@@fasthracing They were accused of literally stealing from the Crown. It has been mentioned in other vids. The Post Office was originally called Royal Mail. Bear in mind the queen bailed Andy out to the tine of £11m too. No questions asked there then.
The auditors just acted on the instructions they were given. They were not the people that made the decisions that ruined people's lives, they simply reported their findings up the line.@@johngreen6191
This case shames our country. WHY are those who were prosecuted not fully reinstated with mortgages paid, pensions reinstated and paid up to date and REPAID the moneys they paid into the sustem.
To require this poor, beset victims to fill in yet more paperwork to prove their claim ADDS INSULT TO INJURY.
THIS IS APPALLING AND SHAMES THIS COUNTRY'S LEGAL SYSTEM. IT SHAMES US ALL.
I used to be a sub postmaster until early 2001 I had an update on horizon in early 2000 and the auditors came took away my post office telling me I owed £9,845,16 I had never had shortages until then. I lost my wife my home and had to move out of the village, when I joined the compensation claim forms The post office said I had not been a postmaster at the time. THEY SENT ME THE FORMS?????? I repaid the shortfall on the day the auditor was there but he still took my post office away. If I had not repaid it they going to prosecute. I lost my whole way of life
Go to a solicitor and get your money back .
@@gerardhampson9089You seem to miss the point, no amount of compensation could recompense this person for the loss of their family, home and reputation!
They'll be some YT channel keen to hear your story, I bet
Write, or better still, go and see your MP. Give them an earache ! Good luck mate.
I hope you get the justice you deserve although any amount compensation you receive would never be enough😢
Not only top brass in the PO but also Fujitsu should be held accountable. They knew.
I'd be surprised if Fujitsu's top people knew. My bet is that it was a case of incompetant programmers. I don't think this is another volkswagen emissions scandal...
of course Fujitsu knew.@@fredfred2363
@@fredfred2363 management would have been aware. It’s not just the programmers. If support staff were having to make direct interventions to correct errors, there will be support tickets in the CRM system, reports etc
Japan has a culture of covering up incompetence. Look at the medical school admissions scandal. Female applicants out performing male applicants but the numbers being rigged to prevent women getting in ahead of inferior males.
@@tuck1s exactly, where does the buck stop? If there is no one to blame at the top when it’s clearly their job and therefore complicit, then how can there be so many receiving it at the bottom of people who had nothing to do with it? Why does one get bonuses & rewards and the other jail time? What is so very wrong with this country that this can happen?
Whatever it is it needs fixing.
Modern day Britain, the innocent get jailed or commit suicide, the guilty get huge payments, pensions and honours.
Paula Vennells went on to work for other institutions as if nothing happened. She does not see herself as guilty of anything. You may see her as "the guilty" - but is this just 'received opinion' ? - are you just repeating someone else's outrage - or reacting to something you saw on the TV ? I find the whole story baffling to be honest. It makes no sense at all.
Not really baffling at all, the Post Office introduced a computer system designed by Fujitso to sub post offices around the country. Soon after it's introduction, people started to be accused of false accounting or theft. Over 2000 and counting pleaded with Post Office to look into the software glitches that were, all of a sudden, criminalising hundreds of innocent people, even though, they were fully aware, along with Fujitso, that the software had issues they kept on prosecuting. They ignored the innocent, forced them to repay from their own pockets, money that never existed. Vennals was at the heart of it, along with government ministers and Fujitso management. The lot of them presided over the biggest miscarriage of Justice this country has possibly seen, and you can't get your head round it.
@@robertsmuggles6871 Are you her Lawyer, by any chance? You would have to be a complete idiot not to accept she is culpable and must be made to pay for it. This is no Witch hunt.
@@jeffjohnson2348 this started out as a legal football, then it became a political football and then it arrived on TV as a form of entertainment. The police have plenty of evidence to start PO people - they're doing nothing. No wonder Vennels & co. just walks on water - they are untouchable. The whole thing is a farce.
The poor post masters who had to remortgage their house and put in +£20k just to balance the books should be reimbursed in full plus interest from the £400k bonus that Paula Vennells was awarded. That woman has sooo much to answer for!
Paula Vennells was only a well paid stooge for the government. it's the people who pulled the strings that need to be exposed.
What really upsets me is that every Sunday she stands in front of a congregation and preaches about right and wrong. Despicable, evil woman.
Don’t forget Adam Crozier’s responsibility, too.
Not just get reimbursed for the non existent money they were ordered to pay back, but get compensation on top!
We still have no idea If Paula Vennells was complicit in the fiasco or just incompetent to be CEO as she lacked control over her management team
Either way returning the honour was the right thing to do give her at least credit for that
as for bonuses well that would depend on her contract and it wont be the first time bonuses go to CEOs while their bad management damages their company
Disgusting behaviour by the Post Office 😢
and people who believed them.
Of which the government is a major shareholder since privatisation.
Privatization of what?@@hariowen3840
Name the top men and women . they have been hiding all this time. NAME AND SHAME.
@bigpants6121
People who believe?
There's always gullible people, anti vaxxers, flat earthers, the religious, tin foil conspiracy nuts.
They're not at fault for the perpetrators actions.
The way these people were treated is beyond disgusting
The Post Office can pursue their own prosecutions without reference to the police. If the police had investigated they would have demanded from the Post Office that Horizon was robust and working properly. But the Post Office did their own prosecutions, so took Horizon as read, this is what happens when you let little boys do a man's job.
@@Steve14psthe only reason why they could do that, is if the government said that it was ok, and so it’s also the government who should be sued, because, nobody but the police, should be allowed to pursue a criminal case against anyone…….
@@ArghansMordonMarghek Quite right too, the police should have been involved, as I said 'little boys doing a man's job'
@@Steve14ps . If only they were little boys, because kids can make mistakes, owing to their lack of experience, and, they can be taught the error of their ways, but these are grown up arsehats, who know exactly what they were/are doing, and they are doing it on purpose, too…….
Which, is why, they and the people who gave them the ability, to gaol people without a proper investigation into this matter, and that’s perverting the course of justice, which has a fairly long gaol sentence, too…..
@@ArghansMordonMarghek I 100% agree with that statement. Had the police been given the task of pursuing these cases many would have not gone to court, the post office would have had to prove that Horizon was robust, police have to be seen to be impartial, the Post Office prosecutors cannot be impartial because they have a contract of employment with the said Post Office, but the PO still has to follow rule of law.
Offences committed by Post Office and its staff:-
Manslaughter
Perjury
Presenting false evidence to a court of law
Making a malicious complaint
Perverting the course of justice
Demanding money with menaces
Bringing the name of the Post Office into disrepute
Theft
False accounting
Failing to properly investigate a concern made by an employee
Not following correct procedures in investigating a cash discrepancy
Nobody’s angry about the £56m awarded initially, but £47m was swallowed up by legal costs? Why aren’t people angry at the money hungry lawyers who absolutely rinsed this for their own benefit?
Agree
In the Itv programme , they are suprised at what they had left , did they not know the amount that would be left ??
They were allegedly told that the might receive nothing
The financial awards should have been paid as awarded. Then all legal costs to to be paid by the Post office over and above that!
@@gymjunke1 thats my thoughts
The post office directors must pay the money back or go to.jail
David Davis one of my favourite MPs should have been PM not cameron.
Fujitsu and Post office must pay! The wrong people went to gaol.
Why have the post office executives beind this horrific treatment not been prosecuted & locked up? They have walked away with honours and a massive pay off.
Corruption is quick, justice takes time.
That's the shat sys in UK.
I tell you why they have paid a lot off money to people to shut things up 😂
The forner CEO, Adam Crozier, wasn't mentioned in the drama. He now works for ITV.
🤪
@@davidhartley5558no need to pay, lots of friends in government. That's why the inquiry is only looking at those that had no authority on the prosecutions
One of the judges involved has now asked the police to investigate possible Perjury committed by Fujitsu whilst giving evidence. I'm sure most people would say that BOTH the PO and Fujitsu DID perjure themselves on the witness stand. Repeatedly.
just reading the wikipedia page titled (British Post Office scandal) and its worse than you have highlighted...
Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
@@Paul-ry5cx😊
During the public inquiry hearings it is repeatedly explained that the PO investigators had their witness statements edited for them by head office legal team. When questioned they say " head office told me to say that". That is their defence. So you give evidence in a trial and you are signing something written for you by someone else and claiming it is "true and fair to the best of your knowledge". None of the investigators see anything wrong with this & still do this today. You would do the same, I would do the same. The issue seems to be misplaced trust. The Post Office legal team perverted the course of justice by systematically biasing the sworn testimony of their own investigators according to their own prejudices in favour of an accountancy system. The hapless investigators were used to legitimise the injustice so it hid in plain sight for all those years of wrongful convictions. You will now see the legal team trying to deflect criticism onto Fujitsu, senior management - they've been rumbled and have nothing to lose - they will try to face down this accusation. And they still might get away with it due to public indifference.
given the testimony today in the Inquiry by the Fujitsu employee, the post office cant blame them solely, as they told the PO from the beginning that the system had bugs and errors. @@robertsmuggles6871
This could have been any of us. That a company could do this to ordinary and innocent people is disgusting.
How do you know.they were innocent? They said so themselves.
@@ayeright320 submit yourself to your own standard: how do you know Horizon was correct?
My evidence:
2003 independent IT review report buried by PO
ruclips.net/video/WrbsCvilqgk/видео.html
Your evidence:
.....?
I wasn't fully aware of what actually went on but now I understand a lot more. The corruption, lies, deceit , intimidation that the Post office engaged in has rocked the nation to the core. The judge called it an " affront to justice ". Those involved should be in prison
This was a TV drama - the reality is a lot of people doing fairly mundane jobs dealing with Smprs admitting to taking money and wrongful accounting in exactly the same way they did before Horizon was invented
They need to pay back EVERY PENNY that they stole from sub postmasters, including payments to next closest living relative of any who have sadly passed...Someone needs to go to prison for all the Post Office lies....
The Royal Mail was privatised in 2014, and you can bet that the new owners were given immunity from Horizon payouts... Looks like UK taxpayer will once again foot the bill, the only people to make money will be the Legal vultures who make money whatever the outcome.
What about the Spmrs who were stealing public money. Just because they've created this massive furore doesn't mean they're innocent
This is an absolute disgrace, those in charge should face conspiracy, perverting the course of justice or malicious prosecutions charges. All postmasters should be pardoned and compensated
In a country that had a just justice system, this would happen. In this country, we have a justice system that protects money and position.
@@007Mrkoi Regarding the justice system; the UK ranks 15th globally.
Hardly something to complain about, though improvement should certainly be sought.
No - only those who were innocent. Are you stating that not one postmaster over a period of several year pocketed a single pound. Please don't be so simplistic as to use the terms ALL or NONE..... human nature is far more subtle than those two words.
simply not true@@007Mrkoi
@@GARDENER42 Ranked. Tony Benn's Five Questions for Those in Power includes How can we get rid of you? The answer is, we can't. There's currently nothing in Statute limiting the life of an Administration. The Five Years limit was from the 1910 Parliament Act, but that was annulled by the 2011 Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, which was itself voided "as if it had never been" in 2022, which however didn't explicitly reinstate the previous Laws it had deleted.
Absolute disgrace, a neighbour postmaster in my village committed suicide - nothing will compensate that family, but justice must be done to avoid it recurring
The cost in compensation should not come into it. They should have thought about that before criminal proceedings against innocent postmasters. Also this isn’t a normal case ffs.
Exactly!
Can’t do the time don’t do the crime! They should also be arrested , charged and jailed for what they have done just like anyone else would be!
most would be happy to get the money back the PO stole off them!
Unfortunately, they can't give back the large chunk of their lives they ruined!@@shaun906
@@shaun906 in the interest of the public this is not enough! Due punishments need to be enacted to send a message and to prevent things like this from happening again.
There is something very strange about all this. The number of convictions rose dramatically shortly after the introduction of the Fujitsu system. This should have been a HUGE red flag for the PO, the Courts, the Civil Service and the Government. The only rational explanation for this was flaws in the software. But nobody reacted, over a period of decades? Failure piled on failure. We need the Public Enquiry to end all Public Enquiries, and a radical overhaul of the whole system. And for the love of all that's fair - let's bring the chief culprits to account. No-one has been prosecuted for all the egregious perjury committed by Fujitsu and the PO.
We need a public enquiry into all the privatised services in the UK. They are all failing, and their awfull services are ludicrously expensive.
The pompous fools probably thought that Horizon was helping them to catch all the thieves that had been t here all along. And then they found another pompous self righteous fool (Vennells) to carry on the 'good work'.
your rightvand the police should have clocked why so many post office workers were being targeted that alone proves something wrong
And not just did convictions rise, given the fact that we now know one or more software bugs were responsible it sounds like corroborating evidence must have been very slim across the board. Did nobody wonder why non of these falsely accused fraudsters had hidden riches? Why so many of them must have had unusually clean and unremarkable records?
It's one thing for somebody to come to the incorrect conclusion of fraud a few times; maybe they even believed their new system was cleverly finding well hidden frauds here and there - but as a repeated pattern over so many individuals and then ignored by so many that should have been doing due diligence it's really shocking.
It's good you specifically point out the courts, because at least public defenders specifically have as a job to essentially prevent this, as do to a certain extent judges. Why didn't that happen? Was there insufficient funding, or were they convinced that innocence was out of the question somehow? What's the point of a justice system at all if we just take whatever accusations are made at face value?
Frankly, I think the most serious problem is in the public defenders and judges. It may be through no fault of their own, but whatever the reason, they singularly failed at their task 700 times and seemingly didn't even realize it. It's inevitable that the CPS will sometimes be overzealous, so while that's of course a problem to be dealt with; we absolutely _must_ have safeguards to deal with cases where the prosecution is simply wrong. We clearly do not.
It wasn’t the police but the post office investigating and prosecuting
The appeals have been challenged?? I wasn't aware of that. This is unconscionable. Whoever is responsible for that should be named, shamed and driven out of their job.
I was angry before the TV program, I'm furious now. The Post Office is even now behaving disgustingly.
I think we should get it quite clear. It is not a case for "compensation". It is a matter of re-imbursement (in full, and with interest) of money stolen by the Post Office system.
Andrew Bridgen MP has been on this case for 14 years. Why has it taken all this time for parliament to wake up and the outrageous actions of the PO to come out?
It is clear now that the Post Office managers and the CEO were stealing from the subpostmasters.
Suicide, marrige breakdowns.... no amount of apology or money will pay back the people affected.
They have wrecked lives and taken wage for it.
Those who knew about the system being faulty and knew about the prosecutions should be held to account criminally or otherwise
This is what happens when you allow a massive computer system to determine people's guilt/future without sufficient human oversight. And we see more of these systems as companies cut costs by taking humans out of the loop.
Unfortunately that’s the future
Imagine a life under AI .... coming soon.
You could argue that humans were very much in the loop. Post office managers appear to have been instructing humans at Fujitsu to rob postmasters. The computers would not have chosen to do that.
I disagree. Regardless of the software its the human decision making around this issue which is at fault. The glaring issue is that we have massive numbers of people suddenly being accused of serious crime, people who have no history of criminal involvement. This goes against everything we know about criminal behaviour. The idea that you can make crazy decisions about a persons character "because the computer says so" is ridiculous. It also begs the question of where exactly did the money go? This isnt an IT issue. And just what exactly were the police doing?
Often the IT companies will tell the customer that their system is 'all singing, all dancing', even though often this isn't the case.
Why is each case being challenged? Every single one of them ought to be automatically pardoned and compensated without any further investigation or delay.
Secretary of State, asks the Monarch of the day (King Charles now of course), and they usually follow the advice and request. Just draw up a list of names, and get our Chuck to sign it off. It literally is as simple as that. Why there’s no suggestion of this, is only explainable or believable, if you are a politician hoping this will drop in the next government’s lap instead of yours. It is a bit much. This could be a long list of pardons, done in a month.
How do you expect liberty stolen to be reimbursed, with ££,??? Forget it.
exactly, why is the Post Office still hiring very expensive lawyers to challenge every penny in court?
@@johnherbert7489 The legal scam artists see it as very easy money - they'll take the Post Office for every penny it has.
Davies should remember that these people had no help from the Govt.
To do him justice, he does know that. Unlike many other MPs, he has acted on what he has taken the trouble to investigate.
Or previous governments, especially the one in power when all these prosecutions were happening.
They all looked away.@@GARDENER42
It was only the TV adaption that has made some senior people actually speak out. Private Eye has been covering this for years.@@RobertJonesWightpaint
I just dont understand why Horizon and the PO ere believed. Senior people in the media must have known something was amiss@@GARDENER42
The Post Office must be scrapped and started again from scratch.
A bit ott
The staff are not to blame, what about their pensions and experience being lost? The board need clearing out and the rules regarding rhe post office doing it's own prosecuting without police input needs scrapping.
Most post office branches are run on a franchise basis, like the people affected in this affair.
Not just the post office !
If it affects the taxpayer then I don't agree. Shareholders should pay up and the management should be penalized.
Major pressure needs to be put on the government….. and it needs to be resolved quickly . Too much damage has been done already .
Good luck with that one, they are useless 😂
@@sueburgess847 predictable but ideological tripe
@@onthenewsuk3681 So your counterargument is just insults? Why do people like you even exist?
@@onthenewsuk3681
Horizon is the outcome of the Pathway project, whose procurement process commenced in August 1994, and announced by social security minister Peter Lilley at the 1995 Conservative Party conference.
@@onthenewsuk3681 If anything is "predictable but ideological tripe", it's what you are saying. |
Those responsible for this disgraceful situation should be prosecuted.
10 million each isn’t to much, As the judge said, an “affront to justice” speaks volumes
The Lawyers fees up until a few days ago stood at THIRTY SEVEN AND A HALF MILLION POUNDS...and that doesn't include the first year as those records have disappeared...this information was revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request...
Good to see the lawyers have been adequately compensated!
oh, you can bet they have years and years more graft ahead of them...@@jonathan-dough
I found that bit of information in the drama unbelievable!
It was no win no fee solicitors that took this so far. Telling anyone who had been sacked out of a PO they could get compensation. Loads of crooks and thiefs being encouraged to claim public money
It should be bankrupting Fujitsu. Has GCHQ looked through this program to find the flaws??? The investigation was inadequate.
My heart ❤️ goes out to all the post office workers ❤❤❤❤❤
I just feel total disgust for the post office hierarchy, the governments that have been in charge over the years , and the c.e.o. of the post office who was in charge at the time .
The pardons and the compensations need to be paid, but also criminal proceedings need to be brought to the vile people who were responsible from the post office and the computer company.
I would almost “like” David Davis if he didn’t always seem to suddenly discover how bad things were AFTER the fact, realising things many many months (years?) after the rest of us…
I have been furious about the post office’s appalling behaviour for years and I am furious it has taken a tv drama to get everybody else so furious … can these poor postmasters just be compensated and apologised to!! There is still unbelievably obfuscation from certain people who should know better and it boggles one’s mind. Ten year old children could do better and that’s rude to ten year old children.
What about the judges, didnt they think something odd was going on. All of a sudden hundreds of post office staff becoming criminals overnight. Absolutely disgusting
Asleep at the wheel judges, not even interested in protecting the innocent.
Because that never happened. There are thousands of PO employees the ones admitting to theft and false accounting who get prosecuted are a tiny number by comparison.
20 years on and it's still dragging on , whilst those at the top were rewarded 😮...UK Justice b----y joke really is..
You'd have thought that if hundreds were having the same issue with a computerised system, someone in the post office would have said this can't be right.
For hundreds of prosecutions 🚩
(that didn't happen in the decades before...), 🚩
but nobody in "senior management" thought that was odd? 🚩
Someone high up in the post office saw an opportunity to make money from the situation and continually blocked any investigation into the software, backed up by the software developers. Fraudulent behaviour and someone needs to pay.
Child Maintenance Service the former Child Support Agency is very similar and destroys lives in this very similar circumstances.
This is absolutely outrageous. Unfortunatley there is no professional body with bite for IT professionals. If a doctor did something like this to their patients they would be struck off for gross professional malpractice.
What a disgusting thing to happen to normal honest people.
Absolutely disgusting. Those poor, poor, employees and their families. This is a case for the Post Office and the Government being sued for Millions. No sense of responsibility.
Surely this should be spoken about in parliament !! It’s an utter disgrace. It should never have happened.
I have no idea what the crime statistics are for theft by post masters, but if there was only the occasional prosecution before the Horizon software was introduced then after the software was introduced a large and unexpected increase, why wasn't the pattern questioned. It would seem unlikely that all of a sudden large numbers of postmasters were suddenly turning to crime
I'm absolutely not taking sides with the PO, I am totally furious like the rest of us, but maybe they thought that with this 'robust', shiny new system in place, they were now catching more people putting their hands in their pockets? I don't know if they were lying, I believe they were, and that they knew what was going on (because of the whistleblower) but like Alan Bates and all the PO's said, they wanted the truth.
I knew about this many years ago and was horrified; not least because I once worked for the Post Office, and admired it's organisation and morals. On a management course at Bexhill on Sea I attended lectures on all aspects of the business, and was impressed by the pride taken in the moral aspect, epitomised by the introduction of the Penny Post when it was decided that one charge would apply to the whole country, from local deliveries to the isles of Scotland. This was a generous and sensible decision that avoided huge the extra effort and cost of charging by distance. In every lecture it was stressed that the Post Office performed a moral duty, serving society. From 1d to £1 now! 240 times increase, and a lousy service too! All trust has gone. How could mangers, right up to the top, let the court cases go on when it was surely so obvious that something was wrong with the computer. Yes, let the PO go bankrupt and start again, and those managers be prosecuted.
The PO must be allowed to recover compensation payments from any managers and technical staff who are responsible for perverting the course of justice.
it wont last, now its privately owned.
@@shaun906Royal Mail is in private hands not the post office.
The uniform penny post was introduced in 1840. According to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator, that one old penny is now equivalent to 84 old pennies, which is still only 34p!
Try googling Bank of England Inflation Calculator to see how we're all getting ripped off. It's great fun, or depressing depending on how you look at it!
My first job in 1954 was delivering evening papers six days a week for which I earned 6 shillings per week. That's now £6.80. I doubt if anyone would do it for that today.
My starting wage as an engineering apprentice in 1960 was £450 per annum, I think. That's £8600 today. Not sure what an engineering apprentice starting wage is now. As a fully fledged Engineer in 1965 it was £1100 pa, or £17,700 today.
Since 2010 goods and services costing £100 now cost, according to the BOE, £147. I think it's more.
I could do this all day
Privatisation is the culprit.
It appears that this has been designed to drag on so people either give up or die off, thus lessening any eventual payout. Although the money is secondary against the human cost. I hope that local press highlights community members previously accused as innocent of their charges.
Tony Blair should be charged for knowingly allowing this to happen.
This is what corruption does, lives ruined for money and power, time for a change. Take away all power from corporations and make the CEOs totally responsible.
Another example that privatising essential services leaves the public purse wide open to corruption.
What's this got to do with privatisation?
When the Post office/mail was not privatised,all monies /transactions were recorded and checked,with no one at the top creaming off with bonuses and high wage.
My wife and I had a Sub PO in Cleveland between ‘87 and ‘89 but we had to sell up after we started Divorce proceedings.
I remember going round to see the Sub PO Federation Guy to tell him and he suggested to me that any sane Sub PO owner would get out asap because of the glitches in the new system that was about to be launched!
No, we never had the system but it was being rolled out and it was causing many Sub PO owners sleepless nights because they need it was a dud!
When are we going to hold the lawyers ( internal post office employed, external , barristers and judges ) that failed and actively resisted adequate disclosure and reasonable routes of enquiry and failed to avoid the affront to justice . I see these individuals as the main driver of post office decisions and the failure of the justice system .
Andrew Bridgen has been on this since the start. Seems to be his thing lately. Patron Saint of lost causes. What everyone wants on all fronts is justice. Justice must be seen to be done on both sides. People need to be made an example of. This was a literal outrage against normal decent people driven to suicide. How about money from fujitsu ?
All should be pardoned. The reason is very simple. If the jury had known what the Post Office and the Police were and were not doing, they would not have convicted. The post office would have no chance of a conviction period.
Police not involved. The PO has its own investigators and prosecutors.
Even more important than ministers ( of both parties) being held to account, every civil servant involved should have their bank accounts forensically examined for links to Fujitsu the software contractor involved.
Hmm, oh, now that might be interesting!
Too distressing for words. PO, get it sorted NOW!
Why was the Post Office allowed to investigate and prosecute people in such a mediaeval way ? The behaviour of its officials was on a par with that of bailiffs.
Any government connected business police their own, always, cos it'easier to rip the general public off (ie, coverups) like the government always do.
This whole debacle shows how the courts of law favour's corporations over the "average man" (and woman). Those who oversaw this travesty need to have the whole weight of the law placed upon them, any benefits they gained need to be stripped of and if serious enough they need substantial jail time. There is no oversight and this could and probably will happen again, corporations have become too powerful they can act with impunity and appear to be above the law.
WHY did the sub-postmaster victims have bear their legal costs when they WON their case and proved the Post Office lied to Parliament, Ministers and the Courts.
"Why should any organisation be allowed to investigate itself?" They shouldn't. That includes the government.
One if the very few genuine MP's. A normal man from a normal background
@cliffordparry2862
So was Andrew Bridgen MP
He brought this year's ago, but see what happened to him.
You jest! This fool was put in charge of Brexit negotiations 🙄
A lying Tory, how surprising!
@@PaulGappyNorrisHe walked because he spoke his mind, get for facts right.
So why isn't he with Andrew Bridgen investigating excess deaths????
The reason lawyers are dragging it out is more money in their pockets, pure and simple.
Yep. There is very little evidence to connect software problems with money going missing but lawyers spun this into a big scandal and made themselves a fortune
I heard about this years ago. Cannot believe it has taken this long to put right. Compensation for the wronged is right and proper and the perpetrators should be punished.
Several villages no longer have Post Offices,
nobody wants to take the risk of violet robbery from outside, or inside, the computer.
2 years ago I emailed my MP for Burnley to use his position to highlight in gross injustices that postmasters were suffering and hey guess what I never even got a reply from his office, head in the sand comes to mind when things get a bit sticky.
The managers of the post office should be jailed for fraud Heavy sentences
A new computer system, with a mysterious "glitch", yeah, right, doesn't look like that to me.🚩
Any computer code (in those days) would have had a human hand type it out.
Someone knows, "move a few items occasionally", so where did the funds go?🚩
Fujitsu should tell us if there was a pattern of timings, days, hours, minutes, when these "thefts" occurred.🚩
It will all show up in the audit trail, oh wait, a lot of "paperwork" has vanished, how convenient!🚩
I know what the post office is like i worked for them for over 5 years they don't care about the staff a disgrace 🏴🇬🇧
I'm sure I read somewhere that the top P.O executives are awarding themselves bonuses for taking part in this enquiry.
If ever there was a reason for parliamentary and executive action it is for cases like this. The Government can pass legislation to make a dangerous country safe quickly enough, but when it comes to real people, UK citizens, who have been abused, suddenly its all ‘drag your feet time’. We deserve better frankly.
Did nobody make the prosecution prove the crime? Surely the accusations wpuld not have been conclusive in a court of law...
All criminal records to be quashed and an apology from HM Government, all the moneys paid to the PO to be paid back, with compounded interest, plus a minimum per head compensation of, say, £1mill plus an extra per day compensation payment for lost earnings and livelihoods should be the base package. Paula Vennells to have her CBE withdrawn and should face a criminal charge of malfeasance in public office…… and Fujitsu to face a criminal investigation….
Surely when so many people were accused and so many protested their innocence,they could see something wasn’t right.
What’s gone on here is BLACKMAIL,,Telling innocent people they will go to prison if they do not pay something they NEVER STOLE
Compensation is clearly important but so is the Post Office management being investigated and ultimately prosecuted if their actions broke the law.
In my role as an "expert witness" and engineering software developer, I can tell you that it is 100% possible to find all the bugs in the Horizon software that ran on the post office users' systems.
And once the bugs have been found, it is also 100% possible to determine EXACTLY how much each PO user account has been ripped off by, as every single transaction was recorded (logged).
Once every single incorrect transaction has been logged, and tallied up with relevant phone call records, where users discussed issues, it'll be possible to prove guilt. Kind of obvious already, but hey.
Then show how much suffering each user had to endure. More phone calls usually means more stress.
The world is becoming more and more technical, and sadly our political rulers are becoming more and more misinformed, relying on 'trusted" technical sources who IMO are not to be trusted.
Always use peer reviewed sources of technical reference, not "mates" who you think you can trust on technical matters.
That's just a fraction of the compensation.
Defamation. Loss of job and hence loss of money. Loss of investment return on that for example, pension payments. Loss of tax savings on pensions. Loss of pension contributions. Loss of income. Costs of legal help. Time served in jail. How much an hour there? Min wage on any work in prison. The forced labour exemption for the state. ....
It's never possible to find 100% of all bugs in a system - for example all OSs', with billions of installations, are updated regularly as and when new points of failure are found. A 'perfect storm' of conditions will always bring new issues to light; that said, the test regime for the Horizon software cannot have been truly comprehensive nor updated if and when new failures arose. Additionally politicians of all colours and civil servants should be held accountable, lose all their 'honours' ; It's no credit to them, or the 'system', that they won't be.
And lets not forget here the sad loss of life. If you look into this carefully four suicides have to date, been directly linked to this Post Office scandal @@adenwellsmith6908
Do you think something to do with “hackers” stealing money before arriving Post Office Headquarter?
Like the test and trace system, we paid 31 billion for from a retired jockey.
"Why should an organisation be allowed to investigate itself?" Same thing applies to Local government re traffic and parking fines. Or in fact, HMRC or any government department.
It's like the behaviour you'd expect from Russian FSB !
i dont think they are comparable...but they will be able to learn from this and up their game...
My husband and I have been watching, and keeping up, with the PO Enquiry hearings for a very long time. "Scandal" just simply doesn't cover it. Common sense should have demanded a long time ago how it can be possible that so many, many disparate people the length and breadth of the country could be swindling the PO in the same way at the same time; especially just after a new computer system had been installed. It simply isn't feasible. After the first couple or so, somebody should have realised that something was seriously amiss with the system. Or more accurately perhaps, that something was seriously wrong with the accusation and prosecution of these people. Of course, as you watch the hearings, it becomes very clear that there were massive cover-ups, and too many people attempting to cover the own backs. Never mind the poor "little" people who were suffering terribly because of the corruption, lies and mismanagement at the centre.
And the woman in charge at the time should NOT voluntarily hand back her CBE: that's far too easy. She should very publicly have it taken away from her. There's a difference. And it's important.
For a sudden increase in "misuse" of funds, with hundreds of prosecutions 🚩
(that didn't happen in the decades before...), 🚩
but nobody in "senior management" thought that was odd? 🚩
Well Britain is not the only country with his problem, the same plays here in the Netherlands as well only here it was the tax department but it is exactly the same mechanism.
I need to do my homework on this issue, but why aren't Fujitsu paying compensation also...???
You should name the minister you spoke to……Mr Davis you are one of our representatives. If you and your colleagues can’t make it happen then who can…get on with it
Three cheers to Andrew Bridgen, who hasn't yet recieved a mention.
This is an absolute disgrace. MPs are not aware of this until now? Each victim was treated with clearly an executive approved strategy by the leadership of the PO. I have never heard of such a disgraceful set of actions from those in power during this period in the PO. The victims should be cleared and the executives charged and jailed for their part in ruining so many peoples lives. The executives in the Post Office should be held to account. Clearly, the expensive lawyers hired by the Post Office to minimise their exposure and protect the Establishment should be removed.
No doubt the software that was faulty should never have been used. It was developed by ICL in Stevenage and that company employed some real dips one who was my neighbour. ICL then sold the software to Fujitsu and it ended up being sold to the Post Office at mega money. Nothing like having friends on the inside.
We all need to write to our MP and complain strongly. If we all did this something might get done. This disgusting situation needs to be addressed
MPs don't do anything. They get paid £90k plus £300k expenses every year but don't do any work. They simply vote how they are told to vote.
David Davis is in a position to actually DO something about this scandal- much more so than most of us. SO GET ON WITH IT!
Andrew Bridgen has been trying to get this sorted for 14 years, bless him.
I cannot understand why the post office still exists. Every shop with a post office counter should have told them to sling their hook. Together they should have put the Post Office out of business.
"Get off moi land!"
David Davies is absolutely correct. People have been overpowered and bullied, lives ruined 😒
No one ever asks where the money actually went? Who actually cooked the books and doesn't the HRMC care about submitting incorrect financials.
The longer the legal process continues, the more money the lawyers make.
Typical money response, deny responsibility, hire ultra expensive lawyers, and drag things out so people give up.
It’s a typical ‘Narcisstic response’ scapegoating to avoid accountability and zero empathy conscience and remorse.The Uk is run by them.
Same old same old, not surprised, are you?🏴
The post office is indicative of an attitude toward process,law and application that has permeated our government and judicial systems for far to long it is sadly not isolated but rather part of a set of injustices that arise from malfeasance in public office backed up by frantic efforts by state actors not only to cover up the crime but to punish the victims of the crime to protect the guilty this feature of the establishment can be seen and measured throughout our state structures
He's a Good Chap, is DD. A shame that "Private Eye" wasn't compulsory reading in Westminster ... They were leagues ahead on this issue years ago................
If the post office are hiring over priced legal teams, the cost of that would outweigh the cost of paying back compensation
It is a an ongoing disgrace that lawyers are still getting more money than those whose lives have been ruined.
37.5 million so far (that figure doesn't include the first years work...which has apparently gone missing...)
If it wasn't for the lawyers then innocent people would still be in prison. Full compensation should be paid by the government.
You can always tell when its an election year , suddenly people start trying to look good ?