The Institutional Failures Behind the Post Office Scandal | "Innocent People were Accused of Fraud"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 มิ.ย. 2024
- How should the fallout of the Post Office scandal be handled? Why do the polls always swing towards the Tories as an election nears? What's going on in Bangladesh? 09/01/2024
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more on today's episode of The Rest Is Politics.
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00:00 Intro
02:16 Post Office Scandal
24:00 Historical pre-election trends
37:40 Bangladeshi Election
48:55 Comoros Election
50:30 China's macro-economic endeavours
I'm an IT professional of 30 years standing, including large corporate systems.
What really baffles me about the PO Horizon scandle is I know no IT developer or other IT professional directly involved, or has ever been directly involved, in creating a system who would ever flat out say that an error is not in the software. The statements management and consultants were coming out with of absolute certainty there was no bug seem ludicrous to me. All developers are painfully aware writing bug free software is hard and extensive, rigerous testing is required to catch errors, and even then the will be bugs that slip through. There's *alway* a little bit of doubt when a problem comes up that it might be in the software. This certainty that Horizon was error free will have been made by a level above the people directly involved in creating it and concerns by people below them ignored.
This very much reminds me of the challenger disaster where management overrode engineer's concerns over the o-ring performance at sub-zero temperatures because of 'political' priorities.
Absolutely, I'm an IT professional as well and someting smells funny here. It's unconscionable the way this was managed
I agree. There is no such thing as a bug free system. I do know that govt clients are often the worse buyers. However, there is no way this system should have passed the user acceptance testing. It also sounds like it was poorly scoped. I expect massive series of scope changes, rushed implementations to meet deadlines and ineffective testing.
Also an IT Professional and it's clear the process failed, individuals make mistakes all the time, everyone is human after all but where was the QA testing, reporting and end user testing? The swiss cheese model clearly wasn't in the minds of the management. It's a project that was so obviously mis-managed, how did the authorities not pick up on that?
To me, who has been deeply involved in aircraft flight control systems software, it obviously has a syphoning tap side door - it was totally deliberately built that way.
I'm not only an IT man (found myself working with Bjorn Sjostrup in the early days of hedge and options accounting, when he confirmed my suspicion, Bell Labs used my name in ignorance of a private joke with my class teacher, who wrote one of the first compilers and used it at the heart of his code), but also a Finance man - I retired as Head of Finance of the Western European Union, sporting a very natty diplomatic cap, which is how Rory knows me. A transaction's a base-level object, with three core parameters, amount, DR, CR, and properly speaking, Serial, DateTime, Narrative. Fujitsu made DR/CR optional, breaching double-entry accounting, in error correction. That should disbar them permanently. But it doesn't end there. Over forty victims have been disculpated, but not a single man jack among their accusers has been sent down for perjury and false accounting. That means the wrong has not only not been undone, but also that the Justice system is broken - and Rory was, for a while, one of the Ministers for Justice.
THE most impressive element in this whole sorry story is the nature of the response of the sub-postmasters after the way they have been treated. They emerge as reasoned, considerate, proportionate, personalities - hugely impressive personalities. Let's hope that they are fully compensated very rapidly.
You do realise that a lot killed themselves, right?
@@_to_-cn8wd I take it that you quote 'a lot' because you don't know. Yes, there were four reported cases mentioned but that does not detract from my comment about those survivors currently appearing in interviews.
I've never heard anyone explain so well what happens when a computer program is updated and an old version continues to try to work! "Dropping a blue ball into a red box when the red box is no longer there" just makes it accessible to all. Bravo Rory!
But it’s basics of programming that there is instructions in the upgrade(s) that tells the computer what to do. That is, “what if” analysis is done and the negative effects mitigated. FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysus) being only one such tool that identifies these issues, effect level considered and likelihood estimated. Where the combined number against each element of the process is a high enough number, you are mandated to either fix immediately or apply a temporarily mitigation until fix is in place.
Also known as "square peg / round hole" which is what a significant proportion of software engineering is all about. For judges to be bought into the idea that it can't possibly be wrong, is such a dangerously incorrect assumption that has been known since the dawn of computing itself.
@@nicemandanthe whole concept of agile development is predicated on the idea that software is almost always wrong
So I run product development teams and this is not about software failure (software fails all the time - that’s why we have user groups and customer councils)
This is about corruption - plain and simple and the transfer of wealth from public coffers to private coffers and friends of government
Also, Rory - good try on the “simplifying” the problem and LLMs
You sir have absolutely nailed it
FREEMASONRY MOVING PUBLIC MONEY INTO THEIR COFFERS
I worked in engineering in the defence industry for 40 years and I could tell you stories about computers doing things that they "can't possibly do" that would make your hairs stand on end. Lawyers and judges are far too bought into the idea that the computer never lies.
Ah the hours spent trying to work out why a bit was always zero only to discover it was a mismatch between the simulator, compiler and assembler behaviour. What fun.
No computer is better than those who write their programs.
@@SL-sd3sg Indeed.
Literally, a 'Post' Truth era has started.
Yeah, I still vividly recall from my engineering degree the statement that computers need to finish all empty memory space with a return, just in case a pointer accidentally jumped into it due to anything from a rogue electron up!
It's an absolute joke that Fujitsu are even considered for any Government work.
Their utter incompitance goes back much further than this utter fiasco with the Post Office.
I was on the one of many initial planning teams at the very beginning of the IT Refresh of the NHS back in early 2000's
From the very beginning we were warning those in charge that Fujitsu were not upto the job.
They were hiring people who had little to no experience as they refused to pay the going rate, the senior management had absolutely no idea about the technologies that were being used or the logistics and scale of the job at hand.
They would cheap out at every opportunity.
A significant reason why the project was a dismyal failure was down to the sheer greed and incompantance of Fujitsu.
Fujitsu has got a well documented history of massively under bidding to get Government Contracts and utterly failing to deliver.
Campbell seems to have forgotten that his boss Blair had a memo about Horizon back in 1999 telling him the system was junk but they did nothing.
Exactly. To me both of them conveniently didn’t speak about both parties being absolutely complicit in this shocking case. And neither even mentioned how Westminster itself was the biggest blocker of justice for all those affected. A real slippery piece of commentary
A handwritten note suggesting that Horizon might be flawed was received, but Sir Tony Blair said he gave it the go-ahead after being reassured by others; among them was his trade and industry secretary - why would he not listen to his ministers.
In a letter dated 10 December 1998, Lord Mandelson said he believed the "only sensible choice" was to proceed with Horizon - at that time there was no alternative
campbell forgets hes mr lies and cover up
@@davidbirchmore4385 ah - thats OK then - another “not me Guv”. He was only the fucking PM
@@virtualaldo you think the PM should know everything about everything within government and neither delegate to nor rely on opinions of ministers and the civil service?
Perhaps we should curb the abuse of gagging orders and NDAs in order to make cover-ups harder to achieve.
Maybe a duty for lawyers to blow the whistle when defending dodgy clients? At first imposted by contract on governement contractors. My mum worked for a firm that defended medics. They defended one psychiatrist at Middlesed Hospital three times!
Oddly enough, the same firm acted for London Amnulance against ICL / Fujitsu (this was the 80s or 90s) over dodgy first generation software for allocating ambulance rides. Previous system of postcards on a conveyer belt among call-handlers worked much better!
@@Veganlinecomas much as that sounds awesome- I do think that eroding a lawyers primary responsibility being to their client seems dangerous.
The elephant in the room here is the ongoing run to privatisation. There appears to have been no appetite to find the truth when it might interfere with a pillar of policy and a source of bonuses
Toby Jones took a pay cut for this part because he was concerned that this kind of production is being squeezed out of broadcasting due to time constraints and cost of production. Just a decent human being. ❤
I think it's actually a good thing that TV is still capable of producing anger and dismay in the public, rather than some sort of conflated internet 'sensation.. Powerful, well-acted televisual docudrama will always defeat poorly-researched 'opinion pieces'.
Well said.
The next scandal is Grenfell. Everybody in construction in the UK knew foam backed cladding easily caught fire and was too dangerous to use in high rise buildings. Everybody relied upon the building research establishment certification, which had stood in good stead since the 1950's. What nobody noticed was that it had been privatised and managers were under pressure to make money.... I know of other building products which should not have gained certification but did. In the end it was run by a woman whose qualification for the job was as an administrator in the civil service.
The list is very long.
I should be able to even claim PTSD compensation from watching that night on my TV, in 2015. Dear God....
Add to this the water companies scandal. £10bn will be charged to customers to create a sewage system to reduce pollution which has been already billed to customers and should have been done now. At this rate that £10bn expected bill can balloon to God knows what amount.
Absolutely correct. It’s also the privatisation of Building Control, where private companies were set up to offer building control services, instead of the local council. Some of these companies were then purchased by building companies so basically they are policing themselves. I’m now retired but we always used the council building control office plus used a private building control company in the background as a checking system if our architects had any concerns about the interpretation of building regulations or a particular product, just to avoid errors and hopefully make sure everything was ok.
I can’t believe we don’t treat these as frauds. Grenfell, Post Office and water company scandals should all be fraud cases and the full force of the law should be applied to the culprits. Is there a lesser sentence of manslaughter for the ones who committed suicides in the case of Post Office or burnt as in the case of Grenfell? We have to remember these are intelligent people who made decisions against the victims at grander scale. I see corruption at these level more detrimental to the society which has a bigger effect especially when we have a big gap in wealth. I say this because my mum was a victim of corruption in the Philippine healthcare when she had a stroke. I expected corruption from politicians but not from doctors.
As a Brit with Bangladeshi heritage, it was very refreshing to get a detailed and well-informed view of Bangladesh. Thank you
Rory and Alastair talk down to people
Currently at just under 11,000 views and nudging towards 150,000 subscribers yet this is probably the best political examination show doing the rounds and should be on prime time TV on either the BBC or ITV helping to inform and educate the UK electorate.
@Rustinho That's because there are only so many people who can bear to listen for more than 5 seconds to an ageing warmongerer with the blood of Iraqi babies and British servicemen on his hands babble on, giving us his so called Pearls of Wisdom.
Yet neither of them were honest about who was really to blame.
We've been talking about this for 20 years I'm glad it's wide open now. It's about time. Same with the blood scandal. And I'm sure there's loads more to come
Have you had a safe and effective vaccine recently?
A few years ago I mentioned the F word in front of some NHS people and I’ve never felt the atmosphere go so cold so quickly. The F word being “Fujitsu”
It's very refreshing to have opposites collide and then get along in a meaningful and intelligent way. Thank you both.
I'm going to be blunt. If Tony Blair had taken Gordon Brown's advice to scrap Horizon before it was implemented, this wouldn't have happened! But he didn't want Fujitsu UK to close as that's what Fujitsu were effectively going to do.
Good point well made. But that doesn’t let off the hook all the rest who did nothing from Blair to the current government. It’s absolutely shameful the whole thing. Maybe a drama about Grendel will help the victims to get justice there too
@@christopherwhittaker2620 Grenfell? Only if the actions of Bent-Toad and the resident's committee are accurately described. Where's the chap whose fridge caught fire, BTW?
New to this issue so not an informed reader at this moment, but to claim a PM should never have approved the contract only makes sense if the Post Office and the government was aware of the fact that the software was not able to perform as the clients needed. As others have acknowledged, any major software system will have issues that require correction. The bigger the job, the greater the number of correction should be shouldn’t it? Cancelling a contract such as that without knowing what is wrong and not allowing corrections to be made by the contractor, would be certain to attract a lengthy legal battle. Not proceeding would be unlikely to be based on anything more than suspicion would it?
@@robertennor1143 You are right. All software contains bugs despite thorough testing. To claim otherwise is to be ignorant of software systems.
What I suspect happened here is that Fujitsu and the PO thought they had a working system, which they rolled out with a set of known bugs. None of these bugs involved cash shortfalls.
People steal. That includes some sub-postmasters, and they do it for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is greed, sometimes it is to hide a previous loss.
The PO know this, which is why they had an aggressive fraud branch. When the software shortfalls started they naturally assumed it was either theft or incompetence. Either way, they were covered by their contracts with their sub-postmasters.
That assumption has cost them dear. Add in the need to keep the POs good name, it's a bank after all, plus a management who refused to admit a problem existed and you get the shit show that occurred.
This is all without the accounts being furtled behind the scenes...
Yes this could have been prevented 20 years ago by the judges in the courtrooms. When you have a prosecution that has absolutely no accounting evidence against the individual other than to say "well the computer says it's correct", then you have to fault the judges for accepting that as "Beyond Reasonable Doubt". The judges should have done their jobs instead of rubber stamping judgments. And I've yet to see anyone, media included, faulting the judges.
I've been watching the computerphile interview with Prof Stephen Murdoch on the technical failures in this sytem (which has been undercovered in my opinion in the press) and reading his blog on the subject. What really is concerning is the lack of rigorous computer science in the design. There seems to have been a lack of understanding of what the computer system was actually doing when the program was executing. That's a trend that's only increased with more and more people in the industry doing coding rather than computer science courses. I'm not saying people need to have deep-level architectural understanding of processor systems (even I don't need to do that most of the time), but understanding that your instructions are going to be running a processor and your data is going to be moved back and forward in memory is vital to ensuring that you know what your system is doing. A lot of programmers just don't know what happens when they press compile and what the program does on a technical level beyond "Oh it runs the code in that library".
When the number of red flags start popping up either you address the issue or get hammered in the long run. Blood scandal, Jimmy Seville, COVID, now Post office. Every one of those stories have had many red flags but they were all brush aside.
Absolutely correct. Doesn't end with the ones you have mentioned. There is no end. HS2, Smart Meters, the water industry,, rail, just off the top of my head.
The pitiful lack of integrity of the judges is my biggest response. The casual setting aside of even basic rules of evidence and discovery. The fact that defendants were denied any access to the reporting system of Horizon is shocking. Every transaction must have been recorded , and recorded in every subsystem and there will be an instantaneous time stamp on each record. They are 100% capable of running forensic tests to find ALL the anomalies. Even those not convicted , but who had to make up short falls have suffered what is essentially theft. It is systematic fraud.
If you watch carefully, they explain that there would be no way for them to detect any difference between a subpostmaster change to the logs, and an external Fujitsu change to the logs... because they were literally logged in as the subpostmaster when they made the changes. Plus, there are no laws requiring them to keep logs going back 19 years, unfortunately.
Yes Alistair, it could’ve been prevented if the Labour government you was part of would’ve taken action but they didn’t so it wasn’t prevented. Was it same goes to Rory. Absolutely shameful and no excuses. And why haven’t you spoken about Westminster being the main problem in this?
Correct
what about the Windrush scandal ; people have still not got compensation
Erin Brockovich is another popular movie that highlights small guy against vast organisation.
Why are we only taking about it now? Because research shows that people dont change their minds when simply presented with facts that run counter to opinion. People are far more likely to change their minds when presented with a story instead. The power of narrative over exposition is extraordinary and often overlooked by many.
Yes, Larry. In a nutshell.
Privatisation usually does seem to cost the tax payer. It's actually quite horrifying.
It’s an absolute scam. The other thing that annoys me is that the gov sell off all these assets, to shrink the gov but it doesn’t seem to shrink their salaries and packages. I mean they do less work for more money.
These projects need to be outsourced, but the mistake inexperienced people make is not keeping pressure on the Vendor that is contracted to deliver and negotiating a bad contract for the provision.
the taxpayer (current and future) is what's actually being sold
You are absolutely correct. Privatisation and separation of the various businesses within the umbrella of what was The Post Office was a complete cock up. I know because I discovered millions going into Royal Mail accounts that were properly the revenue due to Parcelforce. That wasn't the only cock up.
The thing is that UN ordered no more paper from 2025. Finding excuses to abolish the post office will assist in that.
The actual criminals in control and their obedient servants should have proceeds of crime upon all they and their families own until honest auditors work out what was right and just for them to be paid. Major shareholders also. Were businesses such as Blackrock and Vanguard invested?
Came across this video while looking into the Post Office scandal. As someone from the US, it's SOOO absolutely amazing, and refreshing, to see two people from opposite parties sit down, talk politely, understand each other, and even agree with each other! This is something that just does not happen in the US anymore (if it ever really did).
The comment section here is as interesting as the podcast itself, loving it.
of course they were patronised...considered little people of no consequence...disgusting
But isn't that the British way? Little people are there to be used, abused, and then quickly discarded like refuse. Seems fair. 😅
My questions are
1. Why did all the horizon mistakes always go in the PO’s favour and
2. If the PO office lost the class action case why didn’t they pay the costs?
On your 2nd question....that's exactly what I wanted to know. Seems the PO won even when they lost.
Didn't the Post Office settle before going to court? If they did then the people bringing the case would still be responsible for their own legal costs. If the victims had won in court then it's still at the discretion of the court to award legal fees on top. That's how it was with my Tribunal case anyway with a preparation time order, which the Judge had to decide on
The answer's above the Judges' head, the Royal Cypher. It's the same on the Royal Mail - the judges haven't realised the Post Office was hived off a decade back.
@@JSmith19858 A coercive settlement is no settlement.
Someone mentioned in one video that the system was duplicating sales transactions. So it was recording more sales and more money in the till than was really the case. So the computer would say there should be an amount in the till at the end of the day, and the postmaster would have to record the actual amount, which would have been less (only the real money taken), so when they entered the real amount in the till into the system, a shortfall would be reported.
Private prosecutions should be extremely curtailed. The government vacating the convictions is the right thing to do - is it possible that a guilty person might be exonerated, maybe. But the evidence used to convict people is so tainted and rotten that it is better to clear everyone's slate and compensate them.
Private prosecutions is a red herring - all 100 prosecutions in Scotland were led by the Crown.........
How have the changes to Legal Aid impacted the ability of individuals to go to court against the Post Office?
Excellent point
Nick Wallace’s contribution to brining this to the fore has been magnificent. Still available as BBC Radio 4 podcast. Gripping radio.
Thank you Gents.
A few things that sadden me most I think. One is when a mistake or maliciousness has occurred which is bad enough, but the denial and cover up that goes on for years is possibly worse.
I first heard about this story years ago. It was known there were wrongful convictions, so I naively assumed that that would be the end of it. To later find out that there were more convictions still going on after this time is terrifying.
If it takes a TV drama for people to get justice, then my heart goes out to all those who haven't and won't get their fifteen minutes of fame. It will only encourage negative appearance obsessed behaviour, to get as many likes as possible, and to appear to be the most virtuous cause. It should be self evident, and not need to rely on the argument from popularity to be deemed worthy.
Same, I thought justice had already been served following the Panorama show. I'm beyond appalled!
It's not surely a question of "15 minutes of fame", ffs? (One of the most irritating of all tropes, btw.) It's a media-saturated idea in the first place.
The fact that a TV docudrama has finally potentiated this response from our political establishment only reflects what most of us have accepted as being in 'the way of things'. Do you seriously think that the likes of Sunak and Farage will finally take this issue up and run with it, unless they see some sort of political virtue-signalling that might affect their popularity ratings? Sunak clearly thinks it might be a pre-election boost for him and his idea-benighted party. (Sorry, they DO have ideas, but they are all of the sad-sack variety.)
@@TrevorBarre No it's not just a question of the 15 minutes of fame, I didn't suggest that. Just a quick way of describing members of the public who are now in the spotlight, and won't be for that long.
I didn't know you were going to read this, so I couldn't filter out the tropes that YOU find irritating. Personally don't care much for that particular one either way, but that's not important.
The individual names you mention says more about your preferences rather than this issue. All three major parties have had a hand on power in the time this has occurred. It's a problem in politics, not with certain politicians
I do expect our elected leaders not to behave like this actually. Accepting certain levels of bad behaviour as inevitable is a worrying downward spiral.
Civil service are using Windows XP and older, NHS is using systems vulnerable to data breaches and numerous government organisations need updates. This is a glimpse of a national problem and it will happen again.
@@dizzy2020Absolutely. The problem was the people managing the IT system.
@@dizzy2020 The computer system is irrelevant? No it isn't. It's totally pertinent. You can't leave that out of the equation.
which government depts in the civil service are using a minimum of Windows XP?
@@kirkhunter146 The computer system would probably have been fine *IF* management had accepted there were bugs and proceeded to fix them. That's how all software development should work. I worked on Finance systems in Blue Chips that were 20 years old - sure you'd think all the bugs had been found, but hey - still find a new one every month or so. The problem here is not the developers or the software, it's management unable to accept there were problems and preferring to prosecute the users rather than find the bugs.
@@si_w8201pretty sure they are not now but many years back there were reports of the NHS still using XP after Microsoft officially stopped supporting it. However I believe they paid Microsoft to provide to continue patching any critical security vulnerabilities.
I love it when Rory makes out he understands a certain technology without really understanding it!?
A true politician
The most compelling facts for me was that the postmasters all called up to raise the issue .
Let’s say I WAS fiddling the books and siphoning money , would I call up the help desk and highlight my crimes ?
And the other one was that IF money was being siphoned off , and the postmasters flagged up that there was an issue and instigating an investigation , and no one ( as far as I know) has found any unusual or unaccounted monies going into the postmasters banks , or uncovered bags of cash under a bed.
Absolutely the most clear and intelligent way of looking at it. Common sense questions, I agree!
This is probably what the police and CPS would have looked for if they had been investigating and prosecuting. However, the PO’s own internal investigators we’re looking into this and needed to provide answers. So, they ignored questions which were counter to the narrative.
Due to the sub post masters contract they would have been stealing from themselves. Which made it all the more ridiculous.
As Alister Campbell implied, not all SubPostmasters were squeaky clean during this scandal or before. Horizon was also brought in to reduce the incidence of book fiddling in the old paper system. There were around 7,000 SubPostmasters in the early 2000s, with 900 convicted. Why did Horizon 'work' fine for the remaining 6,000?
@@kevinsyd2012 I've heard that the inconsistent internet connectivity caused problems in the system, so if the connection paused/ was momentarily broken at the wrong time of in a calculation the information inputted miscalculated in favour of the PO. So Post Offices with good, consistent internet connectivity didn't have problems.
Perhaps we should have a TV drama about lying in politics, Russian influence in the Brexit referendum etc.
The Iraq war dossier 😂 👀
@@pablo_fe
Toby Jones as George 'Dubious' Bush junior? 🙃🇺🇸🤪
Iraq war....
@@pablo_fe I think there already has been one about the 'dodgy dossier' and its consequences. It was about the weapons inspector whose research was misrepresented to justify the case for war presented in the dossier. Once the press figured this out, rather than the government admitting the intelligence wasn't what they said it was, they instead blamed the weapons inspector, who couldn't take the heat and media attention and walked into the woods and committed suicide. No happy ending there I'm afraid.
Big corporations do not have any ethic. It is time to change the law. People who harm one person are punished as hard as possible but corporations who harm wrongful hundred of thousands get lauded and their managers gratified. As in 2008 they all got away with ALL wrong doing. And lawer who tell their clients how to do it should loose ALL - their big money and their right to practice law. Only when the big guy will finally be punished the system may change.
The BBC did a podcast years ago about this PO debacle. Only now have the politicians noticed.
Fujitsu seem negligent. As a software developer, if my computer system is being accused of a particular accounting bug then I would have changed the code and ensured that there was a very detailed audit trace (for all accounting transactions) and also that there were integrity checks that can detect the date & time that an unexpected situation has happened (E.g. The accounting figures are now suspect). This would typically have exonerated either the computer system or the local Post Office staff.
The question in my mind is why did the Post Office side with Fujitsu rather than their own employees? After all many of them had worked for the Post Office for many years and must have been trusted employees or agents.
They were not employees.
Listen to Radio Four. The Post office was set up in Victorian times and Subpostmasters were contractors who were considered upstart shopkeepers not to be trusted with the nations cash.
It was set up with investigative and prosecutorial powers with no need to involve police. That attitude has continued into the resent day.
The Post Office in its current form must be dismantled. It must be just another commercial company under the rule of law.
@@TesterAnimal1Thank you, this is very helpful. I've been wondering why the po would have powers of prosecution and l hadn't heard any explanation.
I have been a Labour Party member and activist for over 50 years and I'm appalled at Alastair Canmpbell's hand washing on the Post Office scandal. We now know that Tony Blair was told that there were faults with Fujitsu's computer system. Furthermore, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown went gung ho with privatisation across the public sector. I dealt with all this professionally at the time. Barry Reamsbottom
10/10 for Rory's jumper. Definitely a xmas gift from someone who knows him well.
Oh no there can’t be an issue with our system it must be a ridiculous spike in postmaster criminality.’ I mean really, how unearthly can you be?
My uncle was Secretary of the Post Office Superannuation Scheme. He computerised the system. Several vendors bid, he asked each to demonstrate a system that big that was currently in production. None could, but one could show one two-thirds as big. The scheme divided reasonably easily into two groups, so he bought two of their systems, one for each group. The project was delivered on time and on budget. Needless to say he was an engineer.
Your memory fails you Alistair. You weren’t attacking more when in opposition. I still vividly remember Tony Blair coming as shadow education spokesperson to present labour’s plan for education, the interviewer kept trying to ask him what he thought of the conservative plans and he simply kept repeating « I’m not hear to talk about that. ». For me it was so fresh to hear, not simply rubbishing the opposition but coming with actual proposals. It was a nice change to what I had seen of labour and I remember thinking he will be prime minister one day. I think this is where labour has to be careful. They are not being ambitious on ideas but are playing conservative. People need inspiring.
How accountable is Campbell in this? He was there when this all started...
What was his culpability?
It was covered. extensively, from Day 1 in Private Eye. Once again, Hislop and CO/, are the only ones you can rely on for news.
How can a computer start reporting garbage? Quite easily actually. It only needs a piece of dodgy code that inadvertently swaps around the high byte and low byte of a data word, for example.
Why didnt someone wonder how mild mannered, moderately ambitious, "salt of the earth", people in such numbers, go from well respected community members to fraudulent thieves, over a long period of time. Such a poor read on humanity and such a failure by so many individuals and institutions run by well paid, educated and apparently intelligent people?
The PO investigators went to the SPMs with an already impression that the SPMs were guilty. Their evidence was a major contributer to the convictions.
There was no attempt to investigate the SPMs claims. I believe they still work for the PO. They should all be fired & any bonuses they made due to their faulty evidence. Who were the Govts representatives on the PO board & what were they reporting back to parliament at the time. All monies stolen from the SPMs including any additional personal belongings (Houses etc) should be refunded including interest. The compensation should be applied in addition to that money.
I love how Alastair's daily gauge of the vox populi is always "at the swimming pool this morning"
Having just watched Mr Bradshaws testimony you can see a person who was giving the title of investigator but was really a glorified heavey. He didn't investigate anything and even his signature and statement on documents were given by other departments and nothing he knew himself. What his job description was God knows as he certainly was not a investigator. He didn't give a toss about these cases and his job is to tick boxes. Absolutely shocking incompetence and let's be honest he sounds ...Well...a bit thick. What a piece of work
I saw a man who did remember signing documents but was not going to admit it.
@@kirkhunter146 yes oh he knew alright but has he does appear like a person who doesn't care enough to ask question and the seriousness of him putting his signature on court documents and ruining someone's life just doesn't register " it's just my job" in his eyes he does what the boss says when he had the role of someone who wasn't suppose to do that. Some people just don't care and he's one of them.
As Alister Campbell implied, not all SubPostmasters were squeaky clean during this scandal or before. Horizon was also brought in to reduce the incidence of book fiddling in the old paper system. There were around 7,000 SubPostmasters in the early 2000s, with 900 convicted. Why did Horizon 'work' fine for the remaining 6,000?
Your missing the point. A IT system was introduced and there were flaws that produced errors that the post office denied. That's the issue. I was involved in a government project that involved over 30,000 people and found over 500 people has incorrect data due to dwp software. There was a flaw and when certain data was inputted it produced a statement showing that people had £0 pension. When you find out you test and raise it and when you told dwp won't spend the money to fix the error you dam well make sure there's a work around. Your statement that thousands of postmaster didn't have issues is irrelevant. It system can work great 99% of the time but you do not ignore it or lie if that 1% is not. It involves honesty and test,test,test and a management structure that listens. These people had their life's ruined because that didn't happen but you chose a argument that doesn't deal with the issue or have any relevance to this matter and its that attitude that gets us into thus mess.
@@beepresent8636 is it your missing the point? or you're missing the point? or yaw missing the point? Since you can't spell then your point is meaningless. I guess you missed a lot of school?
Having been involved with procurement in the building industry for the 45 years of my working life, which I have now retired from, it’s very clear that government is very poor at procurement. I went to seminars on just about every new idea they came up with and tried to explain that the idea was seriously flawed along with others, but this was totally ignored and the new process implemented only to crash and burn a few years later. A major part of the problem is the people coming up with these ideas are not procurement professionals who actually work in the sector every day. Then there is the lack of quality control as mentioned in this video, companies that have a very poor track record are invited to tender again and again, which wouldn’t happen in private practice. Then there is the lack of clarity on what is being procured and by when. Also with political projects they want to start before the design has been completed just so the politicians can make a statement, this leads to changes and cost issues. For example how can you accurately estimate the cost of something quite complicated that hasn’t been designed, often leading to very poor estimates (guesses really). Politicians then changing the project as it progresses again causing issues on both time and cost. I remember pitching for a government contract and the interview panel wouldn’t believe we could provide estimates that would achieve end results within plus or minus 10% (we showed examples that were within 5%) because none of their previous projects had achieved anything close to this, we didn’t get the job.
Rory & Alistair both have a fantastic ability to relate complex issues in easily digestible ways. Fantastic podcast, well done
It's very important to get all of these people exonerated asap!
I just despair when the Old Etionian Rory confesses to the Labour King-maker Alistair that he spent sooo much of his time as Justice Minister trying to get headlines! And Alistair never even reacted, just highlighting what a game this political bubble this is to those in the Westminster A teams. Then they go on and pontificate about the Post Office, when they were both knee-deep in dismissiveness at the time that this is not my problem or even on my radar! As to Mr Stuart's impressive record as the Justice Minister, the aloof and sloped-back Judges continued to imprison on intermenent sentences as it was so easy and convenient. Almost 13,000 men were/are held in prisons under this (deemed illegal) legislation by the EUHCR, but Mr Stuart did nothing but seek newspaper headlines aparently about anything to promote his position as a Minister of a government department.
You two should take a good reflection on yourselves and hang your heads in shame. No wonder British politics is in such turmoil...
A bit late to this but here's an anon quote from an ex Post Office Investigation Branch employee:
Just before Horizon came in they broke the old IB up as it was an Independent Corporate Unit sitting across the old Post Office Group. The staff went through assessments and applied for chosen units.
I went to Royal Mail as they refused to confirm a job based in my local area. Investigators were removed from specific Area or Regions and simply given casework allocated from Business Centres so they had no overview on crimes or performance trends. Everything was bottom line focussed and casework put together by back office staff.
The Managers were not Investigation trained or experienced and it was going to crash at some point and Horizon delivered that in buckets full. Senior Business Management are responsible for covering it up. The Investigators were led to believe the system was foolproof. Fujitsu are hiding behind customer confidentiality it’s a nonsense.
Look at common characteristics across Hillsborough, Horizon, Contaminated Blood, and so on. Why have senior staff and directors not been held accountable?
its a very negative thing that it took a tv drama over a 17 part radio 4 exposee - plus all the other stuff out there. we cant do dramas all the time, sometimes iyt wont make good tv, or have good actors, budgets etc....
This scandal is the thin end of a wedge. How many people have been wrongly charged by ISPs and mobile service providers for things that they neither ordered or received. I took an ISP to the County Court. I lost and was refused leave to appeal. I had no idea why until i heard that Judges had been told that they had to believe Companies when they said that their computer systems were completely reliable. Interestingly, whilst i could purchase a transcript of the trial i have been denied a copy of the audio file to check the transcript against, which, of course, makes the transcript useless!
The Govt doesn't pay as well as the private sector. My friend in HS2 said his companies lawyers were running rings around the civil servants and Govt Lawyers and everybody knew HS2 was just a cash cow. It was a mismatch between people working for the Govt in poorly paid positions and more educated, experienced people working for the private sector. BAE has made billions in MOD procurement contracts which has been widely circulated due to the incompetence of the Govt in signing contracts which they did not understand.
Always seemed a bit like that to me, with just anecdotal evidence. Incompetence seems slightly less worse than cronyism. Slightly.
Access all areas, come and get public money while it's on offer seems to be the mantra.
I got the impression when talking to the Universal Credit folk that it seemed admirable to get as much as you can out of the system, be you third party private firm laughing all the way to the bank, or regular pundit awarded money that you didn't need. Need having nothing to do with the equation now, just get all you can, you're stupid if you don't.
Having told the man who ran HS1 and brought it in on time and in budget that his experience didn't qualify him to run HS2...
One of the problems is that corporate governance protects senior managers and executives in many cases from personal accountability and consequences for their actions. The corporation gets taken to court and held responsible not the individuals. The individuals just move on to their next senior management role elsewhere.
“Is it possible we’ve done something wrong” corporates don’t remotely act that way! Lawyers are monsters - in my claim the judge turned out to have the defendant fund manager brooks Macdonald plc as a client of his law firm Teacher Stern `LLP and yet I have to appeal in the high court to deal with this clear corruption. Stephenson Harwood LLP for defendant were asked of any conflict of interest. They refused to answer my part 18. The possible corruption was actual corruption and they knew. This is venal and evil by the defendant. My claim £27k and the bent judge awarded all costs of their against me £500k. He knew he was bent. So why try to ruin me as well as just strike out the claim. Why the performative cruelty? Judges name is Samuel Rippon. He and the CEO of Brooks Macdonald CEO have lied their arses off. Brooks Macdonald plc found guilty by jsfc of mis-selling risk etc fraud. There is not a debate. There is only corruption here. Read the CEOs letter published by FCA dated 8th November. They know.
As a civil servant who has had recent experience with large procurements, a key problem is that contractors are brought in to run projects, build business cases and manage product and service tenders…a lack of commercial experience at appropriate levels within the civil service means there is a lot of potential for prior relationships and/or preferences of those contractors (who do not undergo the recruitment process of a civil servant) goes unchallenged
A lot of research. I love these wide-ranging episodes.
No mystery why this has taken so long to gain traction. The PR operation of both Post Office and Fujitsu has been outstanding and relentless. Both have stuck to the script religiously, and shored up their defence where they were weakest: that Fujitsu could alter the figures remotely. Any suggestion that this might be the case was slapped down with blank denial, escalating to legal threats very quickly. So, because it was pretty impossible for computers to independently alter account figures, and always in the same direction, of shortfall in the branches, there was only one logical conclusion: that humans had done it. And given that the only humans with access were subpostmasters, it must logically have been them.
The rebuttal/denial operation was carefully scripted and, above all, totally consistent: no, it was absolutely impossible for Fujitsu & PO to amend figures remotely. Any detection of account anomalies was dealt with by an iron fist, immediately, strongly, with threats giving the subpostmasters no chance to resist. And there was always an escape hatch: they could get out of the worst litigation as long as they stopped claiming that the figures were/could be amended remotely. The attitude was to never give an inch. And it defeated almost all of them.
Big lesson for any corporation fighting lawsuits: identify your weakest link, and defend it totally, as if that small matter were the company itself. Big lesson for public fighting corporations: keep going. If you know you are right, don’t accept small victories; go for the big one.
100% correct. All these people have ass covered their way into very lucrative careers. Executives, politicians and civil servants on the backs of the sub post masters.
Do we know that Horizon was randomly creating the errors? We know from BBC Panorama investigations that Fujitsu could remotely alter figures (despite Post Office denying this). I didn't think we could rule out that this was criminal extortion / fraud.
BLAIR AND MANDLESON KNEW IT WAS A CROCK, BUT FUJITSU BLACKMAILED BLAIR WITH 600 JOBS TO GO IN HIS CONSTITUENCY.
The TV program was initiated because of the failure of all MPs who have failed their constituents AGAIN. We were made aware of this so many years ago and it still isn't sorted. Why as the guilty party does the post office get away with court costs.
What’s the difference between Labour and the tories?
The tories have had 14 years to build and develop their vision of Britain.
The result is Britain is divided, in decline and unless you are v rich you are worse off.
Labour will end non dom status, close tax loopholes and stop the rich and corporations moving money out of Britain to tax havens. Instead that money will be used to invest in our NHS, our education system and our police to help communities .
Why, so that people can see their children receive a high standard of education.
So that they can see a doctor and get medical treatment rather than waiting longer than ever.
So that their communities have enough police officers to prevent crime and prosecute those who commit crime.
After 14 years of Tory greed and misrule we need a Britain that will stand tall.
Not a Britain with a government that after almost a decade and a half has failed.
That taxes people higher than in decades, can’t provide a decent NHS, can’t build homes and that has cut the military way below the level needed to protect us.
Gents this is a phenomenal insight into this catastrophe.
Why don't politicians [or their spads] read Private Eye - or any critical press? Watching them all feign horror at the injustice is a contemptible spectacle. NETFLIX special on tainted blood next please.
Virtually all of them read PE, they want to be up to date on the gossip and see if they get a mention. There’s no way that the vast majority were not aware of this years ago.
We are paying dearly for the demise of honesty....whoever used to teach about that.
Its a story of the incompetent appointing and overseeing the incompetent. This is includes government and senior civil service appointing roles that require technical expertise and overseeing that. Someone who is out of their depth just 'relies' on technology the way a car driver hopes their car does not break down and does not recognise that the funny noise under the bonnet is related to having no oil in the engine. It starts at the top, in government. And flows from there. Including the judiciary and their ignorance of technology, logical fallacies and general deductive rational thought.
This is why we should demand all our public service IT services to become open source. Allow experts with good intentions to inspect and fix broken code.
If we had bug bounties and community led IT projects we will have less bugs and security vulnerabilities.
However it also makes exploitation far easier for experts with not so good intentions
@@David-bi6lf Security by obscurity is an ineffective strategy. A more effective approach is transparency, which enables people to identify and address vulnerabilities. This doesn't require revealing sensitive details like passwords or server access methods. Instead, it involves allowing visibility into the system's design, without exposing actual data. Similar to showing the scaffolding behind a project rather than its confidential contents. The Government already open sources far more critical systems like the login systems for government domains. Many private companies, Governments and non-profits operate like this currently.
Alistair knew about it in 1999 when Tony Bliar knew about the problems in Horizon before it was even implemented by the PO. #CLINT
Creating new law to wipe the slate - its almost as if the whole UK legal system was complicit in the past failings and has therefore lost the right to correct them. Almost ?
54 billion in benefit claims a few decades ago? Explains the downfall of the country really doesn't it 😂
Watch the UK Government cover up that is ongoing regarding GRENFELL......?ITV drama GRENFELL anyone?
Having worked with Fujitsu on their bids for a major company over a decade. They always came with proposals and bids, based on the information given to them, that were unbelievably cheap and not trusted. Where they won contracts (before my time working with them) they were always out of their depth and the performance was always awful.
They were always a joke.
The public are highly animated by this not just because of the drama but because they sense that yet again it's evidence of something in the UK that's broken and fundamentally unfair. There are echoes of the systemic failures in the Covid inquiry. Govt seems unable to know the right questions to ask, particularly when it comes to technology. On the one hand of course MPs can't be experts on a particular technology but they do need to be able to know how to ask the right questions. Enough of them need to have a scientific literacy, to understand data, how to analyse things and use various decision making tools and culturally Parliament has to become much more objective, measured and evidence based as opposed to rhetorical etc. This is something professional managers in industry have generally had to develop expertise at. I do strongly feel that our politicians are not coming from a broad enough background, too many are PPE students, lawyers or media/PR people who have not had a depth of career. We now live in a technological world that is fast moving but our systems just seem stuck in the past. Pretty much all the challenges we face are systems thinking problems now requiring collaboration and data analysis etc.
Here is the thing, apart from all the other aspects of this affair the role of Lord Neuberger in the Recusal seems to have escaped attention.
I have therefore pasted the following ‘The role of Lord Neuberger in the recusal fiasco (Justice Fraser) should be investigated’ on as many TH-cam articles as I could, about ten, but when I checked to see if there was any response I discovered they had all been taken down.
This Kafkaesque episode staggers one at every turn, even when Big brother has been outed he seems to be still working away!
I really want to know why Lord Neuberger interfered , if the recusal had succeeded the whole noble attempt at taking on the stinking system would have failed
Go look at the NHS Continuing Health Care programme, or PHSO and NMC statistics that continually show the public are treated with contempt and honesty, ethics and integrity are a thing of the past.
In order to have avoided this travesty, it was necessary to have honest people. UK has few of this remaining. Too many weak, no backbone, and filled with greed.
The civil service, which I've just joined in DWP also has no one coherent system. It's extraordinary!
The key question you ask about why this issue hasn’t been resolved is simple. It’s because it’s primarily about the general behaviour of the establishment in this country. The judiciary, politicians, political parties, public institutions, large corporations and even the press industry instincts are to close ranks, prevaricate, blame each other, argue the toss, only believe each other and waste time. The establishment lives in a bubble and generally has very little idea about ordinary peoples lives. All the time they ensure that they meet their own objectives and get paid.
It’s interesting how every man and his dog has a view on it now and carrying on business as usual busy pointing their fingers at each other. 😵💫🤷🤦♂️
Alastair, it does not require a drama with Toby Jones to tell you that British folk do not want to be ruled from another country. And do not want floods of folk from other cultures forcing their ways on us. That is why Brexit, no more to be said.
One has to ask why is this injustice towards these people ONLY now being looked at ?
It's because the nullified public have temporarily taken their eyes away from the non-issues in the media. Hopefully, they'll start taking an interest in injustices and stop blindly supporting politicians.
@@andrewoliver8930 I guess I'm guilty of spending a bit of time making my own bread, but don't have a portable device so avoid most of the circuses.
But yeah, same dung, different millennia.
Older American here. Doesn't the UK have IT people / companies that could have developed the necessary program?
Not a good look for the UK’s legal system. Perception from the other side of the pond [US]. Considering the portrayed attitude / culture of those in positions of authority, in the UK, I'm not surprised at how this played out. Based only on what I've seen in videos & read in comments, coming from people in the UK, it seems that those in authoritative positions, regardless of the insignificance of their office, they function as if they have been given absolute, infallible powers from some all-powerful deity or royal source. Do not question my authority, I am the law, you are guilty until proven innocent. That’s just my perception.
Didn't anyone from the defense of the hundreds of accused attempt to independently investigate alternative narratives / causes in an effort to prove their clients claim of innocence or is that not done in the UK's system?
The whole matter was made to be complex and unintelligible by the courts in order to brush away due process and revelation. The whole thing was a cover-up to protect the 'investment' and the bodies concerned - those who were robbed of money that wasn't owed or stolen, those who died, those who went to prison, those who were stigmatised in their community ... they were worthless in the eyes of those at the top. I'm sure they'd use the phrase "the bigger picture".
"Why did it take a TV drama to excite interest?" isn't a criticism of the authorities - it's an indictment of our modern society. The scandal was always out there in the public. But it was too complicated and not 'easy to digest'.
Please stick in subtitles or atleast allow for automatic captions.
You can ‘Watch Transcript’ in the description. That can add a touch of humour too as some of the transcriptions can be strange.
@@clarecrawford9677 all it takes on their end to place it on the video at the same time is turn on automatic captioning when they post the video. The transcriptions is the automatic caption text.
Is there no regulation of computer based accountancy systems that requires independent verification of system performance and accuracy prior to deployment? This is the case for industrial electronics for example. If there isn’t then there should be given the obvious harm that has occurred.
But it is still unforgivable given the pentium floating point bug in the 90s it should have been investigated thoroughly when concerns were first raised.
There is nothing new about buggy software - but with the death of 'risk management' I've had many a disagreements with developers who overlook the need to code for error checking/validation. I get the response 'oh well that scenario would never happen' - to which the obvious response is - Yes, but what does your app/database do if it DOES happen?
Excellent episode today 👏👏
Blair knew in 1999 that the system was not fit for purpose and yet stillpushed ahead with it.
Very insightful episode! Did Mr Stewart choose his wardrobe to remind us of his Minister for Prisons days? 😂
Excellent conversation really thank you you make very interesting points , interesting getting too viewpoints from Alastair too from a Government point of view . The power of that ITV show me bates v the post office is excellent!