The Guardian says this of the Post Office sub-postmaster accounting scandal this morning:
At its heart, this extraordinary saga is about a group of workers who lost their jobs and their reputations – and in some cases served prison time – because their employer wrongly accused them of theft or fraud. You can read Mark Sweney's useful primer on the story here. But it is also about accountability for an apparent cover-up even after the Post Office realised it was in the wrong, and how the story is yet to be resolved for so many victims.
This is wrong, as is much of the commentary on this issue.
Of course, there are questions about the abuse of sub-postmasters.
And yes, there are issues concerning accountability.
But much more o this story is about a society that has gone very wrong.
On Sunday I said that we have a choice in politics: we can emphasise the individual or society. What I did not, perhaps, make as clear as I might is that those who choose to emphasise the politics of the individual are those with power. They are those who have disproportionate rights as individuals because of income, wealth, connections, and power.
The real story of the Post Office is all about the abuse of power. Those in charge put their interests above those of all others - because they believed that they were the most important people in the organisation.
Their status, income, and the right to demand loyalty and to impose control all confirmed that in their own minds.
It was not possible in that case that they might have made a mistake, in their opinion. A mistake, if there was one, must have been by those they commanded, and not by them. Nothing else was possible.
And if there was a problem with a supplier, then that was helpful, because that, too, let them deny responsibility - an attitude still being seen in yesterday's ministerial statement on this issue.
The reality was that those in power in the Post Office abused that power to blame others, to cover up that abuse of power and to persecute long after it was known, even by them, that this was unjustifiable. And they did that because they thought they were worth it - because they were important individuals.
This is not then just a story of a failure of justice, or of governance. It is also a story of the abuse of power that neoliberalism and the cult of the powerful individual encouraged and made possible.
Until we have political and corporate leadership that serves the community and not powerful individuals, nothing will prevent another Post Office scandal because every day those with power create ever more complex structures that tell them that they are the most important individuals and that society must both serve and reward them for being so.
This is the rottenness that the Post Office story has revealed.
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I listened to a substantial part of the short Ministerial statement and debate on the Post Office scandal yesterday evening in Parliament. Quite clearly the government has been caught flat-footed and is struggling to catch-up. It is anxious to appear in charge, and is suddenly trying to put together a viable master-plan for a complex problem it still doesn’t fully grasp, on the hoof. The Minister disagreed with nothing a single MP had to say from any side of the house; the single-mindedness was palpable. Doing his best from a well-meaning but thin brief in substance (especially on timelines); the Minister’s assurances often lacked substantive content, or firm outcomes.
There was a little to much of the florid Parliamentary ritual self-congratulation among MPs, for the work they had done in supporting the campaign; which is singularly inappropriate in this case. Parliament has failed the British people, in a state-sponsored assault on their rights and freedoms, for over twenty years; and Parliament has yet to fix it. There is the problem. Action in many cases will depends on the Enquiry already set up; nothing has changed. The problem is not good intentions now, but twenty years of foot-dragging, and lost opportunity that have been wasted to reach this point, and it seems the Government cannot easily or suddenly find its way through the slow wheels of grinding bureaucracy, or even know how to rise above the fossilised layers of British procedure, constitution and Government that burden the British system. The atmosphere of failure falls over everything.
The minister has the aspiration to fix it all, referring to what “I want to do”, but he did not provide a decisive, precise route map in many cases how it was to be done, promptly; and where he did make specific reference, the system typically was already set up (and grinds to slowly).
Hollinrake doesn’t have a master-plan; they are “looking at” solutions, on quashing convictions, on fast compensation, on recovering PO bonuses, on ensuring wrongdoing is brought to justice; and provide help for the victims that gave up, and do not come forward. He has, effectively a “to do” list, but not the answers. Nothing is ready. He even admitted it was not “ideal” that there were three compensations schemes, but clearly he has to run with it. He seemed worried about some constitutional issues. He was also asked about co-ordination among devolved nations (Scotland has a different legal system, and does not have private prosecutions); but the Minister confessed the Lord Chancellor had only been approached that day (yesterday); the Government was flat-footed, and not ready for something of this scale.
John Redwood MP managed to turn his question into a gratuitous, snide political barb in defence of free enterprise; just to remind us, this is Parliament in a neoliberal age. The constant question “When?” Was often raised. It was not answered, but the layers of scrutiny to be undertaken by the process the Minister outlined, did not diminish the sense that this will not prove a lengthy process; and the Government look helpless at Government. At the end of the debate, the generalised date of August, 2024 was suddenly offered by the Minister; too late to be interrogated.
No doubt panic in government at this turn in events from a TV drama that shocked and outraged the public has proved the catalyst for this government flap; in a difficult election year, it has galvanized Government and Parliament; but if we are witnessing here modern, decisive Government and Parliament galvanized into action, it frankly still leaves a lot to be desired in our system of government. The gloomy sense that all this huff and puff is provisional and based on hope as much as expectation was hard to resist.
Sunak took pride in claiming on Sunday that £150m in compensation had already been paid to “thousands” of victims. In fact as yet, only thirty victims have been awarded the compensation they are due, in full. In disticnt and telling contrast, Lee Castleton, one of the sub-postmasters portrayed in the ITV drama who was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg, BBC said this: “£135 million has been paid to some of the victims, but we’ve had £150 million plus paid to lawyers”. It may be 2024, but this is Britain: we are still living in the world of 1852-3, when Charles Dickens wrote Bleak House. The book hangs on a court case; Jarndyce v. Jarndyce; a family dispute over an inheritance. It drags on interminably, over generations in and out of court, until it is finally decided at the end of the book; at which point the funds of the inheritance in dispute have been exhausted by the fees paid to lawyers. I give you – Britain today.
Oh, and this morning BBC Scotland GMS gave Douglas Ross MP, the woeful Scottish Conservative leader a blandly easy time over the gross Conservative, negligent mismanagement of the Post Office scandal.
it’s Britain; we know where this goes. The long grass beckons…
In all the coverage of this in recent days we should remember Private Eye and their dogged coverage of this story over many, many years.
The facts of the scandal have been known for years and to see senior figures “doing a Captain Renault” (I’m shocked, shocked…..) is appalling.
Computer Weekly and Radio 4 were also on the case some time ago.
Re PE, their coverage of the injustice has been exemplary for years. They also made the point ages ago that lawyers fees have eaten up £ set aside for compensation payments.
There is another story in today’s Guardian that comes at the same issue from the other end of things. The “powers that be” at all levels of society couldn’t bear someone who exposed the shortcomings of the society that rewarded them if they stayed silent about or justified those shortcomings. Hence Camila Batmanghelidjh, who died recently, remains uncelebrated for her remarkable work with children that ‘the system’ spat out.
(The link to the article doesn’t work) The hidden life of Camila Batmanghelidjh: why was her exoneration so widely ignored?
Here is the link Richard. Could you edit?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/09/the-hidden-life-of-camila-batmanghelidjh-why-was-her-exoneration-so-widely-ignored
Let me muse on that….
Stand out para for me
”Local authority social work leaders were furious at her support for a Centre for Social Justice thinktank report which graphically exposed serious shortcomings in child protection services. She did not shy from telling uncomfortable truths about child poverty to those in power. There was also a certain type of politician or policymaker, usually male, that did not take well to being told these uncomfortable truths – especially when they came from a “colourful, bombastic, engaging and creative” foreign-born woman, says one former staffer.”
Precisely
They were too important, they thought, to be told the truth.
Robin
some 17-18 years ago I was Chair of a group of counsellors and psychotherapists who invited speakers in our field.
She was one of them . There may have been accounting issues in Kids Company -I don’t know-but she was a challenge to the to the usual way of doing things. I regarded her as one of the most remarkable women I have ever met.
Before Labour left office in 2008 there was a minister who asked for a group of therapists to advise on how to make social policy more psychologically informed, They did some good work but the minister was moved on. There is even more of a need today for our social and welfare policies to be informed by good psychology and joined up policies. Some countries attempt that and I don’t mean the USA where our Health ministers and shadow ministers go for inspiration,
No accounting or governance issues were ever found
Thanks for that link Robin. I didn’t know about this, but I always felt there was something dodgy about that scandal.
You are right to talk about ‘structures’, Richard. It is only structural change that can change this. We need to understand the fragility of democracy, and understand how flaws in its implementation – such as FPTP and a biased press – produce bad outcomes. We also need to understand that the point of business is to enhance social welfare for many and not to enrich a few, and so structure its governance accordingly. See eg: https://www.futureeconomics.org/2021/11/the-economics-of-starmerism/
This abuse of power by the state is what means appalling events like the holocaust could happen here, or anywhere for that matter.
Some small cabal with the power of the police or equivalent and the courts behind them can terrify individuals and no-one on the inside of the organisation stands up to them. We’ve seen it before with Windrush where so-called public servants hide behind the excuse that they were just following orders.
One issue tha tthis highlights is that while a prosecution by the Policve has to go voia the CPS, a Private Prosecution does not and that is where injustice can start as the behaviour by many Private Prosecutors would render the case inadmissable were the CPS to look at it.
One thing that I agree with Starmer about is that the whole prosecution saga should go straight to the CPS.
Everybody could be exonerated now and given compensation if the will was there. However, Hollinrake is at heart an estate agent, not a politician. That’s why he seemed not to know what to do about it.
There are other examples of gross corporate bullying, admittedly without the prosecutions, in some of our corporations.
NHS Highland, one of the biggest employers in Scotland, recently undertook a review into bullying, there were payouts but apparently nothing has changed post review.
Again a big employer, education, the behaviour of some within Ofsted looks bad.
Examples of, possibly, macho management, a toxic atmosphere encouraged by those much further up. Similar to the way benefits claimnents are treated. All ramped up by the bully or be bullied psychology.
There is a huge reluctance to admit mistakes, understandably, because we pillory people who make them and admit it despite all of us making them. My wife went to a&e late in the evening because after playing badminton the sight in one of her eyes was failing. The doctor there gave her eye drops and sent her home. The next morning it was worse. I took her back to hospital as I, who doesn’t know much about medical matters thought it could be retinal detachment. It was and she later had an operation to reattach but it was by then too late to save much of her sight in that eye. We made a complaint to the hospital which went nowhere. We then went to a no
fee solicitor solicitor. After 6 months and a review by a consultant, who we had to pay, we were fobbed off by the hospital saying it was a understandably error in diagnosis, there was no fault and we had no case. The solicitor felt it was not worth pursuing. No apology or acknowledgement that emergency doctors should be more thorough etc. I am supportive of the NHS and we weren’t seeking compensation, money could not repair a severely damaged eye. We wanted an acknowledgement that emergency doctors should be aware of things they are not sure about, seek help in their diagnosis and their training will insist that they do this. Relatively minor issue but made me aware of how it is difficult and near impossible for ordinary individuals to seek justice against the mistakes or deliberate harmful policies of corporations and state services who have almost infinite resources.
I am sorry to hear that
I’ve followed this saga over many years (Private Eye, Computer Weekly) , as years back I project managed similar systems and reviewed projects, many involving large branch networks. I know one of the investigators as a good friend also with a lot of experience of large financial systems, and we’ve talked about it. Nick Wallis’s book on which much of the TV was based is excellent and should have got more attention when it came out.
A few points that don’t get coverage but I suspect lie at the root. The Post Office was set up as an arms length organisation when the Royal Mail was split off and privatised. The government is the sole shareholder but operationally the PO is kept at arms length. One might guess that the government thought that it could be privatised as well eventually. The result is that the government has chosen to stay out of any operational issues, and I suspect that is how the Horizon problems were seen. Until too late…
It is also similar to an outsource relationship, where as so often happens the organisation doing the outsourcing ends up with little or none of the expertise to understand what the outsourcer is doing. All too common in IT outsources and a cause of severe problems. I can imagine a group of civil servants unable or unwilling to challenge the PO. Briefing the ministers. And potentially the PO not retaining the detailed expertise to challenge Fujitsu. Or just not interested. A recipe for disaster.
There is also something about the PO’s culture which led it automatically to blame the sub-postmasters. Combined with its bizarre internal policing so it could in effect be judge and jury. You see that same kind of ‘audit as finding someone to blame culture’ in other organisations. Ofsted springs to mind.
Both the PO and Fujitsu are deeply culpable. One way or another they both were covering up and blaming the sub-PMs which is beyond despicable. However given their dishonesty and the PO-government structure, I can understand why they got away with it for some time. Even so the government should have been on the case years ago. Other people were…
One of the Second Sight investigative team on World at One today – at about 1316. Balance of guilt tiling clearly in the direction of the Post Office.
Just an after thought on the Post Offices power to prosecute. This goes back to the time the postal service were the main means of communication and I can understand that there was an argument for it to have had those powers then. But in today’s world where it is just another profit making company it should be strip of them. Or should we go the other way and allow all corporations these powers! If an external body was involved it may never of got this bad.
It comes back to an issue that has concerned me for a long time which is the incompetence of our managerial and political class.
Was it here or on Nat Pres that someone quoted Noel Coward as saying that the British Religion was mediocrity
Should the NFSP, ostensibly a trade union but in fact delisted by the TUC in 2014, be criticised for its role in this scandal? Some sub-postmasters say they were “failed” by the NFSP but from what I’ve read it seemed to be in the pocket of the Post Office management.
I see Paula Vennells has given up her CBE with immediate effect. Probably hoping we will all forget her part in the saga.
https://www.ft.com/content/c7a4f51a-994e-4e73-83a9-8ef9faf97fa5?desktop=true&segmentId=d8d3e364-5197-20eb-17cf-2437841d178a#myft:notification:instant-email:content
Henry Mance in the FT suggesting that the PO saga is reflective of today’s ‘faceless, unfeeling, profit maximisers’. ‘Corrupted by outsourcing and corporate hierarchies’.
When even the FT can see it…
I just tweeted that
Why did it need a TV drama to transform the politics? Because the public watched the drama unfold on a personal level; and suddenly realised, for the first time; that if the Crown, Government, Post Office and even the Law can do this with impunity over more than twenty years, on an industrial scale to hundreds of well vatted, unimpeachable ordinary people – like me – why do I think it can’t happen to me and mine? Because, it dawned: it can. This is Britain – arrogant, condescending and vain – our antiquated constitution and system of government is no protection at all. Even the KCs are flapping around in a panic. This goes to the heart of Britain’s utter failure of character in Government.
The penny is finally dropping. You are not safe; Government does not put your safety, security and well-being first, or anywhere close to first.
“vatted”? I hope not. Vetted.
This was in the Guardian today, too and is absolutely sickening.
“Also last summer, unbelievably, it emerged that the current CEO of the Post Office had actually run a bonus scheme to reward executives for cooperating with the inquiry – surely their most basic civic and moral duty. This was at the same time that 81-year-old former subpostmaster Francis Duff finally received £330,000 compensation for having lost everything during the scandal – only for the official receiver (part of the Department for Business) to immediately claw back £322,000 of it to cover bankruptcy and owed income tax. He couldn’t afford to heat his home last winter.”
Completely immoral.
Agreed
Another way the post office made money was by selling them off to shop chains, such as Smiths and supermarkets.
The highly trained staff at the post offices were then asked to apply for their own jobs on shopworkers wages. Lots of them did not. They thought if they were just going to get retail wages they might as well not have the extra pressure of working in the post office system.
When people had been working in crown post offices and the discrepancies were written off the staff did not have to make good the difference. However teams of investigators were sent in and many staff left because of the atmosphere in the post offices. They knew they were not guilty of wrongdoing but were treated as if they were.
A similar story is that of Loan Charge victims, ten of whom have committed suicide.
https://www.contractoruk.com/news/0015758anger_and_condolences_tenth_taxpayer_caught_loan_charge_commits_suicide.html
One has to wonder how close the links are between Infosys (Sunak’s wife) and Fujitsu and how much of an impact this has had with how Sunak has dealt with this until very, very recently.
Here’s an extract from a 2003 Infosys press release
https://www.infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/2003/partners-fujitsu.html
“Infosys Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:INFY) a global IT consulting and software services company today announced its partnership with Fujitsu Limited, a leading provider of information technology and communications solutions for the global marketplace. Infosys, with its global experience, will provide co-development and functionality enhancement services to the Fujitsu suite of software products. Infosys will enhance Fujitsu processes by bringing in new technology and IT skills. Through its association with Fujitsu, Infosys has entered the arena of product development in the Asia Pacific region.
Infosys will partner with Fujitsu in the area of middleware product development. The Infosys-Fujitsu relationship started in February 2002 and is expected to grow in the coming years. Fujitsu hopes to use Infosys’ global experience and presence to roll out its products to new geographies across the globe
I see similarities between the PO scandal and that which engulfed Andrew Malkinson. All victims were defenceless in the face of grubby, bullying mediocrity. Is this really the norm for the UK now?
It has been for some time. Try following @tmealham or @Carlier_J87 on Twitter for more disturbing details.
Anyone else today feel sickened at watching Hollinrake praise the government for what it is doing for the subpostmasters?
£75,000 is less than a year’s salary for an MP, and these people have been made to feel criminals for over two decades in some cases.
In his speech he seemed more concerned about the fact that a few might have been fiddling the books instead of those hundreds who hadn’t.