Meanwhile a couple of things re Alan Bates. First, I don't think anyone has yet posted that there is now a new petition for him to receive an award. I thought he had already been offered an OBE, but anyway he had indicated that he wouldn't accept anything while Vennells has hers.
Secondly he has penned an important and rather concerning article for the FT. Since it's him and not that long, I re-post it in full. The title and sub is stark:
Alan Bates: Why I wouldn’t beat the Post Office today
Litigation funding is vital in supporting ordinary people in their fight against corporate giants — now it is under threat
Thanks to the TV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the Horizon scandal and the plight of hundreds of sub-postmasters like me are back in the public eye and — at least for now — near the top of the government’s agenda. But an issue which is still very much floating under the radar is a crisis facing the little-known litigation funding sector which funded our fight. Combined with the strength and stubborn defiance of my colleagues, such financing allowed us to take our case from Fenny Compton Village Hall to the High Court, securing justice, exposing the truth and clearing our names and reputations. Ours was a David vs Goliath case, with hundreds of wrongly accused sub-postmasters — brutally treated by our employer — taking on the Post Office in a hugely expensive and gruelling legal battle. In today’s circumstances, it’s a battle we would almost certainly lose. Litigation funding enables consumers and small business owners like us to fight our corner. This vital sector sees funders take a calculated risk, based on significant due diligence, to back legal cases that often lack the financial firepower to take on deep-pocketed corporate juggernauts. They do this in return for a share of the proceeds. This has allowed motorists, shop owners and individual investors to access the courts and seek redress from big business for corporate, and in our case criminal, wrongdoing. Today, Apple, Google and some of the UK’s biggest mobile phone operators are being held to account by individual citizens and SMEs who claim to have been ripped off in a variety of ways. On their own, these individuals would lack the funds to pursue cases against these corporate giants. But future access to this essential financing tool has been thrown into doubt. Thanks to an obscure Supreme Court ruling last summer in PACCAR, a case brought on behalf of truck hauliers against large truck manufacturers that had previously been in a cartel, the litigation funding sector in the UK is now in jeopardy. The judgment — on a technical challenge brought by a group formerly found to be cartelists and seeking to exploit poorly drafted legislation — makes litigation funding almost impossible in the UK, and risks unwinding years of historic judgments against proven corporate wrongdoers who have harmed people and small businesses. While the case might be obscure, the ramifications of the ruling are profound. Under these conditions, would our victims group have had the funds to challenge the Post Office as they tried every trick in the book to bog us down with procedure and legal costs? Would we have exposed one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in recent legal history? And should we choke off this narrow route to justice for similar cases in the future? No, no and — hopefully you agree — no.
The government can and should fix this urgently, and in the coming weeks they’ll have their chance. All it would take is a minor tweak to the proposed digital markets, competition and consumers bill, which is currently being reviewed in the House of Lords, to unwind the impacts of the PACCAR judgment. Ministers have even recognised that this is an important issue that needs addressing — after all, it fundamentally undermines their desire to see third-party backed claims being able to hold big businesses to account. And yet so far they have said that it’s not the right time to do anything — music to large corporations’ ears. There aren’t many stories like that of the sub-postmasters, in which ordinary people take on large organisations with deep pockets — and win. But there will be even fewer wins for individual citizens, small businesses and people like me if this issue isn’t fixed straight away.
BBC detailing Harold Wilsons ultimately disastrous decision to give government contracts straight to Fujitsu;
"To understand Fujitsu's role, let's go back to its takeover of the British firm International Computers Limited (ICL) - which developed the Horizon software - in the 1990s.
The relationship between ICL and Fujitsu goes back decades, and the ways in which both operate are quite similar.
In the 1970s, the Japanese government was trying to counter the dominance of America's IBM, and provided 57bn yen of financial support to three giant technology alliances, one of which was Fujitsu.
In the UK, the Wilson government was doing just that by forming ICL.
With the might of the government behind them, Japanese firms went on a shopping spree in the 1980s, encouraged by the favourable exchange rate.
That was when ICL was having financial issues at home. It held several UK government contracts, as the government had a policy that every computer over a certain size was bought from the company. But the firm was struggling to keep up with its international competitors, and by 1981 it had lost £18.7m.
Fujitsu and ICL were a perfect match. The takeover allowed Fujitsu to have an outsized presence in the UK, as ICL's strong ties to the government often meant that it was the only bidder for government contracts."
No wonder Mandelson wanted to push through with Horizon.
BBC detailing Harold Wilsons disastrous decision to give government contracts straight to Fujitsu;
"To understand Fujitsu's role, let's go back to its takeover of the British firm International Computers Limited (ICL) - which developed the Horizon software - in the 1990s.
The relationship between ICL and Fujitsu goes back decades, and the ways in which both operate are quite similar.
In the 1970s, the Japanese government was trying to counter the dominance of America's IBM, and provided 57bn yen of financial support to three giant technology alliances, one of which was Fujitsu.
In the UK, the Wilson government was doing just that by forming ICL.
With the might of the government behind them, Japanese firms went on a shopping spree in the 1980s, encouraged by the favourable exchange rate.
That was when ICL was having financial issues at home. It held several UK government contracts, as the government had a policy that every computer over a certain size was bought from the company. But the firm was struggling to keep up with its international competitors, and by 1981 it had lost £18.7m.
Fujitsu and ICL were a perfect match. The takeover allowed Fujitsu to have an outsized presence in the UK, as ICL's strong ties to the government often meant that it was the only bidder for government contracts."
No wonder Mandelson wanted to push through with Horizon.
Way back in the late 1960s/early 70s I was an 'operator' on big IBM mainframe computers, the 360 and 370 series for those IT buffs with long memories .. to those in the know, ICL was a joke, a pale imitation of IBM even to the similar name. Fujitsu took it over to save ICL from gross ignominy and probable bankruptcy, no company in its right mind bought ICL when IBM machines were there to be used
7 prime ministers and 20 different postal ministers on the time line. They all have had a role to play and all have questions to answer whatever party they are in.
100% this and hopefully the inquiry will get to the bottom of it in due course and report back based on facts not bias.
Despite claims to the contrary not a single poster (as far as I can see) has said any political blame is held exclusively by the Tories, but there are clearly political elements to the story that are impossible to remove from the events.
Blair's lot also involved in all this. Not that I want to defend the Tories or Ed Davey but, as I have said above, politicians from all parties have dirt and blood on their hands as a result of this disgusting fiasco.
Maybe the lesson is never to believe, trust, blindly obey or co-operate with anybody who assumes power or control over you.
I am not that au fait with the wider theories of Anarchism, or Anarchic structures in the broader sense, and am much more comfortable with being able to identify with a closer to home community based society, where those granted power are close by and can be challenged.
One of the reasons why I don't recognise the concept of 'patriotism', or any value in subservience.
Blair's lot also involved in all this. Not that I want to defend the Tories or Ed Davey but, as I have said above, politicians from all parties have dirt and blood on their hands as a result of this disgusting fiasco.
I started to read it, a short way down it uses itself as a source, and after that, a Mail article as a source. I stopped reading after that.
Blair's lot also involved in all this. Not that I want to defend the Tories or Ed Davey but, as I have said above, politicians from all parties have dirt and blood on their hands as a result of this disgusting fiasco.
I started to read it, a short way down it uses itself as a source, and after that, a Mail article as a source. I stopped reading after that.
It's not using itself as a source but linking to yesterday's article. Newspapers are newspapers. Should I ignore The Guardian?
An investigation by the FT suggests that the Post Office claimed tax relief on the compensation payments to the sub postmasters, which isn't legal apparently, and may mean they face £100m tax bill.
As this may make the Post Office technically insolvent, it'll be interesting to see if there's any attempt to claw back any bonuses paid out to senior staff on the basis of the performance of the company, and/or any prosecutions for false accounting, which would be incredibly ironic in the circumstances.
The PO is obviously a very easy target atm but the 'claimed tax relief' bit is at best a massive oversimplification and probably slightly wide of the mark. The tax deductibility of compo paid to contractors, employees or other successful litigants is in a slightly grey area but a case for it as a legitimate business expense could be made. What aren't in a grey area are fines and penalties handed down by authority; from banalities like parking or speeding fines to those imposed by courts for law breaking. Penalties imposed by HMRC for late or faulty tax compliance are not tax deductible. There is no specific tax penalty for being shit at what we do and it costing us loads - we don't get taxed on the profits we might have made had we been less shit, we are all just taxed on the money we actually made. This story splashed across MSM centres on the provisions PO has made in its accounts for possible future costs of compensating the mistreated SPMs. PO seems to have made the assumption all those costs will be tax deductible and estimated its tax bill accordingly. PO does note that there is some uncertainty over the tax treatment of the future liabilities but it hasn't quantified that uncertainty. As far as we know PO hasn't yet been handed down a judicial penalty for any wrong doing - that cost would indeed not save them any tax. We also don't know if HMRC has challenged the tax treatment of any compo that PO may already have paid to victims. For the purposes of the published accounts PO just has to get its auditors to agree the provisions and their tax treatment.
Two other things: PO is in every practical sense just an arm of HMGov and the Treasury - the fact it is charged any Corporation Tax on its results is stupid in the extreme - it's just public money moving around - one department taxing another is a dismal waste of time and resources. This fact also pulls the rug out from the noise about 'insolvency'. The PO is legally constituted as a trading company with one shareholder: HMGov. The numbers cobbled together to make up its annual accounts might show it to be insolvent but its access to funds to pay its bills is not in serious question.
We expect alarmist halfbaked cobblers from most of the mainstream media but it reflects very poorly on the FT for them to have parroted the same "story". Their 'investigation' amounts to one bloke's opinion.
Full two page 'comment' in Saturday's 'Times' (can't reproduce it here, can anybody else ?) .. puts Fujitsu right in the dock and exposes their executives and 'experts' as liars and fraudsters .. perjury, indolent politicians and executives .. the best article about this whole affair that I have read so far
Having been involved with many IT systems and roll outs, my experience is that bugs and errors are a normal part of system management. I have, however never been in position of not having access to support which was accountable to users to sort out reported transaction errors or erroneous reporting. My guess is that Horizon was poorly designed but probably no worse than scores of business critical systems currently being operated throughout the UK. This is why Fujitsu have tried to present the system as "robust" in the face of evidence of bugs and errors known to Fujitsu and the Post Office.
In the Inquiry Fujitsu tries to show it was a "normal" system - beset with the bugs and errors reported by users any IT system would experience.
In my view the crucial failure and criminal negligence, was less in the system integrity of a poorly designed system, rather the lack of transparency and control of the users to manage the impact of bugs and errors to resolve the resulting problem of non-balancing accounts. Users were oblivious to how their data was being altered and impacted by manual intervention of Fujitsu behind the scenes to get round the effect of bugs. In some IT environments, manual intervention may be the only way to correct an anomaly in advance of a software fix, so what Fujitsu were doing was not extraordinary, except it should only have happened transparently with the full knowledge and agreement of the user and implemented only after re-testing.
Sub-postmasters had no access to any data to prove their innocence in the face of an inept and corrupt investigation and prosecuting process - a perfect recipe for disaster.
I suspect Fujitsu will show they delivered a system that the Post Office accepted and were operating exactly as the Post Office contract required. The Post Office didn't have a clue of the impact on sub-postmasters of what they had delegated and must take the main blame and face the consequences.
While I accept your opening premise is true, I think you might be letting Fujitsu off the hook a bit here. Now my view is largely based on a dramatisation of the facts. Nevertheless, even a dramatisation will not depict scenes which cast aspersions on a major player in a controversial scandal in a negative light, especially a global corp. unless those scenes are substantively true. And Fujitsu are staying very quiet, no lawsuits being hurled at ITV. So, we must assume it’s true that Fujitsu set up that team we saw being visited by the postmasters’ union rep. It was routinely going into postmaster accounts and changing stuff without them knowing. Do you think it ok that nobody senior in Fujitsu questioned the ethics of that? They were operating that team on behalf of the PO and for substantial fees. In my view they need to be held to account, and I notice that some heavy -hitting journos, such as Emily Maitlis are starting to ask questions.
Having seen more disclosures in the Skinner case I agree. They clearly knew people were being prosecuted on the back of evidence it was in their interests to assist PO in suppressing.. But I still think it was the PO driving the direction Fujitsu went.and still deserve the most blame. Fujitsu might end up paying out huge sums in order to restore Japanese “honour” which I hope doesn’t deflect responsibility away from PO.
Blair's lot also involved in all this. Not that I want to defend the Tories or Ed Davey but, as I have said above, politicians from all parties have dirt and blood on their hands as a result of this disgusting fiasco.
I started to read it, a short way down it uses itself as a source, and after that, a Mail article as a source. I stopped reading after that.
It's not using itself as a source but linking to yesterday's article. Newspapers are newspapers. Should I ignore The Guardian?
But we should probably leave it here.
You should take the Guardian as a left wing paper with an agenda. The Mail is regularly censured for bullshit, even Wikipedia called them as an unreliable source. I read the article Len, there were some facts in it. But when you think about it, I don't think is is so odd that an MP would visit the head office of one of the biggest employers in his consituency? And the bit where they say "years before" and then actually state it was a year before he became PM? Guilding the lily. As Bournemouth points out, not a single poster has said the Tories are the only ones at fault despite claims to the contrary, but unless you are very dim, you know exactly why the right wing press is pointing out the history of the affair, and it's not through a burning sense of injustice - they could have brought all this to the front pages years ago. The fact is that right now, the party in power continues to give Fujitsu (and Centrica for that matter) huge contracts, when they are clearly rubbish at their job, and the government know they are rubbish at their job. Not twenty years, or ten years ago - right now.
I recommend reading Nick Wallis' book The Great Post Office Scandal. It goes into more detail than I've seen elsewhere.
The personal stories are heartbreaking to read.
It also highlights some of the legalities in an easily readable way.
It's a big book, over 500 pages and I'm only part of the way through it, but it is very informative.
I dare say a few or even a lot of people are getting bored with this subject .. BUT the 2020 radio series, the precursor to the book @ME14 references is being repeated on R4 NOW .. Just a short 15 min listen to today's repeat at 9.45 (episode 14) really sums up the absolute scandal .. I really recommend that you all take a quarter of an hour to listen to this extract, it's like something out of 1984 or Soviet Russian 'justice', absolutely despicable and shocking
I hope, but not confident, that it will be foreseen the individuals compensated represent the biggest and most vulnerable group exposed to the trawl nets of vultures in the Financial Services industry ever to surface.
Unless part of the compensation includes a panel of pre-vetted advisers remunerated on a pre agreed fee basis paid by government/Post Office on top of the compensation I guarantee we will see the biggest feeding frenzy by advisers ever to land on their table, with the most unscrupulous, as always, having the biggest snouts in the trough.
Problem is, well evidence by the PPE scandal, the vetted firms will no doubt be mates of whichever minsters and civil servants control the process.
What a shit star of affairs when public trust in every corner of self-serving government and corporate power has evaporated being shown repeatedly bereft of any guiding moral compass.
I hope, but not confident, that it will be foreseen the individuals compensated represent the biggest and most vulnerable group exposed to the trawl nets of vultures in the Financial Services industry ever to surface.
Unless part of the compensation includes a panel of pre-vetted advisers remunerated on a pre agreed fee basis paid by government/Post Office on top of the compensation I guarantee we will see the biggest feeding frenzy by advisers ever to land on their table, with the most unscrupulous, as always, having the biggest snouts in the trough.
Problem is, well evidence by the PPE scandal, the vetted firms will no doubt be mates of whichever minsters and civil servants control the process.
What a shit star of affairs when public trust in every corner of self-serving government and corporate power has evaporated being shown repeatedly bereft of any guiding moral compass.
Great point, that. It’ll probably include the cowboys who sold footballers the “investments“ in films, and they will probably name-drop said footballers too.
Mind you, if Alan Bates is aware of the danger he’s probably the one person in the land able to organise protection from this threat
Fujitsu saying they have a moral duty to compensate victims.
Wonder why, all of a sudden? 🙄
Don't knock it, it's a step in the right direction. I think most of us had a suspicion that they might try and hide, like the PO people seem to have done when giving evidence in the past, but at least he seems to be saying the right sort of thing now.
From the BBC;
Mr Patterson apologised for Fujitsu's role in what he said was an "appalling miscarriage of justice", and admitted the company had been "involved from the very start".
"We did have bugs and errors in the system and we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters," he said.
Asked why Fujitsu didn't do anything about glitches in the Horizon system when the company knew about them at an early stage, Mr Patterson said: "I don't know. I really don't know."
Comments
Secondly he has penned an important and rather concerning article for the FT. Since it's him and not that long, I re-post it in full. The title and sub is stark:
Alan Bates: Why I wouldn’t beat the Post Office today
Thanks to the TV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the Horizon scandal and the plight of hundreds of sub-postmasters like me are back in the public eye and — at least for now — near the top of the government’s agenda. But an issue which is still very much floating under the radar is a crisis facing the little-known litigation funding sector which funded our fight. Combined with the strength and stubborn defiance of my colleagues, such financing allowed us to take our case from Fenny Compton Village Hall to the High Court, securing justice, exposing the truth and clearing our names and reputations. Ours was a David vs Goliath case, with hundreds of wrongly accused sub-postmasters — brutally treated by our employer — taking on the Post Office in a hugely expensive and gruelling legal battle. In today’s circumstances, it’s a battle we would almost certainly lose. Litigation funding enables consumers and small business owners like us to fight our corner. This vital sector sees funders take a calculated risk, based on significant due diligence, to back legal cases that often lack the financial firepower to take on deep-pocketed corporate juggernauts. They do this in return for a share of the proceeds. This has allowed motorists, shop owners and individual investors to access the courts and seek redress from big business for corporate, and in our case criminal, wrongdoing. Today, Apple, Google and some of the UK’s biggest mobile phone operators are being held to account by individual citizens and SMEs who claim to have been ripped off in a variety of ways. On their own, these individuals would lack the funds to pursue cases against these corporate giants. But future access to this essential financing tool has been thrown into doubt. Thanks to an obscure Supreme Court ruling last summer in PACCAR, a case brought on behalf of truck hauliers against large truck manufacturers that had previously been in a cartel, the litigation funding sector in the UK is now in jeopardy. The judgment — on a technical challenge brought by a group formerly found to be cartelists and seeking to exploit poorly drafted legislation — makes litigation funding almost impossible in the UK, and risks unwinding years of historic judgments against proven corporate wrongdoers who have harmed people and small businesses. While the case might be obscure, the ramifications of the ruling are profound. Under these conditions, would our victims group have had the funds to challenge the Post Office as they tried every trick in the book to bog us down with procedure and legal costs? Would we have exposed one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in recent legal history? And should we choke off this narrow route to justice for similar cases in the future? No, no and — hopefully you agree — no.
The government can and should fix this urgently, and in the coming weeks they’ll have their chance. All it would take is a minor tweak to the proposed digital markets, competition and consumers bill, which is currently being reviewed in the House of Lords, to unwind the impacts of the PACCAR judgment. Ministers have even recognised that this is an important issue that needs addressing — after all, it fundamentally undermines their desire to see third-party backed claims being able to hold big businesses to account. And yet so far they have said that it’s not the right time to do anything — music to large corporations’ ears. There aren’t many stories like that of the sub-postmasters, in which ordinary people take on large organisations with deep pockets — and win. But there will be even fewer wins for individual citizens, small businesses and people like me if this issue isn’t fixed straight away.
The relationship between ICL and Fujitsu goes back decades, and the ways in which both operate are quite similar.
In the 1970s, the Japanese government was trying to counter the dominance of America's IBM, and provided 57bn yen of financial support to three giant technology alliances, one of which was Fujitsu.
In the UK, the Wilson government was doing just that by forming ICL.
With the might of the government behind them, Japanese firms went on a shopping spree in the 1980s, encouraged by the favourable exchange rate.
That was when ICL was having financial issues at home. It held several UK government contracts, as the government had a policy that every computer over a certain size was bought from the company. But the firm was struggling to keep up with its international competitors, and by 1981 it had lost £18.7m.
Fujitsu and ICL were a perfect match. The takeover allowed Fujitsu to have an outsized presence in the UK, as ICL's strong ties to the government often meant that it was the only bidder for government contracts."
No wonder Mandelson wanted to push through with Horizon.
Despite claims to the contrary not a single poster (as far as I can see) has said any political blame is held exclusively by the Tories, but there are clearly political elements to the story that are impossible to remove from the events.
Not sure what's so challenging about that tbh.
Blair's lot also involved in all this. Not that I want to defend the Tories or Ed Davey but, as I have said above, politicians from all parties have dirt and blood on their hands as a result of this disgusting fiasco.
I am not that au fait with the wider theories of Anarchism, or Anarchic structures in the broader sense, and am much more comfortable with being able to identify with a closer to home community based society, where those granted power are close by and can be challenged.
One of the reasons why I don't recognise the concept of 'patriotism', or any value in subservience.
But we should probably leave it here.
The tax deductibility of compo paid to contractors, employees or other successful litigants is in a slightly grey area but a case for it as a legitimate business expense could be made.
What aren't in a grey area are fines and penalties handed down by authority; from banalities like parking or speeding fines to those imposed by courts for law breaking. Penalties imposed by HMRC for late or faulty tax compliance are not tax deductible.
There is no specific tax penalty for being shit at what we do and it costing us loads - we don't get taxed on the profits we might have made had we been less shit, we are all just taxed on the money we actually made.
This story splashed across MSM centres on the provisions PO has made in its accounts for possible future costs of compensating the mistreated SPMs. PO seems to have made the assumption all those costs will be tax deductible and estimated its tax bill accordingly. PO does note that there is some uncertainty over the tax treatment of the future liabilities but it hasn't quantified that uncertainty.
As far as we know PO hasn't yet been handed down a judicial penalty for any wrong doing - that cost would indeed not save them any tax.
We also don't know if HMRC has challenged the tax treatment of any compo that PO may already have paid to victims.
For the purposes of the published accounts PO just has to get its auditors to agree the provisions and their tax treatment.
Two other things: PO is in every practical sense just an arm of HMGov and the Treasury - the fact it is charged any Corporation Tax on its results is stupid in the extreme - it's just public money moving around - one department taxing another is a dismal waste of time and resources.
This fact also pulls the rug out from the noise about 'insolvency'. The PO is legally constituted as a trading company with one shareholder: HMGov. The numbers cobbled together to make up its annual accounts might show it to be insolvent but its access to funds to pay its bills is not in serious question.
We expect alarmist halfbaked cobblers from most of the mainstream media but it reflects very poorly on the FT for them to have parroted the same "story". Their 'investigation' amounts to one bloke's opinion.
The personal stories are heartbreaking to read.
It also highlights some of the legalities in an easily readable way.
It's a big book, over 500 pages and I'm only part of the way through it, but it is very informative.
Unless part of the compensation includes a panel of pre-vetted advisers remunerated on a pre agreed fee basis paid by government/Post Office on top of the compensation I guarantee we will see the biggest feeding frenzy by advisers ever to land on their table, with the most unscrupulous, as always, having the biggest snouts in the trough.
Problem is, well evidence by the PPE scandal, the vetted firms will no doubt be mates of whichever minsters and civil servants control the process.
What a shit star of affairs when public trust in every corner of self-serving government and corporate power has evaporated being shown repeatedly bereft of any guiding moral compass.
From the BBC;
Mr Patterson apologised for Fujitsu's role in what he said was an "appalling miscarriage of justice", and admitted the company had been "involved from the very start".
"We did have bugs and errors in the system and we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters," he said.
Asked why Fujitsu didn't do anything about glitches in the Horizon system when the company knew about them at an early stage, Mr Patterson said: "I don't know. I really don't know."