Mr Bates vs The Post Office

[Lucan Unlordly]

A crazy situation acted out for the whole world to see that's extremely damaging for 'team UK's profile?

Outside of the story itself I'm amazed at the comments on social media from the plethora of folk that are shocked at the lack of ability for chief executives to do the right thing, that the company comes first, that we live first and foremost in a corrupt world.

 

[clyde123]

I'm more depressed than shocked at seeing a big hullabaloo like this now. Given that we've known about this for twenty years. Given that a number of the affected people took their own lives. Given that hundreds lost so much, families broken up, and so much more.
But that's the society we seem to live in nowadays. It's not an issue unless it's on BBC and Sky news day after day, and has its own reality TV show.
It was corruption at the time, and it's been covered up ever since by corruption.

 

[Jeff FV]

I watched the series and enjoyed it (not the right word I know)

I was only aware of the Post Office/Horizon scandal (and scandal is the right word) because someone on this forum raised it a fair few years ago. Sorry, can’t remember who or in what thread, but I am grateful that they did

 

[fisicx]

Private Eye has been reporting this since the very beginning.

All over the world directors are just walking away from their lies and corruption with virtually no prosecution. It’s far too easy for them to buy immunity.

 

[Karimbo]

it's a lesson we should all take going forward, thast is, increasingly decision making will be done with AI and algorithms that heavily affect our lives. we will need to have actual people constantly audit the decisions taken by AI and make sure they are fair and comply with the rules.

the post office were particularly bad, they devised algorithms which expect certain revenue based on what a post office typicall sells and if something deviates then just assume the postmaster stole it. absolutely terrible.

I do think though, that the main reason compensation has been so slow to come by because the company barely makes any profit. i dont think it the post office has surplus profits to compensate the postmasters.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

Suggestion on the news tonight that they'll try to implicate Fujitsu, the software developers, into the mix for compensation.

 

[UKSBD]

One of the problems is, when the Post Office put £150m in a pot to pay for this, people see that pot and want a share of it, and it's not the people who that pot is there for, who are receiving it.

 

[IanSuth]

I'm more depressed than shocked at seeing a big hullabaloo like this now. Given that we've known about this for twenty years. Given that a number of the affected people took their own lives. Given that hundreds lost so much, families broken up, and so much more.
But that's the society we seem to live in nowadays. It's not an issue unless it's on BBC and Sky news day after day, and has its own reality TV show.
It was corruption at the time, and it's been covered up ever since by corruption.

Yes, I remember as an IT recruitment consultant reading all the initial reports in Computer Weekly in about 2008/9. From memory it wasnt actually originally a Fujitsu system, it was a legacy ICL system they inherited when they purchased them. Another system of similar vintage would be CHOTS the appalling MOD "secure" document system that tried to use ICL OfficePower as the wordprocessor of choice.

It was well known in the local area that ICL/Fujitsu would take on school / college leavers who sounded ok on the phone on a temp to perm basis with the promise that it was an entry level way into IT then put them on the secure helpdesk - these were people with ZERO IT knowledge beyond teenage usage - I used to have to tell them 18 mths later when they got bored of poor pay on 24x7 shift pattern that their experience was worth basically nothing outside that environment.

That office still supports MOD systems amazingly

 

[fisicx]

I had to use CHOTS. A dreadful system with, as you say, incompetent support. You spent more time updating the thing than you ever did creating documents with then then vain hope it would end up where it was supposed to be. I seem to recall a tortuous filing file hierarchy.

 

[IanSuth]

Suggestion on the news tonight that they'll try to implicate Fujitsu, the software developers, into the mix for compensation.

At the time this happened there was a transition taking place.

ICL had been an almost nationalised IT company (definitely all large public sector IT systems had to be purchased from ICL), durng the 80's & 90's ICL stopped making it's own silicon, it went into partnership with Fujitsu who made silicon and also had a range of IBM compatible mainframes. Gradually Fujitsu gained a larger and larger % of the shares in ICL until they were majority and if memory serves me right just after the y2k boom they decided against floating ICL as a seperate company and just killed the name.

The only profitable bit of the company in the UK was the software & services division gouging the public sector for business - it would have been this bit that wrote Horizon likely in the big Bracknell site although it could have been on London Rd Reading (but that mainly worked on software for ITSA the national insurance people).

For all intents and purposes the people who likely wrote Horizon (def the senior ones doing the design) were developers who started when it was part of the public secotr, they worked like civil servants (little lady doing tea round with a trolley at 11am) and had the same mentality. Fujitsu got a LOT of .gov cash over the years for what were basically rubbish systems built under monopolistic conditions and with no chance of anyone else winning the business from them no matter what they charged.

 

[IanSuth]

it's a lesson we should all take going forward, thast is, increasingly decision making will be done with AI and algorithms that heavily affect our lives. we will need to have actual people constantly audit the decisions taken by AI and make sure they are fair and comply with the rules.

the post office were particularly bad, they devised algorithms which expect certain revenue based on what a post office typicall sells and if something deviates then just assume the postmaster stole it. absolutely terrible.

I do think though, that the main reason compensation has been so slow to come by because the company barely makes any profit. i dont think it the post office has surplus profits to compensate the postmasters.

As was pointed out one of the issues is this

If there was a discrepancy the postmaster was assumed to be at fault

As an "agent"for the post office they were responsible for making up that deficit or assumed to have stolen it

Many used their own money to make good the difference rather than get a criminal record - some paid in 10's or 100's of thousands of pounds and still got a record

That inflated the profits of the post office at the time.

Should those people get that money back?- unfortunately as soon as they stopped working as an agent for RM they lost all access to the records that could be used to work out what was overpaid

 

[clyde123]

Yes, I remember as an IT recruitment consultant reading all the initial reports in Computer Weekly in about 2008/9. From memory it wasnt actually originally a Fujitsu system, it was a legacy ICL system they inherited when they purchased them.

Computer Weekly was a fantastic publication at that time.
I'm sure it was them wrote about the MOD helicopter crash that killed loads of the top security/intelligence bods from Northern Ireland. Again - exactly the same scenario - the guys at the sharp end (pilot) got the blame and paid horrendous price. Although the problem had been highlighted by the guys "in the trade" for a long time before the crash. The problem was in the control software in the helicopters. Again it was years before this was publicly admitted. Again, by then people had died.

 

[IanSuth]

Computer Weekly was a fantastic publication at that time.
I'm sure it was them wrote about the MOD helicopter crash that killed loads of the top security/intelligence bods from Northern Ireland. Again - exactly the same scenario - the guys at the sharp end (pilot) got the blame and paid horrendous price. Although the problem had been highlighted by the guys "in the trade" for a long time before the crash. The problem was in the control software in the helicopters. Again it was years before this was publicly admitted. Again, by then people had died.

Yes the Chinook FADAC issue

As I was based in Reading so much of the news was about companies around us - we had DEC , ICL, Silicon Graphics and Microsoft in Reading, ICL, Oracle & Dell in Bracknell, IBM in Basingstoke and all the little suppliers and software houses everywhere you looked. (Vodafone started off as Racal VODAC a spin off from Racal research on Basingstoke rd Reading and Orange came out of Rabbit/Hutchinson started with ex Racal engineers as well running from an office in theale)

All my initial interview training was on DEC Engineers being let go in their "Release 93" redundancy program. The weirdest thing was the ICL systems guys from ITSA, apart from the fact you could tell them as soon as they handed the CV over (always printed on a dot matrix printer) the system there was an experimental machine which was a system 29 but with various added system 39 (the last version) bits - so they could neither fit straight in to a sys 29 or 39 environment. When all the NI work was centralised in Lytham St Annes they were all let go and many never worked again - they were so specialised and for want of a better word "institutionalised" they just couldnt find other work

 

[Onthebrightside]

Yes, I remember as an IT recruitment consultant reading all the initial reports in Computer Weekly in about 2008/9. From memory it wasnt actually originally a Fujitsu system, it was a legacy ICL system they inherited when they purchased them. Another system of similar vintage would be CHOTS the appalling MOD "secure" document system that tried to use ICL OfficePower as the wordprocessor of choice.

It was well known in the local area that ICL/Fujitsu would take on school / college leavers who sounded ok on the phone on a temp to perm basis with the promise that it was an entry level way into IT then put them on the secure helpdesk - these were people with ZERO IT knowledge beyond teenage usage - I used to have to tell them 18 mths later when they got bored of poor pay on 24x7 shift pattern that their experience was worth basically nothing outside that environment.

That office still supports MOD systems amazingly

WOW that is astonishing and it ruined the life of so many people, called thieves and liars in their own communities and even going to jail. The purchase of an already faulty IT system backed up by kids given IT titles, it's so soul destroying to know that it happened then, could happen now and is far more likely to happen in the future with AI :-(

 

[UKSBD]

Now they have as good as confirmed it was a software fault there is one thing no one has mentioned - What happened if it was the other way round?

If afrer doing the reconcile the system said there should be £10,000 in the till, but there was actually £10,300 - what happened to that £300?

Were people ever reporting when it was over rather than under, and if so, did the PO look in to it?

 

[IanSuth]

Now they have as good as confirmed it was a software fault there is one thing no one has mentioned - What happened if it was the other way round?

If afrer doing the reconcile the system said there should be £10,000 in the till, but there was actually £10,300 - what happened to that £300?

Were people ever reporting when it was over rather than under, and if so, did the PO look in to it?

Couldn't happen from what i understand

The issue was double entering of the same purchase transaction - so a purchase of a product would go through twice (or more often not show as going through and so be resubmitted when it had actually gone through first time).

So imagine £1k in till and someone gives subpostmistress £100 to go into national savings.

System records £100 in so £1100 in cash but screen hangs or says it hasn't posted, so postmistress re-enters or represses "submit". System now thinks it has £1200. At next audit, post office says "system says you have £1200 we can only see £1100 so you must have spent/misappropriated the other £100 pay up or we prosecute. Remember these were mainly people running small newsagents/village shops that had a post office counter in them, so this was just one of their income streams/cashflows

Don't recall any mention ever of of it handling withdrawals in the same way

 

[Karimbo]

One of the problems is, when the Post Office put £150m in a pot to pay for this, people see that pot and want a share of it, and it's not the people who that pot is there for, who are receiving it.

including the lawyers in the class action, no doubt

 

[Karimbo]

Fujitsu profits just £22M https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/08/post-office-it-fujitsu-profits-horizon-it-system

Post office profits £39.5M : https://corporate.postoffice.co.uk/media/gplocqde/signed-pol-ara-2022.pdf
[nb. I'm really busy, so no time to actually research throughoutly, i just quickly googled]

They'd have to pay several years of their profits to really compensate the postmasters, to make things right, each postmaster would need 7 figure payouts, or very high 6 figure amounts.

I just dont think they have it.

 

[MikeJ]

Fujitsu UK Ltd has £1.5billion in assets, including £487million in current assets.

Their latest accounts were due in December, and are late.

 

[IanSuth]

including the lawyers in the class action, no doubt

They took the whole of the original payout from the case that got the evidence public and until today that win stopped any of those 555 claimants trying to claim from the compo pot as well.

 

[IanSuth]

Fujitsu UK Ltd has £1.5billion in assets, including £487million in current assets.

Their latest accounts were due in December, and are late.

I think they own this building which was ICL from the day Bracknell was built until rebadged Fujitsu - on a nice big green patch just off major roads and behind the John Lewis HQ https://maps.app.goo.gl/yVpQQT6QRgEZdu4JA

Likely worth a pretty penny

EDIT: Found a planning application in 2002 when the freehold was owned by Coal Pension Properties so maybe not

 

[Clodbuster]

It annoys me that it looks like you and I are going to pay the compensation. Post Office and Software company must pay.

 

[IanSuth]

Post

It annoys me that it looks like you and I are going to pay the compensation. Post Office and Software company must pay.

Post Office was at the time still getting most of it's £ from us and Fujitsu's UK business is pretty much all public sector as well so however they structure it it is us paying

 

[Karimbo]

Fujitsu UK Ltd has £1.5billion in assets, including £487million in current assets.

Their latest accounts were due in December, and are late.

I presume the guardian article has done proper research on this and quoted the profits of the fujitsu subsidary that actually did the horizon IT. fujitsu ltd indeed has big trading activity. The operating profit of fujitsu limited - FC024070 WAS £1.8 billion GBP - that's true.

But would fujitsu limited be liable for horizon IT or is the ultimately the subsidiary that's on the hook for lawsuits?

The guardian article names Fujitsu Services Ltd - which hasn't posted accounted since 2001. is marked as active, seems to have a lot of entries obfuscated. Perhaps this ifnormation is hidden from a court order.

 

[IanSuth]

Don't you wish you could win business despite offering rubbish:-

Fujitsu was one of three companies bidding for a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) contract in 2021 to replace a system of secure electronic communications connecting civil servants and diplomats across 532 sites in more than 170 countries.

Officials had abandoned an earlier procurement process in 2018 following a challenge from Fujitsu.
When Vodafone contested the FCDO's decision in the courts it emerged that Fujitsu's winning 2021 bid had been evaluated as having "significant deficiencies resulting in a technical solution that is likely to be unfit for purpose, and requiring workarounds".

It was nevertheless the highest scoring bid.

Vodafone was ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to overturn the FCDO's decision.

Fujitsu won Foreign Office contract despite concerns

The firm at the heart of the Post Office IT scandal is in the spotlight over government contracts.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[WaveJumper]

Don't you wish you could win business despite offering rubbish:-

Fujitsu was one of three companies bidding for a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) contract in 2021 to replace a system of secure electronic communications connecting civil servants and diplomats across 532 sites in more than 170 countries.

Officials had abandoned an earlier procurement process in 2018 following a challenge from Fujitsu.
When Vodafone contested the FCDO's decision in the courts it emerged that Fujitsu's winning 2021 bid had been evaluated as having "significant deficiencies resulting in a technical solution that is likely to be unfit for purpose, and requiring workarounds".

It was nevertheless the highest scoring bid.

Vodafone was ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to overturn the FCDO's decision.

Fujitsu won Foreign Office contract despite concerns

The firm at the heart of the Post Office IT scandal is in the spotlight over government contracts.

www.bbc.co.uk

Which for me shows you can have very little (actually) no faith in government procurement process's a lot of politicians are probably looking over their shoulders right now, and so they should be, will they and these corporate executives ever face the music I am not going to hold my breath. This is just the tip of a very big iceberg. Shame its taken the general public so long to wake up to the fact.