Post office Horizon scandal just got worse

[Gfamily]

Yesterday the PO Enquiry heard some properly weird testimony from George Thomson, former CEO of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters (BBC summary here, YouTube video of testimony here). He still maintains that Horizon was robust, blames the PO for failing to defend it more forcefully, and clearly colluded with the PO to deter sub-postmasters from taking part in the Bates vs the PO group litigation order.

Just for clarity, the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters is meant to defend the interests of sub-postmasters.

But (if I've read it right) is funded by POL.

[snoozeofreason]

Yesterday the PO Enquiry heard some properly weird testimony from George Thomson, former CEO of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters (BBC summary here, YouTube video of testimony here). He still maintains that Horizon was robust, blames the PO for failing to defend it more forcefully, and clearly colluded with the PO to deter sub-postmasters from taking part in the Bates vs the PO group litigation order.

Just for clarity, the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters is meant to defend the interests of sub-postmasters.

But (if I've read it right) is funded by POL.

Indeed. POL seem to have had a decent return on their investment.

[JQH]

Which is probably why the Federation was expelled from the TUC

[snoozeofreason]

There have been a couple of interesting tangential developments from the Post Office scandal. The first is that a spotlight has been thrown on other organisations that operate as private prosecutors. In particular, rail operators have been making extensive use of the Single Justice Procedure to bring prosecutions for fare evasion under the Regulation of Railways Act. It looks as if they aren't allowed to do that, and around 75,000 convictions are likely to be quashed (and yes, all the zeroes in that figure are meant to be there, and the comma is in the right place). It is likely that the cases involve defendants who pleaded guilty, and probably were guilty but, as the Chief Magistrate has pointed out "Innocent until proven guilty is only really as good as the process, and you can’t have undue process to get there."

The other development is that, as I mentioned earlier, questions are now being asked about prosecutions related to the Capture system, which was the predecessor of Horizon. The government have now appointed a firm of forensic accountants (Kroll, this time, rather than Second Sight) to investigate.

Apparently the Kroll report on Capture is due to appear in mid-September.

[snoozeofreason]

There have been a couple of interesting tangential developments from the Post Office scandal. The first is that a spotlight has been thrown on other organisations that operate as private prosecutors. In particular, rail operators have been making extensive use of the Single Justice Procedure to bring prosecutions for fare evasion under the Regulation of Railways Act. It looks as if they aren't allowed to do that, and around 75,000 convictions are likely to be quashed (and yes, all the zeroes in that figure are meant to be there, and the comma is in the right place). It is likely that the cases involve defendants who pleaded guilty, and probably were guilty but, as the Chief Magistrate has pointed out "Innocent until proven guilty is only really as good as the process, and you can’t have undue process to get there."

The other development is that, as I mentioned earlier, questions are now being asked about prosecutions related to the Capture system, which was the predecessor of Horizon. The government have now appointed a firm of forensic accountants (Kroll, this time, rather than Second Sight) to investigate.

Apparently the Kroll report on Capture is due to appear in mid-September.

The Kroll report on Capture has now been published. It concludes that there was a reasonable probability that Capture could have resulted in incorrect shortfalls being reported, but did not attempt to draw definitive conclusions on the safety of convictions arising from its use. The Report is here, and a BBC summary here.

[jimbob]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... dApp_Other

FFS, there's no excuse for this in 2023

Post Office executives changed data on the Horizon IT systems used by post office operators without their knowledge as recently as last year, the public inquiry into the scandal has heard.

[snoozeofreason]

There have been a couple of interesting tangential developments from the Post Office scandal. The first is that a spotlight has been thrown on other organisations that operate as private prosecutors. In particular, rail operators have been making extensive use of the Single Justice Procedure to bring prosecutions for fare evasion under the Regulation of Railways Act. It looks as if they aren't allowed to do that, and around 75,000 convictions are likely to be quashed (and yes, all the zeroes in that figure are meant to be there, and the comma is in the right place). It is likely that the cases involve defendants who pleaded guilty, and probably were guilty but, as the Chief Magistrate has pointed out "Innocent until proven guilty is only really as good as the process, and you can’t have undue process to get there."

The other development is that, as I mentioned earlier, questions are now being asked about prosecutions related to the Capture system, which was the predecessor of Horizon. The government have now appointed a firm of forensic accountants (Kroll, this time, rather than Second Sight) to investigate.

Apparently the Kroll report on Capture is due to appear in mid-September.

The Kroll report on Capture has now been published. It concludes that there was a reasonable probability that Capture could have resulted in incorrect shortfalls being reported, but did not attempt to draw definitive conclusions on the safety of convictions arising from its use. The Report is here, and a BBC summary here.

The Horizon Compensation Advisory Board has now recommended that all convictions based on data from Capture should also be overturned.

...
Academic Chris Hodges, a professor of justice systems who chairs of the government appointed Advisory board, wrote to Shabana Mahmood MP, the secretary of state for justice, advising that the Horizon and Capture situations are “indistinguishable”.

“We find it impossible to distinguish between the injustice suffered by the Horizon victims and the Capture victims. The Capture victims deserve particular speed in response in view of their greater duration of suffering and their advancing age,” wrote Hodges. “We urge you to overturn all the Post Office-driven convictions from the Capture period by legislation as soon as possible.”

[snoozeofreason]

A third Post Office system, Ecco+, which predates both Capture and Horizon, has now come under scrutiny. Ecco+ was used in the 1990s in Crown Post Offices (larger branches, directly managed by the PO). As these branches were not owned by sub-postmasters, fewer prosecutions resulted, but staff may have been dismissed or forced to resign.

Rupert Lloyd Thomas spent 27 years at the Post Office in senior roles, which included IT responsibility. He raised concern about Ecco+ in the 1990s.

“By 1996, Ecco+ was widely known to be chronically unreliable and the Post Office conducted an investigation into it after I raised issues,” he said.

“It was a cheap and nasty system, and I had a lot to do with work trying to get that system fixed.”

Lloyd Thomas, who was involved in investigation problems with Capture since January this year, added: “Ecco+ needs to be investigated like the Capture system.”

The problems that the PO has historically had with software seem to be partly related to software bugs, but partly to a culture where the results of those bugs get blamed on individuals rather than code. I guess it is unsurprising that similar issues arise with different software systems, because the culture is the same.

[noggins]

Yes - really this thread has the wrong title, its not the "Post Office Horizon scandal" its the " Post Office Unfair Contracts and Malicious Prosecution Scandal "