Post office Horizon scandal just got worse

[El Pollo Diablo]

I recently read through a few SRA judgements, they are extremely hot on misleading practices and any deliberate actions which bring the profession into disrepute. It would be hard to claim that a legal company failed to understand what "without prejudice" meant, as it's such a basic legal concept, therefore the only reasonable assumption is that it was deliberate and malicious.

[snoozeofreason]

The Williams Inquiry into the Post Office's Horizon failings - including their failure to disclose relevant evidence at the trials of sub-postmasters - has just been adjourned because of their failure to disclose relevant evidence to the inquiry (and this comes after senior executives at the Post Office have received bonuses for providing information to the inquiry).

Inquiry Chair, Sir Wyn Williams, had been due to hear evidence from former Fujitsu engineer, Gareth Jenkins. He will now be called to a hearing later in the year, likely to last four days.

Counsel to the Inquiry, Jason Beer KC, set out a number of failings of the Post Office, including disclosing 95 documents to the Inquiry this week that relate to Mr Jenkins in some way and should previously have been disclosed to the Inquiry. The Post Office has apologised to the Inquiry for sending these documents so late.

Mr Beer referenced evidence given by Post Office’s General Counsel, Ben Foat, on Tuesday, and set out reasons why it would not be appropriate to call Mr Jenkins now.

He noted that this Inquiry is itself investigating the late or non-provision of disclosure by the Post Office in a series of criminal prosecutions that lasted over a decade, and the non-disclosure of documents in civil proceedings, and the unfairness that such non-disclosure had on parties and on witnesses.

He said: “We of all people will not entertain the making of the same mistakes of the past whilst simultaneously investigating those mistakes.”

He also noted Mr Jenkins is under criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police for serious criminal offences relating to his role in the Horizon scandal, and that the evidence that he gives to this Inquiry may be used in any criminal investigation, prosecutorial decision making, and in any criminal proceedings brought against him.

Mr Beer went on to say that at 10.32 pm last night, the Post Office wrote to the Inquiry drawing its attention to the fact that amongst the 95 documents that it had recently disclosed, it had recently identified that one of them was a new document that the Post Office said was ‘likely to be of significant interest to the Inquiry’. He said the Inquiry had already identified the document as being of significant interest. The Post Office also disclosed in the same letter that it had identified 4,767 documents, not previously disclosed to the Inquiry, that may be relevant to the evidence of Mr Jenkins.

Mr Beer said: “It is of course grossly unsatisfactory, to be told at 10.32 pm that there are 4,767 documents that are at least potentially relevant to a witness who is being called 11 hours and 28 minutes later.”

Sir Wyn Williams will be issuing directions to the Post Office this week that seek to ensure disclosure issues do not continue.

The Chair agreed with Mr Beer’s plans to reschedule the hearing and said “I cannot help but express my frustration that this has happened at this time. It is a very important time for the Inquiry, and we do not need dislocation.”

[Opti]

Marina Hyde takes the Post Office to task in her own special way.

Here.

She really is a National treasure.

[noggins]

An IT experts take on the stupidity of computer infalliability and the Horizon scandal:

https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/artic ... /5226/5073

[snoozeofreason]

Sir Wyn Williams, chair of the Horizon enquiry is now threatening that further failures to disclose relevant evidence may result in jail time.

All future Inquiry requests for evidence to the Post Office will carry a notice under section 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005 which carries a threat of a criminal sanction and up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment.

Williams said the failure to supply all documents relevant to witnesses due to give evidence earlier this month was ‘grossly unsatisfactory’ and he noted the views held by many sub-postmasters wrongly convicted by the Post Office that the mistakes were deliberate.

Williams stressed that he remains open-minded about that position, but added: ‘It would be remiss of me to fail to guard against the possibility that there are those who are engaged in the process of disclosure of documents on behalf of the Post Office who are unwilling or unable to comply strictly with requests for disclosure of documents made of them by the inquiry and/or are unwilling to ensure strict compliance with requests.’

[Martin Y]

An IT experts take on the stupidity of computer infalliability and the Horizon scandal:

https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/artic ... /5226/5073

Thanks for posting that. It was really interesting in its own right rather than what it had to say specifically about the Horizon scandal.

[noggins]

Its clear a new legal framework(?) for computer system derived evidence is needed.

[Brightonian]

An IT experts take on the stupidity of computer infalliability and the Horizon scandal:

https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/artic ... /5226/5073

From page 17 of that document:

One of the Horizon problems that shocked me, with my background in accountancy, was that it breached the rules of double entry bookkeeping (e.g. the Dalmellington Bug34). It is completely unacceptable that a single, non-zero, accounting entry can be created without its double, a counter-balancing entry.

I remember my own shock, as an accounts clerk using an unrelated system in the early 1990s, when I somehow managed to credit one account without a matching debit from another account. (The system was still partly in development at the time.)

[nekomatic]

Thanks for posting that. It was really interesting in its own right rather than what it had to say specifically about the Horizon scandal.

Yes.

[Fishnut]

They are offering £600,000 to each person who was given a criminal conviction.

It'll be interesting to see how many take the offer and how many push for more. It's not clear whether taking the money means you lose the option of getting more in the future, or whether you are still eligible if it's decided that more is warranted by the inquiry. Given that people went to jail for years and some lost their homes it doesn't really feel that much.

I thought this line did a very good job of summarising how f.cked up the situation was,

Between 2000 and 2014, the Post Office prosecuted 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses - an average of one a week - based on information from a recently installed computer system called Horizon.

[jimbob]

There should be prosecutions for perverting the course of justice, and possibly perjury. It was knowing.

[Fishnut]

From the Guardian: Post Office knew legal case was likely to bankrupt Horizon IT victim, lawyer says:

Castleton bought a post office in Bridlington, east Yorkshire, in 2003. However, within a year his computer system showed a £25,000 shortfall, despite him calling the Post Office’s helpline 91 times as he suspected the Horizon IT system was at fault.