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Largest ever miscarriage of justice?

The PO have had to suspend their communications director, after a recording was leaked, where he continued to accuse the sub-postmasters of stealing.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ms-Horizon-scandal-downright-stole-money.html

"The Post Office communications director can be heard telling an unknown person: 'You go, 'Oh, I'd like to run a Post Office' and... we give you £30,000 in cash to stick in a safe.

'And the problem with £30,000 in cash in a safe is if you've got 11 and a half thousand post officers... some of those people might decide to – not necessarily with any particular intent – to borrow that money for a little while.'
Asked if he truly believed this is what happened in the Horizon IT scandal, Mr Taylor added: 'Well, some of them downright stole it. The problem is they're all grouped together. And as is true in life, you know, there are probably some people [who] have been hard done by."

Taylor exemplifies the attitude of the PO investigators, not worrying so much about evidence and establishing guilt and innocence. The PO investigation was so bad, that there will be some guilty people who supposedly get away with their crime.

That fails to show any understanding that the guilty people who are possibly going to get their convictions overturned and compensation, were actually punished and suffered a lot for their crimes. They experienced the loss of their jobs, accusations, financial penalties, some imprisonment. It's not as if they are getting away with no punishment at all, which is unlike PO inestigators and senior managers. He glosses over the real problem of unsafe convictions.
 
An explanation as to why the head of ITV, Adam Crozier did not feature in the ITV drama about Alan Bates and the sub-postmasters who took on the PO over their convictions. It was because Crozier had left prior to Bates starting the campaign. A producer for the drama explains that they concentrated only on the campaign run by Bates and during that time, Vennells was in charge.

https://twitter.com/stugoo17/status/1746451519665266697
 
Nessie said:
Hopefully the Law Commission will now instruct a return to PACE that computer evidence should provide proof it was working properly. The best example I can think of, is the CAMIC machine for drink drivers. Evidence someone blew over the limit had to be accompanied by evidence to prove the machine was working.
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I think this is the Law Commission paper that recommended the change to PACE: https://www.bailii.org/ew/other/EWLC/1997/245(13).html#para13.1
 
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Blue Bubble said:
Very much worth a read, this blog by UK lawyer David Allen Green describes how we (as a country/society) have got into this incredible mess.
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I think the reason why people do what the investigators, lawyers and PO management did, is because of a culture within the organisation to protect the good name of the organisation. At first, I have no doubt, the PO thought it was protecting the organisation, by rooting out dishonest sub-postmasters. Then, as the realisation dawned, that Horizon was at fault, they covered up their mistakes, to protect their own reputations, as well as the PO.

I have no doubt that similar cultures exist in many other organisations, an example being the RC church, that covered up paedophile priests and abuse in schools and care homes, rather than tackle it. Otherwise, good people justify cover-ups to protect their and their organisation's reputation.
 
Robert Peston on X

Back in 1999, Sir Geoff Mulgan was an important but isolated voice in Tony Blair’s senior team who warned that Fujitsu’s Horizon system - which has led to such an appalling miscarriage of justice for so many sub-postmasters - was a monumental crock. Shortly before the final decision on roll-out of Horizon, in May 1999, he wrote a “lessons learned” note for the then PM Blair. His language is blunt and unequivocal (there are shades of Dominic Cummings). It is astonishing that what he said went unheeded. Here is what Mulgan said more than 24 years ago should be learned:

“Horizon has been a fairly disastrous project. It: - was misconceived from the start - has faced continual delays and problems - has over the last year taken up huge amounts of ministerial and official time - has delivered in the end a far from optimal solution

“Information: nearly all the facts presented to ministers turned out to be unreliable. Moreover data was presented in ways that were difficult for ministers to understand.

“The Post Office: throughout this process the relative lack of competence of the Post Office and their failure to develop a proper business strategy has been a key failing.

“Courage. Perhaps the most important lesson is a more general one: namely that when a project is clearly failing government needs to be bolder about cutting its losses. There was a clear case for termination 12 months ago...”

Since then around £2.5bn has been paid to Fujitsu for a system that provided the unreliable evidence behind almost a thousand criminal convictions that ruined lives and should never have been made. The government cannot claim it was not warned.
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:rolleyes::D
Nessie said:
I think the reason why people do what the investigators, lawyers and PO management did, is because of a culture within the organisation to protect the good name of the organisation. At first, I have no doubt, the PO thought it was protecting the organisation, by rooting out dishonest sub-postmasters. Then, as the realisation dawned, that Horizon was at fault, they covered up their mistakes, to protect their own reputations, as well as the PO.

I have no doubt that similar cultures exist in many other organisations, an example being the RC church, that covered up paedophile priests and abuse in schools and care homes, rather than tackle it. Otherwise, good people justify cover-ups to protect their and their organisation's reputation.
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Can I throw in "pensions?" A lot of people were (less so now) playing the long game in organisations like the Post Office and looking to retire on fat, final salary pensions. Why rock the boat?
 
If you did have a PO franchise, was running a post office complicated and were a lot of functions carried out by post offices.
 
Filippo Lippi said:
:rolleyes::D

Can I throw in "pensions?" A lot of people were (less so now) playing the long game in organisations like the Post Office and looking to retire on fat, final salary pensions. Why rock the boat?
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That is the culture seen in all public institutions such as the police, NHS etc. Whistleblow about how complaints are dealt with and end your career. It makes more sense to keep quiet.
 
Nessie said:
That is the culture seen in all public institutions such as the police, NHS etc. Whistleblow about how complaints are dealt with and end your career. It makes more sense to keep quiet.
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Aren't you supposed to have protections in the UK for whistleblowers against recriminations for speaking out (Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998) or is it just the same sad joke it is here and in Australia and the US?
 
smartcooky said:
Aren't you supposed to have protections in the UK for whistleblowers against recriminations for speaking out (Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998) or is it just the same sad joke it is here and in Australia and the US?
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It's got better but legal protection does not necessarily make whistleblowing itself easier for an individual, there can be a lot of social and peer pressure involved.
 
smartcooky said:
Aren't you supposed to have protections in the UK for whistleblowers against recriminations for speaking out (Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998) or is it just the same sad joke it is here and in Australia and the US?
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From the government website

https://www.gov.uk/whistleblowing

"As a whistleblower you’re protected by law - you should not be treated unfairly or lose your job because you ‘blow the whistle’."

Sounds great....

"Who is protected by law
You’re protected if you’re a worker, for example you’re:
an employee, such as a police officer, NHS employee, office worker, factory worker
a trainee, such as a student nurse
an agency worker
a member of a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP)"

That's brilliant....

"You’re protected by law if you report any of the following:
a criminal offence, for example fraud
someone’s health and safety is in danger
risk or actual damage to the environment
a miscarriage of justice
the company is breaking the law, for example does not have the right insurance
you believe someone is covering up wrongdoing"

Ahh, hold on....

"Complaints that do not count as whistleblowing
Personal grievances (for example bullying, harassment, discrimination) are not covered by whistleblowing law, unless your particular case is in the public interest.
Report these under your employer’s grievance policy."

Employers deter whistleblowing by threat of bullying, harassment etc and the protection under the law is to take the employer to an employment tribunal, so in effect making the employer the victim, who when it is a public sector organisation, can spend millions defending themselves.

https://assets.publishing.service.g...idance-for-employers-and-code-of-practice.pdf

"If a whistleblower believes that they have been unfairly treated because they have blown the whistle they may decide to take their case to an employment tribunal"

Other options for the public sector include paying off the whistleblower and getting them to sign a NDA, so no one knows about what happened. It is lip service protection, designed to make it easy for public sector managers to protect themselves and cover up misconduct.
 
smartcooky said:
Aren't you supposed to have protections in the UK for whistleblowers against recriminations for speaking out (Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998) or is it just the same sad joke it is here and in Australia and the US?
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An absolute ******* joke.

The NHS, for example, is regularly found not to have followed its own policies and procedures on whistleblowing, let alone the actual law. Not to mention pissing all over its own complaints investigation procedures when the complaint is agin one of the favoured groups (usually management and HR).
 
a judge summed up one of the cases

Welshman said:
Iif I recall correctly it has been pointed in this forum if postmasters had been stealing large sums of money what happened to this money? Were bank accounts checked to see if any large sums had been paid in? Were checks carried out if postmasters had financial problems which would make them steal huge sums of money and were suddenly resolved eg debts paid? Were any investigations carried out to see signs of extravagant spending eg holidays, new cars.
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From the Private Eye article (linked in the early pages of this thread):
“There is no direct evidence of her taking any money… She adamantly denies stealing. There is no CCTV evidence. There are no fingerprints or marked bank notes or anything of that kind. There is no evidence of her accumulating cash anywhere else or spending large sums of money or paying off debts, no evidence about her bank accounts at all. Nothing incriminating was found when her home was searched.”
 
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Darat said:
See: https://www.computerweekly.com/news...re-is-moment-to-change-digital-evidence-rules misworded it - legal rule not law.
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KAJ said:
You might find this link interesting (I did).
“Computer says guilty” – an introduction to the evidential presumption that computers are operating correctly
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Is this binding on the jury? Can they be directed to presume the computer is correct, or are they at liberty to note the lack of evidence and conclude there's scope for reasonable doubt?
 
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