Mr Bates: Compensation process ‘frustrating,’ ‘people are suffering, they’re dying’
Mr Bates and former post office operator Jo Hamilton are up next.
Speaking from his home, Alan Bates said:
It is frustrating to put it mildly.
I mean, there is no reason at all why full financial redress shouldn’t have been delivered by now. It’s gone on for far too long. People are suffering, they’re dying… And it’s just seems to be tied up in bureaucracy.
Hamilton said:
They’re in this factory of bureaucracy that just swallows up paperwork.
Key events
Hamilton made a plea to the government and Post Office:
There has to be a way of applying a bit of common sense to this and cutting out all the red tape.
Q: Do you think that there are many victims still out there who haven’t yet come forward?
Bates said:
There are people contacting me now who have had losses over the years… and I am sending them on to lawyers these days. But yes, they are starting to come through again.
Both said that the Fujitsu IT system is still being used at the Post Office.
Hamilton said:
I have no proof of it, but I’ve heard it’s not brilliant. It’s still not brilliant.
Asked about the role played by the National Federation of SubPostmasters, Bates said “they were in bed with the Post Office from day one”.
They’ve refused to support any subpostmaster in any legal action against the Post Office.
Hamilton said that when she rang up the federation for advice, she was told:
‘You just go find yourself a good criminal lawyer.’ And that was the only help I got from them. There was no question of, where’s the money gone?
Horizon inquiry: Fujitsu knew that faulty IT system could lead to a legal challenge as early as 2008
My colleague Mark Sweney is watching the inquiry led by Sir Wyn Williams where four Fujitsu employees are testifying.
Fujitsu knew that faults with the system it used to extract data on Post Office transactions that were subsequently used in the prosecution of hundreds of postmasters could lead to a legal challenge as early as 2008, an inquiry has heard.
The public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal has revealed internal documents circulated within Fujitsu admitting that there were a string of problems with its Audit Record Query (ARQ) service, which involved teams extracting Post Office counter transactions that had failed to complete, that found issues including the duplication of as many as one-third of transactions.
Emails between Fujitsu managers and its fraud and litigation team over two years, which ran the ARQ queries for the Post Office, highlight a string of ongoing problems that had to be repeatedly fixed or circumvented with “manual workarounds” over a number of years.
“If we do not fix this problem our spreadsheets presented in court are liable to be brought into doubt if duplicate transactions are spotted,” said one executive in an email exchange presented as evidence.
While the issues with the system were supposedly fixed, the problems kept recurring over a number of years, with another internal email from a Fujitsu executive stating: “In essence we have a problem with the ARQ extraction tool. Under Horizon this woud inhibit the duplicate transactions held from the audit servier and thus supply evidence for court etc without duplicated records. This could allow for legal challenge integrity of the system.”
It has also been revealed how Fujitsu was keenly aware that the issues with the ARQ service, which was worth £850,000 annually, could impact its contract with the Post Office and involve fines.
In a 2008 email under the heading “benefits and risks” Fujitsu executive Graham Welsh said: “If we cannot better identify where data integrity can or cannot be guaranteed then we are in breach of contract and may be fined heavily, [and] not be able to offer the ARQ service or will undermine confidence in the service.”
Rajbinder Sangha, who joined Fujitsu in mid-2010 as part of a three member team working on ARQ requests, told the inquiry that she was not aware of the scale of the issues with the system.
This was dealt with senior members of the team who had more knowledge of the system. It causes me concern now because obviously we had bugs in the system.
Hamilton told MPs how she took her case to the court of appeal via the criminal cases review commission process.
I applied and I didn’t hear anything for years, literally years and every now and again, you get a letter saying we’re still looking at it.
When she was wrongly accused of false accounting by the Post Office, she had to remortgage twice.
At the time I felt helpless when they told me I was the only one that was having problems. I just presumed it was me because I didn’t know any better. They kept my wages and I had to remortgage.
Hamilton was forced to plead guilty to false accounting to avoid prison. She told MPs about her experience:
They convinced me that it was all my fault. And I wasn’t tech savvy at all 20 years ago. And yeah, they convinced me it was my fault. And that was before the days of social media. So you felt like, I really was alone.
It’s the feeling that nobody’s listening, when you say you’ve got a problem, you just need people to listen.
Bates said after he had submitted his claim “it took 53 days before they asked three very simple questions”.
The whole thing is madness. There’s no transparency behind it, which is even more frustrating.
I hear a lot of stories about government lawyers or the firms that governments are using for lawyers are not happy about working extra hours or working at weekends or working evenings.
Mr Bates: Compensation process ‘frustrating,’ ‘people are suffering, they’re dying’
Mr Bates and former post office operator Jo Hamilton are up next.
Speaking from his home, Alan Bates said:
It is frustrating to put it mildly.
I mean, there is no reason at all why full financial redress shouldn’t have been delivered by now. It’s gone on for far too long. People are suffering, they’re dying… And it’s just seems to be tied up in bureaucracy.
Hamilton said:
They’re in this factory of bureaucracy that just swallows up paperwork.
The first session is over. Business and trade committee chair Liam Byrne summed up the main findings so far:
A tiny number of people have had redress. You’ve told us that there is red tape that is dragging out the process for months. You’ve told us that there are hundreds more potential victims out there. You’ve told us that many of the victims who have had redress may have been shortchanged. You’ve told us the legislation is potentially welcome and Fujitsu have a role to play in providing some compensation.
Arbuthnot said he had faith in the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, led by retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams.
Today, the inquiry is hearing evidence from four Fujitsu employees. You can watch it here:
Arbuthnot: ‘cases need urgent overturning’ as ‘can’t have more people going to their graves with convictions’
Urging the government to overturn the wrongful convictions as quickly as possible, Arbuthnot made this plea:
These cases need urgent overturning because we can’t have more people going to their graves with convictions still on their record.
You can watch the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry hearing live here:
Hudgell said there is a danger that of the thousands of post office operators affected by the scandal, many will settle without legal advice.
The Post Office has said that 85% of people who have claimed on the Horizon shortfall scheme have had money paid out. The scheme was put in place by the Post Office to compensate postmasters who, while not subject to criminal conviction, made good the apparent losses caused by the faulty software from their own pockets.
Responding to a question about the need for Post Office investigators to be fair, Hudgell said “it was culturally ingrained” that the new IT system that was brought in
was going to catch out a nation of dishonest people, and the narrative from there was to collect evidence to support that and to ignore anything to the contrary.
Hudgell said:
It’s fair to say that Fujitsu have a role to play. At the end of the day though, this isn’t about the IT system.. it’s about decisions made on the back of that flawed IT system. So who made those decisions? Who’s responsible for that? Fujitsu are certainly part and parcel of that.
We’ve got in excess of 100 psychiatric reports for people diagnosed with all sorts of depressive illnesses, post traumatic stress disorder, paranoia, everything that you can possibly think of.
