The Post Office scandal – an everyday British corruption.

The Post Office scandal has been aired as an ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office which is unusual. Most British scandals stay under wraps until everyone involved is either dead or too old to face the consequences.  A lot of dirty washing was hung out for the public to see and many were shocked that a beloved British institution could be so utterly callous and corrupt. Those of us who have tangled with UK authorities were not shocked, we know through bitter experience the playbook strategies used against the ‘little people’. Think of Hillsborough, Gosport, Grenfell and the 1950’s pension scandal, plus the many other human tragedies that have yet to receive any public recognition. The Post Office scandal differs only in that we have been allowed to see the depths of depravity used to deny justice and closedown dissenting voices.

This Channel Four news clip gives us an insight into the playbook narrative used to gaslight and diminish those who speak the truth.

Through unredacted correspondence (who let that out?) we are learning that government was at the centre of the scandal. There is no such thing as an ‘independent’ public body. They are all controlled by central government no matter how ‘arm’s length’ they purport to be. Given this scandal began in 1999, it makes no difference what colour party we have in power, red, blue and yellow all followed the cover-up narrative, until now.

80 covertly recorded audio tapes of senior PO executives

The Channel Four news clip reports that ‘someone’ within the inner circle had the foresight to covertly record senior PO executives and their legal team discussing ways to close down the opposition. The senior lawyer leads the way in shutting down MP investigations and controlling the Alan Bates campaign. There is no detail as to what lengths they would go to in order to achieve their objective but those of us who have had the misfortune to brush up against public body lawyers will know that they are not guided by the truth but by the need to protect their client’s reputation, whatever the cost.  

The ‘Second Sight’ investigation into Sub-Postmaster’s cases has not confirmed the narrative that the Horizon IT system was robust, so the head of legal suggested that all future cases should be reviewed by a PO-controlled process with senior oversight. Things are always much safer when an organisation is allowed to investigate itself, as in the Police, the NHS and the Ombudsman.  CEO Paula Vennells earns her bonus by being able to deliver blatant lies to a parliamentary select committee that there was ‘no evidence’ of a miscarriage of justice and even has the gall to state that she is bound by the Disclosure Act as she actively breaches it.

The common themes here are:

• In-house or controlled investigations into complaints.
• Legal teams protecting their clients, no matter the facts.
• Denial of evidence.
• Blatant lying from senior staff.

Missing from the Channel Four video is the direct involvement of government. It would be interesting to know who was in the room during the covert audio recordings. It would be even more interesting to know which of them was ‘traitor’ and not ‘faithful’. 

For more information, we can look at the excellent Nick Wallis Post Office Horizon Scandal Reports. This one from July 2020. (My emphasis)

There are, arguably, three Post Office scandals:
1) Why an organisation saw fit (and was allowed) to criminally prosecute 900 people over two decades.

2) How the UK justice system abetted this.

3) The Post Office and the government’s attempt to cover it up.

I want to focus on point three. 

In July 2012, forensic accountants Second Sight were invited by the Post Office to investigate the growing number of complaints about the Post Office’s Horizon IT system. 

The Post Office knew there were a number of former Subpostmasters campaigning for justice well before then (the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance had been around since 2009), but now a number of MPs had got involved, led by James Arbuthnot.

In Sep 2013, the Post Office board and/or the government realised the information Second Sight had begun to uncover – about the Horizon IT system and the Post Office’s business practices, investigation and prosecution strategy – had the power to potentially bring the organisation down and damage a lot of reputations within government. 

Somewhere, a political decision was taken that it was “better” to cover up the truth (or, technically,  make it almost impossible to uncover), than to bite the bullet and deal with the fallout. 

The consequences of that decision were horrendous. It allowed the Post Office and specific individuals within it to behave abominably towards Subpostmasters well into 2019. 

https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/07/the-post-office-cover-up-part-1-how-and.html part one

From part two of this report we can see how the long arm of government pulled the senior management strings from the outset.

The government has always distanced itself from the Post Office’s handling of the Horizon scandal, repeating the tedious mantra that although the Post Office is publicly-owned, it: 

“operates as an independent, commercial business within the strategic parameters set by government.”

But that’s not all the story. The mask first slipped on 23 May 2019 at the High Court when the Post Office tried to delay paying legal costs to the claimants after losing the first trial. The Post Office QC gave as a reason: 

“It is a question of arranging the funds…  and talking to our shareholder about it.”

This contrast baldly with a government statement issued in January this year:

“government did not play a day-to-day role in the litigation or on the contractual and operational matters that were at the heart of it.” Talking to the government about the timing of a litigation payment is precisely a day-to-day operational matter.

When I presented this “arm’s length, independent” plop to the senior Post Office insider who helped inform my work on this year’s File on 4, Private Eye and Radio 4 series, they nearly spat out their drink with laughter. 

The insider told me that whilst they were there, Post Office staff with varying levels of seniority were running in and out of BIS the whole time. They also told me that culturally, within the Post Office, senior management priorities revolved around what the government wanted. What the government wanted, I was told, to the exclusion of almost anything else, was for the Post Office to become profitable.

The shareholder’s eyes and ears

Another thing which gives lie to the government’s position is that there has been a government representative sitting on the board of the Post Office as a non-executive director since it split from Royal Mail eight years ago. 

First was Susannah Storey (April 2012 to March 2014), second was Richard Callard (March 2014 to March 2018). The third and current incumbent is Tom Cooper.

Although the Business Department (formerly BIS, now BEIS) technically “owns” the Post Office – which means it is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Business, Storey and Callard came from an outfit called ShEx or SharEx, which was short for Shareholder Executive. 

ShEx was a group of supposed industry titans who were brought in to oversee the government’s interest in publicly-owned bodies (eg Highways England, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority), many of which were being run as quasi-autonomous companies.* 

In 2015 ShEx became part of UKGI – United Kingdom Government Investments. UKGI is a company wholly owned by the Treasury, and it is there Mr Cooper comes from.

Now, thanks to Paula Vennells’ evidence, we finally have confirmation of the government’s closeness to the Post Office:

“UKGI directors were fully engaged in the discussions and Post Office (including myself and each subsequent Chair) had conversations with their senior line director and the Chief Executive of UKGI too from time to time. The present UKGI incumbent director [Tom Cooper] joined the Board in 2018 with a fresh pair of eyes…. He was fully engaged on the Board, sub-committee and with ministers and lawyers at BEIS.”

Vennells’ statement is clear. She is saying our elected Ministers knew what the Post Office was up to. Government lawyers knew what the Post Office was up to. Civil servants and business experts like Susannah Storey, Richard Callard and Tom Cooper knew what the Post Office was up to. And they, at the very least, let it happen.

Vennells’ shareholder-knew-everything take contrasts starkly with Business Minister Lord Callanan’s recent suggestion that the government was “misled” by the Post Office. According to Ms Vennells, the government knew and knows everything. 

https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/07/the-post-office-cover-up-part-2-they.html part two