Mr Bates v the Post Office - how a TV show changed the British constitution in a week

[Zombie]

Last week a TV company in Britain broadcast (yeah, aerials ‘n’ stuff) a fact-based drama show over 4 nights called Mr Bates v the Post Office

Yesterday (10 Jan 2024), the UK government - because of this TV show - announced it will create new legislation to completely bypass the justice system and cancel the bulk of 983 criminal convictions over a period of 16 years (some convictions have already been overturned including the case featured in the ITV drama) and award up to £600k compensation to each wrongly convicted person.

This breaches the normal separation of powers (although, in reality, there must always be some overlap in a functioning democracy) but, under the British constitution, Parliament can do this because it is ‘sovereign’ (in most democratic countries this could not happen, and even if it could it would take a very long time, but because Britain has an “unwritten” constitution it can be done). The new law should be in place this year.

 

So what’s this all about?

It’s about the UK Post Office 

- imposing a flawed computer system called ‘Horizon’, developed by Fujitsu, on all its franchised postmasters/mistress branches

- instructing them to leave their terminals switched on at night for ‘maintenance’

- inserting false branch transactions during the night, causing the branch to show a deficit

- demanding payment for these ‘missing’ monies and, if refused, forcing ‘interviews‘ without legal representation and then prosecuting (the PO holds these unique powers)

- this money was paid into the PO ‘profit and loss’ (initially a ‘suspense account’ - which the PO denied in court) and the PO board and CEO took bonuses from this money

- postmasters/mistresses refusing to plead guilty (because they had done nothing wrong) were told they would be sent to prison (many were) and told their branch was the only one to claim a computer malfunction (a blatant lie) to intimidate them into saying they were guilty (many did this)

- during the case featured in the ITV drama the PO used ‘expert’ witnesses who gave testimony that was not honest/truthful to undermine the postmasters/mistress claimants 

- many postmasters/mistresses were ruined and several committed suicide

 

Here’s the story:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67932595

 

 

Edited January 11 by Zombie

[Mikiesboy]

Great show... glad it's made a difference in this travesty.

 

We watched it last week, and nothing has made me quite so angry or emotional for some time.  The lack of interest and compassion for these hard-working people by the post office and others involved was mind-blowing.

Edited January 11 by Mikiesboy

[chris191070]

24 minutes ago, Mikiesboy said:

Great show... glad it's made a difference in this travesty.

 

We watched it last week, and nothing has made me quite so angry or emotional for some time.  The lack of interest and compassion for these hard-working people by the post office and others involved was mind-blowing.

I can't say what I really think about this travesty, because I'd get it trouble with the moderator.

But it's the biggest mistake made by certain people, that's caused hurt and pain to so many.

[Mancunian]

4 hours ago, chris191070 said:

I can't say what I really think about this travesty, because I'd get it trouble with the moderator.

But it's the biggest mistake made by certain people, that's caused hurt and pain to so many.

I think I know what you would like to say, or at least pretty close to it. It is yet another travesty that the powers that be have attempted to hide hoping it will go away, another is the way patients were infected with Hep C and HIV by the NHS, for years it was covered up and even when it was publicised it has gone largely ignored. 

What the media has done for the post office victims is to be commended and needs to be repeated for others too.

[chris191070]

 

 

This says it perfectly 👌 

Edited January 12 by chris191070

[Guest]

Speaking from personal experience, and it may, or may not be the best take...

The only winners of this scandal are people who weren't personally affected by this terrible miscarriage of "justice". 

People lost their lives, families, friends - because majority of population were content with "trusting " the system and the news back then. 

This TV series is great, but it should bring some self reflection to every viewer on what was the actual truth of the accused? 

Watching the series, it is difficult not to get emotionally involved seeing the actual injustice being done in the name of law. 

I edited this post because initially, the premise deeply touched me and, I got emotional in what I wrote.

Should it make things better that we now recognise what was done? Ultimately yes.

One more thing I take, from the series is, that truth will prevail. People should always fight- and the story of the affected andcthe campaign for their innocence is inspiring. 

Edited January 12 by Dariusz Alexander

[Zombie]

5 hours ago, Mancunian said:

What the media has done for the post office victims is to be commended and needs to be repeated for others too.

gentle reminder, guys, that this forum is for things around this story that we can discuss such as traditional radio+TV still being very much alive alongside streaming, why we still need live broadcast media, why people blindly trust computer systems when it’s clear things are going wrong - all part of this story, and all uncontroversial  

[jamilalbrnah]

Thanks for the information!

[Ron]

I read about this in The Washington Post here in the states. Ever so often things like this crop up and it’s usually some sort of news media that breaks it into the open. That’s why we need strong investigative reporting. We all benefit from it, but so much of it is getting gobbled up by hedge funds and other conglomerates then milked for cash until there’s nothing left and then closed down and discarded. 
 

I like watching John Oliver’s show on HBO/MAX (he and the show just won yet another Emmy award), because he is both entertaining and hits hard on a variety of topics that people really should know about.

Edited January 19 by Ron

[Zombie]

6 hours ago, Ron said:

I read about this in The Washington Post here in the states. Ever so often things like this crop up and it’s usually some sort of news media that breaks it into the open. That’s why we need strong investigative reporting. We all benefit from it, but so much of it is getting gobbled up by hedge funds and other conglomerates then milked for cash until there’s nothing left and then closed down and discarded. .

What’s unusual here is the timescale, almost 30 years from the 1995 beta software launch (with the same problems reported almost immediately) until now. And there’s been nearly 15 years regular media reporting since 2009.

The problem here wasn’t lack of media attention but people losing the plot - literally - because the story had unravelled so slowly, in dribs and drabs, and over such a long period that no-one could see the whole horrific narrative and get excited by it.

Streaming companies might have all the money, but they wouldn’t have made this (expensive 4 hours quality drama and a likely ‘niche’ audience). Fortunately a traditional TV company, ITV, took a gamble and was prepared to take a hit. But they didn’t take a hit, they made one.

And we’re still only half way through the story…  

 

Edited January 19 by Zombie

[E K Stokes]

8 hours ago, Zombie said:

What’s unusual here is the timescale, almost 30 years from the 1995 beta software launch (with the same problems reported almost immediately) until now.

When you join the (UK) Post Office, a government owned and run organisation back in the eighties and through the nineties (with unique powers and its own investigation branch, police, like for the railways) you have to sign the Official Secrets Act.

The 1989 revision of the Act introduced provisions surrounding illegal disclosure of sensitive information – otherwise known as leaking. The maximum sentence for espionage under the Official Secrets Act 1911 is 14 years, but longer terms can be imposed for a series of offences.

The problems with Horizon were known from day one, but who is going to risk their: bonus, job, or even prison? Who thought it would get so out of hand? Errors in the system were corrected remotely overnight, with the best intentions, but one change can generate knock on effects. The Post Office Investigation branch (police force) were there to arrest "imagined" criminals and were the people who dealt with mail theft etc. with absolutely no knowledge about complex computer systems. It's not too difficult to imagine how a series of events led one to another and finally a catastrophe that destroyed people's lives and even killed some. A good analogy would be a series of aircraft crashes which are found to have been caused by a design fault, the only difference is the scale and the cover up!

[Zombie]

15 hours ago, E K Stokes said:

When you join the (UK) Post Office, a government owned and run organisation back in the eighties and through the nineties (with unique powers and its own investigation branch, police, like for the railways) you have to sign the Official Secrets Act.

The 1989 revision of the Act introduced provisions surrounding illegal disclosure of sensitive information – otherwise known as leaking. The maximum sentence for espionage under the Official Secrets Act 1911 is 14 years, but longer terms can be imposed for a series of offences.

The problems with Horizon were known from day one, but who is going to risk there: bonus, job, or even prison? Who thought it would get so out of hand? Errors in the system were corrected remotely overnight, with the best intentions, but one change can generate knock on effects. The Post Office Investigation branch (police force) were there to arrest "imagined" criminals and were the people who dealt with mail theft etc. with absolutely no knowledge about complex computer systems. It's not too difficult to imagine how a series of events led one to another and finally a catastrophe that destroyed people's lives and even killed some. A good analogy would be a series of aircraft crashes which are found to have been caused by a design fault, the only difference is the scale and the cover up!

Every UK citizen is bound by this Act (or Acts) and if you “sign(ed) the Official Secrets Act” back then it may well have been a brief guide to what the Act is about in order to confirm your awareness, as part of your employment contract paperwork.

But things were done differently then, and what’s left of “the Post Office” is now just a government owned commercial business providing a counter service (mostly franchised) for parcels / special delivery, with basic banking and other bits and pieces. So the OSA is no more of an issue than it would be for any other public service company employee, and certainly no excuse for not speaking out against the catalogue of egregious crimes that the company senior management seem to have committed. More importantly, the OSA does not protect anyone from disregarding the justice system.

As ever the difficulty with any large organisation (and, in this case, the large turnover of directors and CEOs over 25 years) is pinning responsibility onto individual senior managers, but there’s now so much audit trail evidence emerging that it seems very likely that several CEOs, directors and lawyers will be prosecuted for serious crimes including conspiracy to pervert the course of justice (which carries a maximum life sentence) and, if convicted, could get long prison sentences. Those innocent postmasters/mistresses ruined and killed deserve nothing less.