(Neil Lock, 20 March 2024)
A company called DPS Computing has for some months been relaying videos of the Post Office inquiry chaired by Sir Wyn Williams. These videos have been most interesting, showing, to all who can see, just how dishonest the Post Office representatives have been in their actions regarding the Horizon computer system.
The Post Office prosecuted several hundred sub-postmasters on false grounds of financial fraud, when the only “evidence” of any “fraud” came from their own flawed computer system. When the sub-postmasters started to fight back, they were met only by a renewed assault of lies and attempts to suppress them. When they got as far as taking a civil case to the courts, the Post Office tried to force the judge to recuse himself. All credit to Mr Justice Fraser for soldiering on, and doing his job properly.
Time and tide have moved on, and the Post Office themselves are now the subject of inquiry. They have fought like cornered snakes, and tried to “lawfare” their way into silencing the inquiry, even trying to force Sir Wyn Williams to recuse himself.
Then, along came DPS Computing, with a series of videos aiming to bring the evidence given at this inquiry to the multitude. I’ve watched 20 or 30 of them, and together they convey one message. The Post Office, and the individuals acting for it, are guilty of one of the biggest crimes committed in these islands since William the Conqueror’s invasion.
And yet, yesterday DPS Computing felt it necessary to publish this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy5HSeIB0Tg. And the follow-up today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6symM3hBzk.
Let me try to paraphrase. Google (owner of YouTube) has suspended DPS Computing’s account with them, on the supposed grounds that someone else “associated” with them has committed some breach of some “policy.” Without telling them any specifics of what they, or even their “associates,” are accused of. Or even who their accused “associates” are!
This violates, at least, articles 10, 11 and 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Not that the UN themselves have any concern for human rights these days. It also violates the European Convention on Human Rights, article 6.3(a) and (b).
And the timing is interesting. Particularly in the context of the “on-line safety bill.” Someone in the global establishment seems to think that we need to be “protected” from the truth. At least as it pertains to the Post Office inquiry… and COVID vaccine injuries… and a lot more that, if brought out into the open, would destroy the credibility of the political class.
Edmund Burke told us, 250 years ago this year: “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.” He was right. But I will give you my two follow-ups. One, “Bad laws should not be obeyed.” Two, “Those that promote, support, make, enforce or condone bad laws are criminals.”
I was going to add a third about those that lie or mislead. But that’s enough for now.
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[quote]”The Post Office, and the individuals acting for it, are guilty of one of the biggest crimes committed in these islands since William the Conqueror’s invasion.”[unquote]
I think that’s histrionic and over the top. For one thing, the inquiry is not yet concluded. For another, we don’t know that all of these people are factually innocent. I have every sympathy for any innocent person who is convicted of a crime he did not commit, but any ruling that the convictions are unsafe (I don’t doubt that’s the case for most of them) does not imply factual innocence.
I have the sense that this is yet another matter on which we are being encouraged to be scandalised and all worked up in a lather of emotion over what in reality was quite a complex matter that took place many years ago, involving lots of different people making decisions.
We should remember that just as a legal injustice was done to many subpostmasters, there is a corresponding grave risk of a sort of mob justice being inflicted on Post Office officials who made judgements and took decisions in complex circumstances without the benefit of the 20/20 hindsight that so many people now seem to have.
I was subscribed to the DPS Computing channel and I am sorry to hear that YouTube took it down. Clearly that was wrong on the part of YouTube, but at the same time, I must say that the channel’s narrator was not my cup of tea. He adopted a narrative that clearly prejudged the inquiry – much as you do in this article – and his understanding of the law and the relevant legal and investigatory terminology was poor; he came across as generally inarticulate and poorly educated.
I preferred the old, more serious way of doing things, in which inquiries such as this were not televised, any member of the public could observe the proceedings in person, and journalists and other commenters were admonished not to make prejudicial statements about matters that had not yet been concluded, and for all anyone knows, might never be satisfactorily determined.
It seems that, nowadays, everybody is a hindsight merchant and quick to leap to the conclusion of corruption without considering that genuine mistakes can be made and people who make decisions are not always availed of the full picture.
Of course, if corruption or wrong-doing on the part of anyone working for the Post Office is proved, those involved must be punished.
True, Tom, we don’t know that all the sub-postmasters are innocent of any wrongdoing. Probably a small minority of them were “cooking the books,” even if very probably only on a small scale. But that does not take away the magnitude of what has been done to those who truly are innocent. I agree with Blackstone that “it is better that a hundred guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should suffer.” And the Post Office has wrongly accused many hundreds of different sub-postmasters, over a period of at least two decades.
I cannot conceive that those at the top of the Post Office did not know about what was being done, or did not approve it. If people at the middle levels were taking decisions on insufficient evidence, that is the fault of their superiors. In any case, the evasiveness of several of the Post Office witnesses at the inquiry suggests, to anyone with a sense of right and wrong, that they were up to no good, and they knew it.
BTW, the DPS Computing channel has not been entirely taken down. (So far). It is only their Google account that has been taken away. I suggest you go over to their channel, take a look at some of their recent videos on the inquiry, and form your own views based on the evidence presented there.
Of course, but that’s all just a collection of your guesses, opinions and impressions, none of it is fact. I think we are unlikely to know what really took place. These public inquiries are bent towards ascribing blame rather than getting to the truth of things, and are essentially just street theatre – now performed virtually on YouTube.
If someone within the Post Office knew that Horizon could have caused the shortfalls in the accounts of sub post offices and this was not disclosed to defence solicitors, that was a clear cut breach of the Attorney General’s Guidelines on Disclosure. But did they know this? Did they ‘know what they knew’? Who was it within the Post Office who knew about these problems and was that person equipped with the wider knowledge and experience to appreciate its significance? And if some within the investigatory and legal teams knew, was their knowledge sufficient that they would appreciate the relevance and significance of the problems? After all, virtually every large-scale IT system has bugs and faults.
It sounds to me that a whole lot of people, including the defence, didn’t perform their duties assiduously. No-one should be convicted on the back of what might be regarded as ‘black box evidence’. One can interrogate a computer or system but not cross-examine it.
Well Tom, it’s a fact that some of these sub-postmasters have attested that their careers were ruined by what happened. A number even committed suicide. It is a fact that the Court of Appeals in 2021 quashed the convictions of 39 of the sub-postmasters. And it is even a fact that Paula Vennells apologized for the suffering caused: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/26/ex-post-office-head-apologises-to-workers-after-convictions-quashed. Do you think the Court of Appeals was wrong in this case?
This is the biggest miscarriage of justice in the UK for, very likely, several centuries. When such a thing has happened, the inquiry ought to leave no stone unturned. It ought not only to identify the specific culprits, but also to expose the culture of corruption in the Post Office that led to so many wrongful convictions on the basis of false “evidence.” It’s also a fact that the Post Office sought to interfere, not just with Mr Justice Fraser’s investigation, but with the inquiry itself.
Besides which, it is obvious to anyone with significant experience in software development and testing (including me) that no system beyond a certain level of complexity (and certainly no system on the scale of Horizon) can possibly be free of faults and defects. To hear it asserted in court that Horizon was bug-free, if I had been on the jury, would have led me to suspect perjury, if not worse.
Neil, I am not arguing over court verdicts or the guilt or innocence of the people involved. That’s beyond my knowledge. An unsafe conviction is not the same as factual innocence, but I don’t doubt that some of them are innocent – for all I know, every one of them is innocent. I don’t know. I know very well from personal experience how the courts work and how people can be railroaded. I am under no illusions about the matter.
Did someone from the Post Office really state that the Horizon system was free of fault, or was it a different statement? What precisely was said and in what context? What didn’t the defence for any of these subpostmasters have the system itself tested and interrogated? There are just so many aspects of this that seem not to make sense, which I suppose is why we have a public inquiry, but the climate in which the inquiry is being conducted is one of mob justice rather than a mission to get to the truth.
Tom, if I am not mistaken as to who you are, you yourself have been a victim of “railroading.” As a result, you were barred from your career as a solicitor. I cannot judge your guilt or innocence in that case, because I do not have the evidence.
The situation regarding computer systems being “free from fault” is far worse than you imagine. See the second paragraph of this recent article: https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/it-experts-call-for-review-of-computer-is-always-right/5118414.article.
As to “why didn’t the defence for any of these subpostmasters have the system itself tested and interrogated?” I can only rely on DPS Computing’s assessment. Which is that, whenever a sub-postmaster engaged a software consultant to help them defend themselves, the Post Office switched their tactics to settling out of court.
I agree wholeheartedly with the Law Society Gazette article, but surely it only reinforces my point, and if anything lends weight to the position of the Post Office in this ongoing inquiry. Any criminal defence to a case involving reliance on a computer system or other digital system that does not include an interrogation and testing process of that system is surely negligent. Questions must (or should) be asked of the defence solicitors involved, where convictions have been overturned. It may be that the answers that come back from the defence solicitors are that they had good reason not to interrogate the systems because it was clear from the evidence that the output could be relied on, in which case one must consider whether any faults in the systems would have been materially relevant in undermining the prosecution case.
Can you provide a source for your assertion that subpostmasters who were being prosecuted in the criminal courts were offered settlements whenever they brought in a software expert? (DPS Computing does not count as a reliable source, if it’s just his opinion or conclusion). Has any witness actually stated this? If so, who?
I am not inclined to accept the assessments of DPS Computing as he doesn’t appear to know much about the law (I can tell by the way he talks about it) and I stopped watching him because of his bias. No offence intended, but he is not the inquiry, he is just somebody giving a narration of his own opinions about it while showing choice highlights from it.
It’s just that people tend to put their own gloss and slant on things, to fit whatever stance they find emotionally appealing, rather than looking at it coldly. It could be that I am being overly cautious, but I am wary of jumping to conclusions unless all relevant facts are to hand. I am not willing to be a puppet on a string for other people’s agendas (even though I do have sympathy for all these subpostmasters, whether guilty or not, as they were all in trouble and, whatever they did or did not do, acted under mental distress).
It doesn’t matter who I am and my circumstances are irrelevant, except to say that my personal experiences give me a greater insight into people who suffer adversity and get into trouble and this gives me sympathy, even for the guilty, and I know from experience and observation that it is naive to rely on what sentencing judges say, nor should reliance be placed on write-ups from media and journalists. Court decisions in criminal matters are very binary, whereas human behaviour is not. However, I am also often mistrustful of ‘public inquiries’, especially in matters such as this, because I think they can be politically influenced (and the influence will often be very subtle). I think it’s street theatre.
Lastly, I am of the view that whenever it is shown that a conviction is unsafe, the appellant should be compensated in full and handsomely, regardless of what is believed about his or her factual culpability. I should have stated in an earlier comment and will remedy it now: an overturned conviction means that the person is legally innocent and should be treated as such in all respects.
Neil,
I was browsing YouTube today and found this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@innocencefraudwatch586
I can’t say I agree with much of what the channel is saying, but I think it’s right to be sceptical about this scandal.
Here’s a comment I have just posted under one of the videos:
I’ve been recently debating this case online with somebody knowledgeable about software testing and I’ve just found your channel and blog. I would not say that I agree with you about the case, but I believe you are right to be sceptical about this whole thing. It’s not so much that I think the subpostmasters were factually guilty, it’s more that I suspect these cases fall into a complex grey area that the criminal justice system’s binary Guilty/Not Guilty verdicts cannot allow for. I think it’s possible that Horizon was causing local accounting errors and the relevant subpostmasters either were afraid to raise it with the Post Office or raised it and didn’t receive any response or resolution, and some of them then proceeded to resolve the errors through theft or fraud. In cool, rational hindsight, that sounds crazy but an otherwise honest person in the middle of that situation might well act that way. This would explain why some of them, while protesting their innocence, nevertheless confessed to false accounting. If I am broadly right, then my personal view would be that most of them should be treated as innocent because any wrongdoing they committed was probably under a state of mental distress in which they did not give much thought to the consequences and probably intended to resolve the discrepancies eventually, but it spun out of control in each case. I am fully appreciative of the moral hazard involved in such an opinion, but I think sometimes the law has to give way to social reality in its decisions and attitudes. This comes under ‘exceptional circumstances’ – a regular person who is otherwise scrupulously honest can do crazy things under certain pressures, especially if socially isolated.
I prefer the binary view. If there is any doubt of guilt, a defendant must be found innocent.
Exactly.
“A regular person who is otherwise scrupulously honest can do crazy things under certain pressures.”
Very true, Tom. But one of those crazy things is to confess to a lesser crime they did not commit, in order to avoid being persecuted for a much larger crime (which they did not commit either).