Yesterday at the inquiry an email was shown that clearly indicated that as a result of the infamous Receipts and Payments Mismatch bug, gains were recorded in some of the branches affected. These gains had been recovered from the SPMR presumably by a Transaction Correction. Post Office then decided the only way to rectify the situation ‘fairly’ – many months later – was to repay those gains they had recovered from the SPMR and not by way of Transaction Correction but via the SPMR pay packet (which is a significant detail in its own right).
What follows is a story. It represents a thin line between Hypothetical and Real. Much of it is in actual fact true.
Mrs Pennells
In January 2019, Vaula Pennells was the Manager of the Sub Post Office in Trumpton. She enjoyed her job and she had been doing it for a long time. So long in fact that she was nearing retirement. The only issue she had with her job was with the Subpostmaster who owned the branch. He was absent most of the time and left Vaula to do all the work. The SPMR had bought the branch a year or so earlier and had introduced a new regime in that if there were any losses in the branch they were to be recovered from the wages of the employees. Vaula herself had had over £1,000 taken from her wages as a result.
At the end of one particular busy day in January 2019, Vaula found that the branch accounts were suddenly £2,000 to the good. It had been a long day so Vaula took the £2,000 and put it in an envelope in the safe and adjusted her stock accordingly so that the daily balance was accurate. She did not investigate what had caused the discrepancy.
At the end of June 2019 Vaula eventually retired and as she handed over to the new Manager they both checked the contents of the safe to ensure the contents matched what was reported on Horizon. Vaula knew the envelope was still there and knew that only she knew about it so with a retirement holiday coming up she decided to take it for herself. After all the SPMR had held her responsible for losses it was only right she was entitled to the gains.
In late August, Post Office phoned the branch and informed them that due to a processing error a Remittance In error had occurred in January and that when the Remittance Slip had been scanned by Horizon, Horizon did not record the actual physical amount of cash that the branch had received. POL wanted the £2,000 back.
The SPMR looked back at the paper copies of all transactions and balance snapshots they had for that day and could not see any discrepancies. The receipt for the Remittance in was found and the end of day balance snapshot showed no variance. The SPMR explained that the lady on duty that day had retired in June and he had no contact number for her. The SPMR further explained that he had been following the GLO that had only recently finished in court and pointed out that according to his contract he was perfectly entitled to keep the gains. POL refused this argument. They said they knew what caused the problem. They knew they had sent the correct amount of currency and they knew the Remittance Slip matched what was sent. It was only a wee problem with the actual scanning of the barcode on the remittance slip that had resulted in the glitch.
Much of the substance for the story above comes from this article in Computer Weekly in 2019 https://archive.ph/w6cbK I have recently found out a lot more about what happened at that time which I cannot discuss for legal reasons but suffice to say the story above is closer to reality than it is to fiction. The Post Office in the form of Julie Thomas did not provide the complete story to Karl Flinders at Computer Weekly and in an email to me on the same subject Al Cameron, the CEO said this:
Re: The error , Catch 22 and Some other thoughts ,….
Alisdair Cameron <alisdair.cameron@postoffice.co.uk>
Sat 29/06/2019 09:12
To:Tim McCormack <t.j.mccormack@outlook.com>
Tim thanks so much, I have a half written email to you in my drafts so this is very timely.
I appreciate that the last years have made it very difficult to have easy and open conversations but I do think that a shared desire to do the right thing for Post Offices gives us many shared views.
I also understand why you will work straight through to prosecutions etc but my belief is that if we and Postmasters are communicating openly then these issues should not lead to that. I am delighted you liked the approach, that is how it should always be – and quicker – transparent and open as well as fixing and solving issues so no one is anxious or out of pocket.
What would therefore also be best is people telling us what is happening and I am sure you will have seen the extra investments in field teams to build more trust and dialogue. You know that I think we have work to do on culture, that is no secret.
You also raised the scanning issue but in checking back we can find no issues or differences arising – if we are missing something please encourage people to bring it to my attention.
Obviously I can’t talk about the litigation and I won’t – but I promise that we won’t let our thinking be dominated by continuity of advice or positioning.
I talk to a lot of Postmasters and how we engage them in the running of the business as we drive to alignment and shared interests based on mutual trust is absolutely something I am thinking about. It won’t be a quick process.
With that caveat, I would therefore be delighted to meet Helen – let me know if that is what she would like also.
I don’t know how long I will be doing this job, maybe only a few more weeks but do feel free to communicate any any time.
Kind regards Al
Al Cameron wrote this to me on the understanding that I would never have access to the internal correspondence that lay behind his reply. Sadly that is no longer the case and I have seen evidence of a massive cover up of a computer error that was in existence from January 2019 through to July 2019 while the GLO was on going.
Post Office said this to Computer Weekly:
“We are aware of an issue with a small number of Cash Pouch REM barcodes, which we are working to resolve as quickly as possible,” it said.
“The issue means that when the barcode is scanned, it is only recognising part of the REM, which means it does not register the full value of the REM on Horizon. This may also impact Bureau services.”
First and not in itself inconsequential ‘a small number’ is totally wrong it was a large number. Second – it was not happening to the entire network – how could such an intermittent error manifest itself randomly? Third – this was a computer error that generated gains for an SPMR and finally Fourth which is currently vitally important for obvious reasons, this is a computer error involving another system not Horizon that has caused a discrepancy in Branch Accounts.
At the end of the day, the scandal will be broken down into two parts. The role of the good guys and the role of the bad guys.
There is no better shining light on who one of the good guys is here than in the Computer Weekly article.
Mark Baker, postmaster branch secretary at the CWU, said: “We have discovered a variant of the Dalmellington error that works against the Post Office and this time in favour of the subpostmaster. The Post Office had no idea about it. If the subpostmaster had done what the manual says and settle to cash, the subpostmaster could take the cash out of physical stock and keep it.”
“But that would be immoral and potentially illegal, so my advice to subpostmasters is don’t settle to cash, settle centrally.”
Mark Baker is telling SPMRs to ignore what is stated in their contract and do the right thing from a moral and ethical perspective. It is beyond belief that POL have survived these last 24 years devoid of any employee with the moral and ethical backbone such as Mark demonstrates here.
As for Vaula? What of her moral and ethical duties in March before the error was known by POL? What if the SPMR eventually took legal action against her? Maybe more to the point how could POL legally recover the £2k from the SPMR if he refused to pay?
problemswithpol 