Wholly Unacceptable Behaviour
With these words Sir Wyn Williams described the behaviour of individuals at the Post Office and both institutions, behaviour he considered “worthy of condemnation.” In essence, the Post Office demanded money with menaces based on data it knew was not reliable and defrauded its sub-postmasters (“SPMs”) of monies it was never owed. Lawyers, investigators, IT specialists and their managers were at the heart of this behaviour. For 13 years. The later parts of his Report will describe in detail that behaviour and by whom. Today was about the human impact. And what an impact it was. The figures and detailed descriptions revealed by the judge are stark and horrific.
– Between 2000 – 2013 ca. 1000 SPMs were wrongly convicted of fraud, theft or false accounting for crimes which did not exist. They were publicly labelled as dishonest. This happened because the Post Office and Fujitsu stated that their IT system could do no wrong. No-one over the age of 14 believes this about any IT system. The Post Office – whether its Board, CEO, Chair, or in-house legal counsel – took no steps to ensure that its investigations and prosecutions complied with the applicable laws and rules. Nor did its owner, the government, despite criminal justice being one of the state’s fundamental duties. The CEO’s and Chairs during this time included many many people beyond Ms Vennells. She should be answerable for her many failings. But not made a scapegoat for those before her who presided over and were responsible for this disaster. They too must be made to answer for their faults.
– The convicted SPMs and thousands of others (the judge estimates the eligible claimants to be ca.10,000) were held responsible for made up “losses” and made to pay these back. Many lost their businesses and savings. Some were bankrupted and lost their homes.
– The impact on both groups and their families the judge described as “disastrous.” What this actually meant included 13 people whose suicide was attributed to the Post Office’s conduct, 59 who contemplated suicide or tried, sometimes more than once, mental breakdowns (including time in institutions), the stress and trauma of investigation, trial and conviction, as well as imprisonment for some, hostile and abusive behaviour from and/or ostracism by the communities in which they lived, shame and embarrassment, the effect of all this on wives, husbands, children and other family members, as well as the long-term financial consequences of losing your good name, job and the means to earn a living. And so on. In the judge’s words “their suffering was acute.”
The rest of the Report is about the various compensation schemes: a cat’s cradle with Kafkaesque rules administered by the government and Post Office in ways which the judge agreed could be accurately described as “overly legalistic, slow and potentially obstructive.” The key finding is that none provide the “full, fair and prompt” redress promised. Many recommendations are made.
What is described here is appalling. But its appalling nature is not new. It echoes and repeats how many other scandals have arisen and how the victims have been treated. In truth, there are always three scandals wrapped up in each one:
– The original problem – usually small and resolvable if dealt with.
– The failure to investigate or resolve. Usually because no-one at the top sees the need or thinks it too expensive (to which the answer is always: “You should see how expensive a major crisis is.”)
– The utter failure to provide proper timely redress coupled with callousness and cruelty to the victims. Look at how the Aberfan families were treated with parents asked to prove they were close to their children to get compensation. Or the blood compensation victims and what Sir Brian Langstaff said in acerbic terms about the government’s failures to compensate. Or any of the many other scandals we know about, now too numerous to mention and affecting every part of our society and its institutions, whether public or private.
The first two problems are bad enough. But it is the final one – the treatment of the victims – which really makes the scandal shameful. Our treatment of the victims is unconscionable. There are many legal, bureaucratic, managerial, practical reasons why this happens, a desire to save money chiefly among them. But I will suggest one deeper reason. We have, as a society, lost any sense of shame and guilt. We threw them out, thinking that they were horrible, old-fashioned feelings which oppressed people unnecessarily. And while there was some truth in that, in reality, some behaviour is shameful and people ought to feel ashamed and guilty. Some shame and guilt are essential to ensuring effective boundaries on our behaviour and some sense of conscience – a professional conscience, if you will, for those not wanting its religious overtones. But however you describe it, without this at an individual level, a person cannot be truly said to have integrity. Laws, rules, regulations, Codes of Conduct, procedures, and guidance can never be a substitute for this, only a help, especially when a person is faced with difficult choices. We fool ourselves if we think otherwise. Public inquiries, criminal trials, disciplinary hearings etc., are no real substitute for an individual professional conscience, a still small voice reminding us that we must try to do the right thing, that the right thing means asking what we should do not what we can, that what we do affects others and that we owe it to them to make matters right when we cause them harm. Above all, that it is how we treat others – individually and as a society – which shows what we truly are.
Instead, we get a version of DARVO: Delay, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Look at how the Post Office described the SPMs at a late stage, how it tried to present itself as the victim of thieves – even as the evidence piled up that the reverse was the case. It is the modus operandi of the abuser and reading all these reports it feels more and more as if large parts of the British state are behaving towards its citizens like an abuser. If the victim cannot somehow be blamed or turned into the offender, then the state and those carrying out its functions continue being as horrible as possible. It is as if they are looking to distance themselves from the human beings they are harming. And the consequences of what they are doing. The callousness is a sort of defence mechanism. Because if they truly understood the harm they were causing, they’d have to confront their own part in causing it. And people will do anything but that. That is how you get an ordained priest deciding that advice from a PR professional is the first response on being told that a human being you are responsible for has tried to commit suicide. (Vennells’ Christianity does seem to be of the unctuous sucking up to your betters variety skewered by Austen in Mr Collins, though without the humour.)
How can these people live with themselves when they have caused such misery to others? Insulated by their own arrogance, with a smorgasbord of platitudinous excuses and self-justifications to choose from, contempt for the victims and never having to confront the reality of what they have done to others probably explains it. They do not mix or live with or even know in any real sense or value any of the ordinary people affected. That is why the judge wanted to focus on the human impact first. So that we do not forget the many people whose lives were ruined. So that we hear their stories.
We have become the 21st century’s version of Disraeli’s Two Nations: the rulers – those who have power over others and because of this think themselves somehow virtuous – and the rest of us: treated with contempt, callousness and indifference if harmed by the actions of the powerful, dependant on an overly slow justice system seemingly incapable of bringing redress or accountability and hoping for some arbitrary display of compassion after pulling at the right heartstrings at the right time, like petitioners at the Tudor court. In 2025.
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