Sue Edgar is Chair of the National Federation of Subpostmasters and a serving Subpostmaster. Her story is fascinating. The evidence she gave to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry on the afternoon of Fri 4 March will undoubtedly be seen as significant for a number of reasons, but I would like to focus on what she said about remote access to Subpostmaster branch accounts.

By 2016, the Subpostmasters’ campaign for justice was well known to the Post Office and the National Federation of Subpostmasters. Remote access to the Horizon IT system was a live issue.

In order to maintain confidence in the integrity of its prosecutions (and sackings/asset recovery processes), the Post Office had to convince everyone that Subpostmasters were in sole control of their accounts.

After all, if someone else had access to them through the Horizon system back-end, particularly if that access could not be detected, then they were not in sole control of their accounts. If that was the case, it was a little unfair to criminally prosecute them. More than a little unfair, in fact.

In 2015 three Post Office executives stated, on the record, to a Panorama producer:

“It is 100% true to say we can’t change, alter or modify existing transaction data, so the integrity is 100% preserved.”

The Panorama producer checked: “And that’s true now, and has been for the duration of the system?”

To which the Post Office execs answered an unequivocal “Yes.“

This was not true. Proving it was not true would require a multimillion pound High Court case which eventually went to trial in 2018.

But in 2016, according to her evidence on 4 March 2022, Sue Edgar and a fellow Subpostmaster called Ann were invited to Fujitsu HQ. And this is what Mrs Edgar said happened:

“They were showing us what the Horizon would do and what it couldn’t do after a conference one year… and we went and we were looking round and we were saying, ‘Oh, so this is where you do whatever, and this is where you write the programmes’, and what have you.

And then they took us into another room that we weren’t allowed to discuss because we shouldn’t have been in there apparently and this guy was showing us … so we said, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘Oh, I go through the systems and blah, blah’.

I can’t really exactly say what he said but he said, ‘Look, I can get into every Post Office in the land, I can get into their system’, and Ann and I just looked at each other and he said, ‘I’ll show you’. What he did, he said, ‘There, look what I’m doing’, and he went into a postmaster’s stock unit and he took I can’t remember the amount but he took some Euros out of that guy’s stock unit, and our jaws just dropped to the floor, and we were looking at each other and said:

‘But won’t he be short now? Are you putting them back in?’

‘Oh no, I’ll put them back in tomorrow.’

‘Right. Well, what happens if it’s his trading period or he wants to balance?’

‘Well, he’ll be short but they’ll be back tomorrow and he’ll find them tomorrow.’

And we said – ‘But you can’t do that’ – it was wrong.

‘Oh no, no, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’ll put them back tomorrow.’

Now, we left that night and got on the train to come home but we didn’t know if he’d put them back in and whether that postmaster was right or whether he balanced right or he balanced short.

People used to say they could do that and I said ‘no’, but I used to say ‘there will be a back door’, I mean even though I’m not techie I knew there must be a back door into a system because every computer has that and I did mention this to… I can’t remember exactly the date but we think it was about 2016 and I mentioned this to my contracts manager.

I mentioned it to a couple of people that were in the Federation at the time who were higher than me, because I was just at the branch secretary then, and they more or less – especially Post Office, they just fobbed me off with: ‘No, he was just carrying on. He was just like showing off. He can’t do that. He’s just like telling you that. Because you don’t understand he’s just saying that’. But we actually saw it. Two of us saw it at the time and, to be honest, it was a topic of conversation all the way home.”

You can watch Mrs Edgar’s saying the above here, (thanks to Tim Brentnall):

Screen grab of sue Edgar confirming remote access was known before the glo trials when the post office still denied it was possible @ElCShaikh @RonRwarming @nickwallis @chrish9070 @ArchNichola @GandMBB @PostOffice @ArchNichola @CWUPostmaster @mkiceburnmarko pic.twitter.com/BRCiO98Jbj

— tim brentnall (@wierdhead) March 8, 2022

Rudkin re-run

Not only is Mrs Edgar’s evidence extraordinary in itself, it almost exactly echoes the experience of Michael Rudkin, a former NFSP exec, who visited Fujitsu HQ for a look-see at the Horizon system in 2008. Here are the relevant passages about this episode from my book:

“Rudkin was met at Fujitsu reception by a friendly chap called Martin Rolfe, who signed him in, gave him a guest pass and took him on a little tour of the building. This concluded at Rolfe’s own office space.

Martin introduced Michael to one of his colleagues, who didn’t take well to a Fed exec being in his place of work. ‘He was rude and rather negative,’ said Michael. Martin engineered a swift exit. ‘He said, “Let’s get out of here. Come with me, Michael.” As though I was his long lost friend.’

The two men went through several secure doors which needed a pin-pad entry code. As they did so, they discussed some of the issues Rudkin wanted to raise around problems with bureau de change and accounting for foreign cash.

They went downstairs and ended up in the doorway of what Rudkin describes as ‘a boiler room. A subterranean office. All their gubbins – the air conditioning, the central heating was in that room.’

In what sounds like some kind of bizarre dream, Rudkin told me that alongside the machinery in this boiler room, there were two desks, with two Horizon terminals sitting on them.

The terminals were recognisably the same as the terminals Rudkin had in his own Post Office – that is, exactly the same hardware you’d find on a Post Office counter top – and they were running the same software. Four men in office-wear were present. Rolfe introduced them as ‘The Covert Operations Team.’

As soon as the men clocked the arrival of visitors, three of them left. They were not friendly as they did so. One remained sitting at a terminal. Rolfe gestured towards the unattended Horizon terminal and said,‘This is one of the offices we have a problem with.’The man who had left the terminal in a hurry was still logged on.

Rudkin said Rolfe was showing him the branch’s figures and told him, ‘This is the live system.’ Rudkin asked what he meant – could the figures be adjusted in real time on the system?

According to Rudkin, Rolfe ‘made an alteration on screen to demonstrate to me that he could do that. He then reversed the transaction and he made a joke about reversing the transaction, otherwise the office would not balance.’

Rudkin challenged him. ‘I said, “Have you just altered the bureau de change figures in that branch?” and he said “Yeah.”’

Rudkin was aghast. ‘I said to him, “For years, we’ve been told that you do not have remote access into Post Office branch accounts.”’

Rolfe seemed to think it was a bit of a joke. Rudkin didn’t, asking in that rather intimidating baritone, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’

Rudkin told me he could not be escorted out of the building quickly enough.”

The day after Mr Rudkin’s visit to Fujitsu he was suspended by the Post Office over an alleged discrepancy. Michael resigned his position on the NFSP and was systematically discredited by the organisation’s leadership (for the full story, please do buy my book).

The point is – here was something almost identical happening to another Subpostmaster, eight years later.

As Mrs Edgar states – she mentioned this experience to the Post Office via her contracts manager, and to her NFSP superiors. Everyone denied it.

What was going on in there?

You can watch Ms Edgar’s evidence in full here, or read the full transcript of it here.

For obvious reasons I have spent many hours dealing with sacked and convicted Subpostmasters, rather than those still working.

The evidence given to the Post Office Inquiry has come from both serving and former Postmasters. I am currently watching the focus group session on the afternoon of Fri 4 March – particularly because of some social media interest in what the Chair of the National Federation of Subpostmasters, Sue Edgar, told the inquiry about remote access to Horizon, the Post Office’s disastrous IT system.

I haven’t got to the relevant bit yet, but before I do, I thought it was worth putting up a post about the evidence from David Hartley.

David is a serving Subpostmaster at Bispham Road Post Office in Southport, Merseyside. He is an active member of the National Federation of Subpostmasters. David took on his Post Office in 2005, but before that he ran Hope Place Post Office in Nelson for sixteen years. David decided to take on a Post Office “because it’s seen as a national institution” and a “trusted brand.” He told the inquiry “I thought it was a good move and that it would settle our future together.”

David’s disillusionment was writ large in his demeanour throughout the focus group session. He described himself as “well past retirement age… but to actually sell a post office now is nigh impossible because the word’s got out there to the general public, and naturally they don’t want to touch it with a barge pole. Would you?”

Automated Teller Madness

Like so many other Subpostmasters who had given evidence, David spoke clearly about the sense of abandonment he felt and how it continues to this day. The Post Office has apparently recently switched many of its cash machines (ATMs) away from Bank of Ireland to an in-house set up.

Although the Post Office publicly denied it, ATMs have long caused huge issues for the Post Office and postmasters over the years, with Postmasters being badly trained and held liable for thousands of pounds worth of discrepancies.

When independent forensic investigators Second Sight raised problems with accounting for cash dispensed by ATMs back in 2014 they were publicly rubbished by the Post Office who said “there is little evidence to support this view”. A year earlier, a secret report presented to the Post Office noted “losses from ATMs have been one of the major concerns.”

So how is the Post Office managing the sensitive switch from Bank of Ireland ATMs to the new system? According to David:

“We were sent a booklet, just a few leaves of paper actually, not even a booklet. That was the extent of the training for it. I’ve since – and I’m not on my own – experienced losses in the ATM. I’ve got a paper here that’s asking me to pay £1,426.61. That’s just come yesterday because of shortages in the ATM.”

David welled up with tears as he described the losses he’d experienced since Horizon was introduced and the Post Office process for dealing with them:

“The process was you put it right”, he said. “That was the end of it. There was no… it was either a black and white. There was no grey areas… If there was a shortage you put it in. You made that right… We’ve had to borrow from family members, from friends, we couldn’t even… sorry … we couldn’t even afford a pint of milk one week because we’d had to put that much money in.”

Federal Failure

Although David himself had been an executive officer of the National Federation of Subpostmasters (around 2012), he described the NFSP’s failure to act on Horizon:

“We were told by the then General Secretary that we have to believe that the system is robust, even though I’ve been paying God knows how much back to the Post Office over the years from when Horizon first started. So I believed it. I thought it’s bound to be mistakes on somebody’s part. I’ve sacked staff in the past thinking they were stealing.”

The full horror of this treatment of Subpostmasters – suspecting their employees whilst experiencing the creeping dread of their livelihoods slipping through their fingers – has to be seen in the context of Paula Vennells’ relentless drive to reduce Subpostmasters pay, which ran pretty much throughout her seven year tenure. David told the inquiry:

“We’ve taken pay cuts as postmasters to keep the business afloat and I challenged the then chief executive officer, Paula Vennells. I stood up at conference and said, ‘Can you tell me why we are taking pay cuts and you are awarding yourself an 18 per cent pay rise of over £500,000?’

“I said, ‘You should hang your head in shame’. She didn’t even have the guts to respond to it. She just looked at her side-kick and nodded and she stood up and said, ‘I think that’s rather personal’. Well, yes, it was rather personal. It was personal to all of us that we’re taking pay cuts.”

Watch David’s evidence here. Read the transcript of the focus group session here. The inquiry will continue to take evidence from former and serving Subpostmasters until the end of this month.

Malcolm Simpson was a Subpostmaster at Boxgrove Post Office near Chichester, West Sussex. Malcolm came to the inquiry on 24 Feb with his wife Lesley (pictured above).

Malcolm and Lesley bought Boxgrove village shop in 2003. It had a Post Office counter which was run completely separately by the incumbent Subpostmaster. The Subpostmaster left in 2007 and although he was reluctant to do so, Malcolm said it was the “logical step” for him to take over.

After inadequate off-site group training (during which Malcolm said none of the trainees could balance correctly) he was let loose on Horizon in his branch.

A Post Office trainer came in to monitor Malcolm’s account balance at Boxgrove at the end of his first trading period. He was £150 down. According to Malcolm, the trainer “said ‘oh that’s the way it is. Go and get the money out of the shop till to balance’ as if it was normal.”

Malcolm’s problems continued. Discrepancies arose which he had to make good – losing £12,000 in the process. He was eventually suspended and sacked in 2012 after his third audit, which found an alleged stock discrepancy of £4820. He was threatened with criminal prosecution if he did not make good this and his other accumulated discrepancies.

Malcolm was relatively calm as he described the way the Post Office had methodically gone about destroying his business, his life and his health. He tried to explain how he felt now, saying:

“I’m a bit broken… cautious and scared. I’ve always been somebody who respects authority and expects people to treat you as you treat them. The Post Office… don’t care about anybody, and that makes you anxious and scared all the time when you’re working for them… and there’s no support. They don’t care… you’re just a number, and I couldn’t cope with that. I’ve always worked in teams and with people who there’s mutual respect and there just wasn’t any of that and it just grinds you down… [he breaks down]… you feel so alone. And so… I’m not as confident as I was.”

Malcolm has had two strokes, brought on by stress. During his evidence he paid tribute to Lesley, calling her the “strongest person I know”.

Before he finished, Malcolm gave a written statement to the inquiry. It is a powerful cri de coeur which goes to the heart of this whole scandal. Afterwards the inquiry chair, Sir Wyn Williams, paid tribute to this “formidable speech”. As he left the witness seat, I asked Malcolm if I could have what he had written. He very kindly gave me his handwritten papers. I have transcribed his words below:

Malcolm Simpson’s oral statement to the inquiry

“These people take away your sense of worth and your sense of self. There is no need to invest in the individual, to nurture and develop. No desire or culture to help people grow, to make them feel valued.

Instead there are just lies, indifference, aggression, all take. Demands for total loyalty to the brand and blind acceptance the Post Office is always right.

The reality is the complete opposite. The only people within the whole Post Office structure who are held accountable for every action, every stamp and every penny are Subpostmasters. And that accountability is managed by a totally corrupt computer system which is not fit for purpose. And a system that is policed by a corrupt hierarchy who spout the party line over and over – “Horizon is robust and works very well”, “You are the only person in the whole network who is having problems.” – Nigel Allen [Malcolm’s Contracts Manager] told me that.

Auditors arrive, turn your business into a crime scene, provide no written evidence, get the Contracts Manager on the phone after just one-and-a half hours and his first statement is: “Well – you need to resign.”

When I reacted to this he just hung up – he knew he didn’t have to argue with me – everything is stacked in his favour. He knows I am going to crash and burn. After all, Subpostmasters are totally expendable.

You are belittled by the whole process, you can’t prove your side of the argument, you can’t defend yourself, there is no support, no honest fair process, you are alone.

It’s too much for many. You feel abandoned, tainted and that is what they want. A quick call, grab some money, move on to the next victim. Leaving heartache, anguish and devastation in their wake.

If you’re lucky, and I was, someone steps up, trusts you and guides you through to the calm times. They carry the whole burden until you recover. Eventually you dig in, start afresh, reinvent and move on. But the hurt and pain is always there, buried deep, suppressed, but always eating away.

After a stroke you are known as a ‘stroke survivor’. I’m lucky enough to consider myself a Post Office survivor as well – but they damaged me and tried to damage my self, my worth, my family, my business and my community.

What do I want from the the Post Office?

– Significant compensation paid to all victims including the 555 [claimants in the Bates v Post Office litigation] now. Plus the costs that are owed to the 555. It will never bring back loved ones lost or replace all the lost years but it will allow every victim to move forward with some sense of security and with less stress, anxiety and hurt.

– Post Office to start behaving with honesty and integrity. Providing full and open disclosure going forward. They will never extinguish the deeply embedded toxic culture that still exists until there is root and branch change. This change will only come through closing this devastating chapter fully, by coming clean and admitting all the lies and exposing all the guilty at all levels of the organisation.

I fear for this inquiry in the long run, because the actions of the Post office previously all show that they will do anything at any cost to protect themselves. The civil case [Bates v Post Office group litigation] was fought in the most aggressive manner by Post Office and when they attempted to recuse Judge Fraser and tarnish his reputation, it showed everyone how low they are prepared to go.

Be careful, Sir Wyn, and your colleagues here at the inquiry. Post Office will try every underhand, dishonest and evil tactic to destroy any threat and they have powerful friends who will back them all the way. They never want the truth to come out. I fear for all your reputations and well being.

Messrs. Scully [Postal Affairs Minister], Kwarteng [Business Secretary] and Read [Post Office Chief Executive], through your delaying and blocking of proper compensation for all the victims of this scandal you are as guilty and complicit as [Paula] Vennells, [Angela] van den Bogerd, Elaine Ridge and Nigel Allen and all the others who bullied and terrorised so many.

Sort it out now – do the decent thing for once and put the victims first.”

---

After putting Mr Simpson’s statement on twitter, I went to Derbyshire, where I had been invited to read from my book in a pub (the Royal Oak in Ockbrook – see below). There was a member of the 555 present (Tracy McFadden, who spoke very movingly), several serving Subpostmasters, a CPS lawyer, a police officer, a lawyer representing 11 convicted former Subpostmasters and two senior Post Office executives. I finished by reading Malcolm’s statement to the room, and I will continue to read it at every event I go to.

The number of people affected by the Horizon scandal is a question news editors used to ask me and journalists used to ask themselves when trying to get some kind of handle on scale of this story. This was in the bad old days when the Post Office refused to give out information and no one else had a record of it.

Alan Bates from the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance always had a perceptive view of the likely scale. In our very first conversation in 2010 he told me the number of people affected could be “the high hundreds, possibly more”. I thought that sounded unlikely.

Computer Weekly’s seminal 2009 article which broke the story featured seven people.

The Welsh-language Taro Naw documentary strand, which broadcast its first investigation the same year, found a further 29.

By the time I did my first investigation for the BBC in 2011, that number had expanded to 55.

Then, in 2013, the Post Office’s own Complaint and Mediation scheme attracted the hitherto unimaginable figure of 150.

In 2017, at the first open hearing of the High Court litigation, we were told that 198 people had signed up as claimants. This included people who had been forced to hand over money and/or been sacked, as well as those who had been prosecuted and convicted.

By the time the group litigation at the High Court began in 2018, there were more than 500 claimants. Of those claimants 74 had been prosecuted and 61 had criminal convictions.

It was only after the claimants had secured their stunning victory at the High Court that the true scale of the scandal became apparent. In April 2020 the Post Office told me it was looking at “around 500 additional cases … which resulted in convictions.”

That was the moment the doors were blown off. We knew there were 500+ people involved in the civil litigation – ie people who had lost money over the scandal, but now the Post Office was fessing up to “around 500” criminal convictions using Horizon evidence.

This admission came at the same time thousands of people were dying of a horrible virus, which rightly dominated the news agenda. I passed the figure to the excellent Tom Witherow at the Daily Mail. He and his editor were equally astounded, but given what was going on in the world, we were lucky it made p27.

On 25 May 2020 we were told the Post Office was “reviewing” 900 prosecutions since 1999, then, in April 2021 we were given the final reckoning – the Post Office believed 736 convictions between 2000 and 2013 might be unsafe . This briefly increased to 738 convictions between 2000 and 2015, but in the last couple of weeks the Post Office has settled on a number of 706.

The number has reduced from 736 “as further information was received during the work” the Post Office is doing to investigate prosecutions based on Horizon IT evidence.

Of these 706 “94… have now been through the appeal Courts” with “71 convictions overturned and 23 dismissed/abandoned/refused permission” (the 72nd conviction which was overturned was a DWP prosecution based on Post Office Horizon IT evidence).

On 11 January the Post Office chief executive told Parliament that 736 convictions were unsafe. If the Post Office is now saying it believes 706 convictions might be unsafe, of which 23 are unlikely to be overturned, we are down to the high six hundreds.

Getting the numbers right matters, as is remembering that every number represents a person and a family being put through hell. The fact these figures are still in “the high hundreds” is almost insane. And that’s before you begin to count the thousands of Postmasters who weren’t prosecuted, but who were still forced to hand over money to cover the holes in their branch accounts. Many of these individuals lost their life savings. Some were sacked anyway, losing their business investment and livelihoods.

I’m rather glad there is going to be a statutory inquiry, so we can at last begin to understand how this happened.

NB – all the unlinked stats above are referenced in my book, which is available below.