SSLO000131
$SL0000131
Post Office audio file 13015
CHRIS: In my pile of tricks we have the (inaudible)
together with the comments to the (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: Yes, let's get that. POL figured this.
CHRIS: (interference) it was useful actually for POL to
hear from you on certain roles. It was one of the
(inaudible) being CEO is reading and writing, and
actually when you came in she was able to keep an eye --
MR WARMINGTON: Sort of identify --
CHRIS: -- understand (interference) and I think when
I talked to her afterwards she came out with a view sort
of (inaudible) more solutions. So what way is there
through this that meets the criteria of (inaudible) of
(inaudible) certain officers.
The converse (inaudible) wrong is, I thought there
was (inaudible) in that meeting that actually has
a means of getting to, if you like, the absolute truth
of the matter that mediation is probably not the best
device actually. Mediation (inaudible) sort of
mucking -- compromised process.
IAN: It was described in the last meeting as horse trading,
a rather rough and ready process that sometimes depends
more on the skill of the mediator and on one of the
parties rather than that on the underlying submissions.
CHRIS: I'm not sure if it was Kay's expression or somebody
else's (interference). It is almost (inaudible)
I suppose (interference).
IAN: When I took over from (interference) maximum and
I think it could have been --
MR WARMINGTON: (inaudible) I think it started with
Arbuthnot and the Jo Hamilton case and then it became
(inaudible). But the initial work was around about 25,
pretty similar to 30, of which two were the original MP
cases. And Angela was sort of dumped into the pool
saying, look, it would have been handy to have two
cases -- and that was the Jane Brewer case and one
other.
CHRIS: So you did your interim report --
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
IAN: We had 27 MP cases and 19 JFSA cases and that is as
a result of finding extensive publicity in the
(inaudible) magazine that goes out and so on. And
obviously (interference) applications. And Alan is
still saying that people are getting in touch with him
and saying, you know, they hadn't heard anything about
it, they have only just found out about it. It is
slightly odd.
MR WARMINGTON: Also the terminology, use of the word "case"
was true with regard to the 27. They were cases with
multiple events which were being reported, much of the
ones we are looking at now, mediation of cases. But 19
were more likely events, that's why we referred them to
spot (inaudible). People were reporting a particular
situation the idea being --
CHRIS: This week's --
MR WARMINGTON: I would like to report something recent that
we think is serious. This is what happened, so it was
more of an event.
IAN: Yes the JFSA submissions (interference) investigation
on possible problems with Horizon and that was one of
the reasons why we contacted SPOT (interference). We
weren't looking at the totality of their relationship
with the Post Office in the same way that we had to for
many of the SPM cases. But the intention was to sort of
surgically drill into a specific issue or a small number
of issues in fact, that would increase the likelihood of
us finding some evidence on an underlying (inaudible).
CHRIS: So (inaudible).
IAN: Of course what we are now dealing with is a bit of
a hybrid, and Ron and I sort of refer to the original
terms of reference, the original agreements of job 1 and
job 2 being sort of mediation, as we touched on with
Paula. There is still a bit of a gap (interference) of
our concerns is we mustn't lose sight of MPs as
stakeholders in all of this, and we need to sort of make
sure that we meet their requirements in terms of
reporting and updates and everything else.
CHRIS: Meeting in March -- 24th.
IAN: Yes. What's still slightly up in the air on that is
exactly what the (inaudible) what they will require.
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
MR WARMINGTON: But for you Chris, at the risk of repeating
this, what we wanted POL or whoever goes to (inaudible)
to be briefed on and I think probably has been, is that
we know, we know that every time we face the MPs one
question always comes out, have you found evidence of
unsafe conditions? Which is why when the scope of it
came out, (inaudible) keep away from that. We know how
to answer that. We knew it was going to come up the
first time it did come up. We rehearsed what we were
going to say which was along the lines of the
vernacular: who are we, we are accountants -- who are we
to stand in judgment on the courts of the land, if
verdicts have been reached, particularly if somebody has
pleaded guilty to something, who are we to comment on
that and why? However, if we have found during the
course of our work or it has been produced to us
something that might be relevant to the defence, then,
we will not hesitate to put it forward. It is
absolutely our position. And that usually gets us off
the hook. And it is much cast (inaudible).
MALE SPEAKER 1: Indeed it is not in a position to --
MR WARMINGTON: And part of the rules of the answer so --
MALE SPEAKER 1: And in terms of the software (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: So all eyes on (interference) at that point.
MALE SPEAKER 1: I mean Tony's clear steer seems consistent
with our own (inaudible) advice is that (interference)
on going duty of disclosure for -- in respect of new
matters, and I think the threshold is really low, it
might have been relevant (inaudible). Not it would have
been relevant, just it might be. Obviously there are
boundaries around that. That's something that
(inaudible) and Chris you will make sure (inaudible)
keep your eye on. I think the organisation has very
much seen to that (inaudible) make sure POL is --
MR WARMINGTON: The nearest we have got to that is an
interim report is on (inaudible) 22, which was the
Alison Ball situation. That was particularly germane
because her MP was a guy called Mike Wood, a really
effective hard working guy, who has been at every
meeting and is frankly gunning for poll position.
So, what he -- what came up on that case is that
she had pleaded guilty to false accounting but the
backdrop to that, was she got in a hell of a mess,
3
IAN:
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
probably of her own making, but possibly because of the
problems she was having with the instruction manual
because of the time [overspeaking] the Post Office was
open within a short amount of time within a short space
of development. So on a Wednesday night particularly,
selling scratch cards, which if they are not really
careful, get them out of sync (interference) Horizon
(interference) .
February 2010 (inaudible) change of procedure.
February 2012 there was a change of software which
closed the (inaudible) out and therefore after that
there couldn't be an explanation. The point was in the
build up to that time POL itself found a huge number of
errors occurring (inaudible) report.
The issue in that case would be is our current
knowledge of the problems that were then occurring
germane to her situation at the time? Not germane to
whether she committed false accounting, she did, but was
it germane to why she did false accounting? Did she
(inaudible) because of the scratch card problem?
Chris, the other thing you need to be sensitive to is
the MPs I think were not sort convinced by the mediation
proposals and I think it was James Arbuthnot.
CHRIS: What was their? I can sort of see the obstruction
IAN:
why.
I think they felt it was a bit of a soft option and it
was a digression from the full army investigative mode
that they sort of clearly wanted and thought that, you
know, people had set it up and up to the point of the
July 2013 sort of meeting, you know the way forward was
to complete these investigations, complete this
(inaudible) views and so on.
Mediation then sort of came up as a proposal and
I think it was James Arbuthnot who sort of managed to
sort of pacify them to a certain extent. But, I think
that will only survive if we get a pretty successful
sort of outcome to sort of the mediation. If
a significant number of applicants fail to reach
agreement in mediation, I suspect that that will
infuriate the sort of MPs who feel -- it is a bit like
you know Yes Minister when they set up a committee. It
buys time but it doesn't actually sort of solve the
problem.
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
CHRIS: Yeah quite.
IAN: I think that is something just to be alert to but if
you want to carry the support of MPs you, as a party to
the mediation, must ensure that wherever possible and
appropriate you know every case reaches a successful
outcome.
CHRIS: What I would suggest is this, and I think that is
a very real sort of risk, we go through -- POL expressed
(inaudible) there is money on it --
IAN: What's the point if we are not going to get --
CHRIS: Yeah. What is the point and particularly now as we
go further into it, I don't know whether word gets
around (inaudible) if you weren't involved in the scheme
in any way shape or form (inaudible). How am I ever
going to have a rational discussion with him about --
IAN: But if something happened ten years ago that resulted
in them losing their livelihood, you can quickly easily
work out how they can reach those sort of --
CHRIS: Yes.
MR WARMINGTON: Those three cases we have got cases 9, 14
and 1, Brewer and Castledon, we have gone right across
the spectrum. We have got Beijage, whose father
represented him. His father is a retired barrister,
civil servant and his father said to me: how much do you
think I should ask for? He came straight out. I said
look I can't answer that. You need to have that
conversation with (inaudible). I mean he is probably
thinking of just horse trading. Jane Brewer, on the
other hand, probably one of the most [overspeaking]
extraordinary. Probably somebody said she's just trying
to do it for her daughter. She wants to cash in her
pension to pay the shortfall (inaudible) repair the
damages. You could probably offer her a small amount,
if it is appropriate and she would be very happy. She
is a pretty reasonable person (inaudible) 5 million.
MALE SPEAKER 1: There is a network not just the JFSA, that
are emailing me [overspeaking].
MR WARMINGTON: And Roger --
MALE SPEAKER 3: [overspeaking] there is not love between
the NFSP and --
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
MR WARMINGTON: Baker is the one we are dealing with.
IAN:
He is trying to get in on this. He has been batted
off. But he has been appointed in a personal capacity
by one applicant.
MR WARMINGTON: The venom directed towards the NFSP is
IAN:
almost universal among the population, they haven't got
a good word to say about George (inaudible). They
regard them broadly as lackeys who are taking POL'S
money and representing -- (inaudible) to (inaudible)
obviously, he couldn't have his cake and eat it. He
couldn't represent employees of the Post Office if they
were not employees, and legally they are not. But, on
the other hand, if you can discipline them, suspend them
without pay as though they were employees, that's sort
of (interference).
The other potential sort of high value case, which
I know we touched on in the meeting with POL, is these
discontinued prosecutions because on the face of it,
because of your policy that (inaudible) which is to
suspend you know the beginning of a criminal sort of
investigation, irrespective of the facts on sort of
whatever, and if subsequently that has resulted in them
losing their livelihood, which it almost always normally
does --
MALE SPEAKER 3: -- no further balance, no further action
goes out.
IAN: Yes, suspension is -- I see this a lot in some of the
HR cases that I get involved in. Suspension is meant to
be a neutral act and I'm afraid in Post Office terms,
because of the nature of the contract and the
relationship (inaudible) it is anything but a neutral
act and where (interference) a subpostmaster loses their
livelihood and potentially goes bankrupt and may lose
their house and so on, and then, if six months later,
that investigation doesn't lead to a prosecution, that's
a pretty strong case for them to argue that something
was done badly wrong.
MR WARMINGTON: Yes, in the corporate world -- the
corporations I have worked at, I have suspended -- in
fact I withdrew the power from my investigations to
suspend or fire any employees. The way it worked was we
all (inaudible) recommendation to the HR team and if the
HR team did not do what we recommended, we would take it
to the chairman of the company. So we would have
6
IAN:
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
a right to appeal.
We withdrew the power (inaudible) to suspend them.
But in every case in my entire history of suspension
never once did we suspend a person without pay. We
always took the view, even when we knew the person was
guilty, and we knew that it might take four or five
months to get to the bottom of it, we always continued
to pay them because we always took it (inaudible)
recover that money is part of the asset recovery
exercise. And we always did. So it was heads we won
and tails we didn't lose by continuing to pay.
I think the other point that again has the potential
sort of impact across the board with this is the point
that I made somewhere in here, that if the Post Office
is operating rationally, it needs to evaluate the
potential sort of cost of litigation, if an applicant
mediator goes down the litigation route, and ensures
that, as part of the mediation sort of proposals, that
it (inaudible) is at least a significant portion of the
outcome of the investigation.
CHRIS: It wouldn't surprise you to know that we have run
IAN:
the scenario analysis to see what the (inaudible) are.
I will share with you, just for your ears at this stage,
sort of where the legal analysis went to from our
external (inaudible) is that the -- even in the very,
very worst case scenario, the figures that we would be
talking about at a civil level in the court are vastly
smaller, vastly smaller than has been claimed. That
does two things. You can see it is good news on the one
hand, and sort of bad news on the other.
Because it is not bridging that gap.
CHRIS: So the challenge I have got is -- and this actually
IAN:
(inaudible) some of these things (inaudible) -- is
actually how do we try and bridge that gap? I think
Paula expressed it slightly differently that, in a sense
more suitably. I think she said, when we set this up we
were thinking (inaudible) -- an apology and a sort of
small sum of money and that was -- I (inaudible) I'm
terribly sorry, here's some money for your troubles
which would fit very well with a number of cases.
Brewer absolutely perfect and there would be quite a few
cases where it would work.
There is an argument for getting those cases dealt
with relatively early or quickly. [overspeaking]
7
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
CHRIS: Hope you didn't mind that I was frank with you.
MR WARMINGTON: Delighted you are and we will be equally
frank. There are at least two cases, more I suspect,
where what the individuals have said is, look I am
blacklisted. My wife is running (inaudible) the Post
Office is (inaudible). I thank them for allowing my
wife to continue to run the business. She is sick now,
I was going to help her but I can't because I'm
blacklisted. Were we to find that that person was
innocent or could be forgiven, then just the lifting the
blacklist for that person (inaudible) another problem
further down, but it would certainly do (inaudible).
BELINDA: Just following that through in terms of the
IAN:
process, to what extent do you consider those sorts of
issues when you are considering the (inaudible).
Not really at all. I mean our role is sort of
fact-finding, not, you know, sort of interpreting those
facts from the point of view (inaudible) to the
applicant.
MR WARMINGTON: I tell you what did come in in the early
IAN:
draft of Jane Brewer, I wanted to say (inaudible) along
the lines of: look, this person is -- it is unusual that
she really does hold the Post Office in high regard and
its people and Fujitsu and she says Horizon is a really
lovely system. Here is a person you can do business
with. That's really where I was coming from. It is
a person who without a doubt, I don't even know if she
is going to mediation, but she is already halfway across
the bridge. [overspeaking]. And in that case, it is
one of the two where frankly, as distinguished
(interference) the investigation, the lack of
investigation (interference). Angela and Lynne Norbury
has really dug deep to find out what was going on
(inaudible) discovered what was going on, but they had
done a very credible job in doing that. And the other
person recognised that and was respectful of it. And
I think a somewhat reluctant applicant to wait for the
scheme, I got the sense that's a gnat's whisker for
closure and that actually is a common theme. Very often
in these cases the Post Office has got within a gnat's
whisker of closure for the person and then it didn't and
then it got worse.
But there is an argument for clearing out some of the
low hanging fruit, because you look at 147 applications
as Paula clearly has done. She looked at calculations
8
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
about length of time, reports (interference) bit
unmanageable. If we can sort of reduce that 147 even by
say 50%, it is probably going to be much easier to
manage the (inaudible) .
CHRIS: That's got to be right.
MR WARMINGTON: They are all overwhelmed. Alan was
(inaudible) 150 in the (inaudible) when I estimated the
rate we were going (inaudible) but it was a lot more
than you know we were geared up to handle.
CHRIS: And that is cause for concern because whatever way
you cut it, you follow the existing (interference), it
could be years (interference) suggested this.
MALE SPEAKER 1: Certainly the view was expressed in the
last (interference) that the earliest we see this
getting (interference) is probably December/January and
clearly Paula (inaudible) October. But as we mentioned
in the meeting there is not any chance of achieving that
at the moment.
IAN: Shall we work our way through your piece of paper.
MR WARMINGTON: Before we do, let me sort of (inaudible)
most of us understand this, the nature of the majority
coming in is sadly all over the place. We have got
applications that vary from: I had all these differences
and I haven't got the foggiest idea what caused them but
I'm pretty sure it was Horizon; right through to: I had
this problem and that problem and here's the
application, quite detailed applications. On
an individual scoring basis, 0 to 10, we have some
coming in at quality 0 and some at quality probably 7 or
6. [overspeaking]
CHRIS: Some have crawled out of the woodwork having not
made any claims at any point over the last --
MR WARMINGTON: I heard about this stuff and I thought
perhaps that's why I had shortfalls. I can't remember
what my shortfalls were but [overspeaking] there is
a minor score. Minus 2 to plus 3.
But then in come the CORs and there are two sorts.
Those that do their own work and those that employ
a professional adviser. The ones that come in on their
own vary in quality, usually from about level 1 through
to probably not higher than level 3 in terms of the easy
9
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
to understand (inaudible). Then you go to the CQRs
prepared by the professional advisers that vary in
quality from 0, the worst professional adviser are as
bad as the worst ones that had no help at all. Beijage
is a good example where he wrote about three pages of
bullet points that were incoherent babble essentially
and all his adviser did was add a covering note and
deliver the same document.
In terms of (inaudible) and then presumably
(inaudible). On top of that they vary in length from
say (inaudible) people like that, quite succinct, six or
seven pages through to the big stuff that comes in,
20/30 pages from Emma Porter, which is the best quality
you get, through to this one, which is one COR of
373 pages.
MALE SPEAKER 1: Whose is that?
MR WARMINGTON: This is 118. Generally what we are finding
IAN:
is there is a difference in approach between those
prepared by lawyers and those prepared by accountants.
But (interference) recommended (interference) which is
that we go through that and instead of dumping is
straight across to Angela, it goes into a buffer. We
then look at it, go back and say, thank you for that,
this is not clear or that is not clear; what do you mean
by that; if you put the word "not" out of that sentence.
Then they harden that off. That puts on a two or three
week delay in the process but speeds things up
(inaudible) .
I think a further recommendation which really explains
the work is, before POL start working on (inaudible)
I think it would be very useful to have Second Sight and
POL agree at that point what the ten issues are because
some of the applicants, some of the CORs are frankly so
ambiguous that you know it does make a lot of sense
possibly to agree upon (interference) and certainly as
a minimum between --
CHRIS: Yes.
MR WARMINGTON: Just to reinforce that point. On the
application, remember we did this spreadsheet, this one
ticked only one box, box A. Foreign Exchange. Quite
strange. It was a pretty unusual box. Only four people
in the population could tick that box. So in comes this
and this is going to obviously tick a few more but it is
important that when this goes across to POL we say this
10
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
applicant raised these five issues. Then we kind of
stick to the tramlines. We say this person raised point
A and 13, trading as a (inaudible) and point 12, the
help centre said to do one thing and then two weeks
later said you should not have done that. That is
point 12.
If he is raising those, we make it clear to POL
that's what we are expecting to see answers to.
Otherwise what we have found is we get an asynchronist
result. They raised, the applicant (inaudible) raised
those five issues. POL answers three of them and two
more and then we are messing about trying to bridge
those two.
MALE SPEAKER 1: It would be much more efficient to
(interference) .
MR WARMINGTON: We do.
MALE SPEAKER 1: I think (inaudible) but what I would hate
to happen is for the applicant then to feel short
changed because they think they have raised --
IAN: Which is why [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: Sorry, we do identify the points.
IAN: -- is actually reach out to the applicant and get them
to also buy into the identification of the key issues.
MR WARMINGTON: For example, on Castledon, he raised four
points but the extra point, which is anonymous, is why
did they hit me with such a big club; when in the space
of three months, from four months, from the first
shortage I had, I was in court? Why did they do that?
That's not a thematic issue but it is a point that
we obviously have to -- he raised it, we have to -- his
PA endorsed that being raised and we as POL have to
respond to that. That's where the thematic.
(inaudible) 17 with the super thematic. None, as it
were, become a variable number because something can be
added. But Ian's point is, if he has raised nine
incidents in all and seven of them were thematic, two of
them (inaudible), then that is what we would expect the
Post Office to respond to and it is really helpful for
us, and speeds up the eventual report if we all know
that that's what's being dealt with. We have tried it
out and it does work.
11
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
CHRIS: (inaudible) to take to Angela I suppose seeing
whether her process can be biased in that direction.
MR WARMINGTON: One of the professional advisers actually
did that, just off the top of her head and that was
Emma. She attended the Birmingham session. We showed
them that and one of those was in the training material
anonymised. She caught onto the fact it would be very
helpful in her report to use the thematic pages.
CHRIS: (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: Correct, yeah.
CHRIS: Simplify things and speed them up and one way to do
that is the synchronisation.
MR WARMINGTON: Yes. When I go through this I use two
coloured highlighter pens and I will put simply T13 in
the margin, T5. And I know now when I go through that
again I can flick through and say now I'm writing up the
subject of FX. I'm looking for anything that relates to
T6 and I can go through that really quickly and say
that's (inaudible). Otherwise I'm going through this,
back and forth, with 17 different --
IAN: The thing however with the streamlined process is
going to absolutely really (interference). On Friday,
as we all heard on the telephone call last week, because
Kay expressed some pretty strong (inaudible) views that
she was expecting a much more substantive report from
Second Sight. That is something that Ron and I have
given a lot of thought to. We are convinced that we
might call it the more minimal type approach is
absolutely right. We do expect the mediator to read all
of the material from the applicant and to read all the
material from POL and therefore the Second Sight report
stands on top of that and compares and sort of
contrasts, highlights some issues, and also as he
introduces any particular insights that Second Sight
have.
But, one of the reasons for doing that was to
address the point Paula made at the last meeting that if
you are going to be producing 150 page reports, that's
going to take a finite amount of time. If you multiply
that by 147, whatever the number is, we are still going
to be doing this in three years' time. We say that is
the reason we decided to go for a more minimalistic
approach. But certainly the shorter, more succinct
12
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
report is the more consistent with that approach than
clearly the model, the (inaudible) style of report that
Kay felt --
CHRIS: To be honest, I wasn't quite sure why Kay was coming
from where she came from. [overspeaking]. Mediation
background.
MR WARMINGTON: She is a mediator, she knows how to
(inaudible). She knows that what she wants as
a mediator is one document to read that summarises the
whole situation. If she goes into mediation and what
has been given to her is wait for it, a thematic report,
a glossary, the applicants' original application
file pages, one of those, a POL response with 100 pages
of attachments and then our report as well to read, she
thinks, I only want to read one report. I want one
report that tells me everything and then, if I want to
go into details, I will use that. I do not want to have
to read (inaudible) which says -- which summarises, as
it definitely will, what the applicant has said and how
POL has responded. Using the tramlines you have laid
out, which are great, is where have we got common
ground, where haven't we? That's great. Where it falls
down and Ian and I didn't quite come to blows over this,
that is something we have to deal with, is the issue
of -- probably best dealt with as a simple example -- in
the Brewer case there were (inaudible) POL
unsurprisingly in (interference). You rarely get the
Horizon desk calls (interference). Kath I think it was
who prepared that response or Shirley did, and said of
the 116 calls, 26 plus one, call them 27, related to
Horizon. They gave me the whole lot. They volunteered
the whole lot. (interference) yellow highlighter.
(interference) the yellow highlighter I was referring
to. I went through 26 and 27 and there were 40.
I don't know quite why. There may have been six plus
one (interference) didn't say Horizon and clearly they
were related to what the applicant hadn't raised.
So 41 of the calls were actually directed to
(interference). One of those related to the (inaudible)
which POL referred to, related to the famous customer
who came in wanting £14,000 of premium savings and was
charged £60,000. The reason for that was the first
offering of a debit card went through and the second
offering of the different debit card for the remaining
20,000 was rejected by Horizon. It said no, the card
wad declined but it had actually accepted the debit.
Reoffered, the second time it went through. It has now
13
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
gone through three times. Three lots of 20,000. The
customer went away, checked with their bank, didn't
realise it happened. Suddenly realised it happened, she
was 60,000, went away on holiday came back and
(inaudible) unsurprisingly.
Now, there is a lot more detail but I won't go
into this. Bottom line is this is what we call a one
sided transaction. A transaction that because of the
relationship between Horizon and the loop system, you
can get a situation where there is four possibilities.
Either both systems processed the transaction
completely, or neither system does (inaudible) or one
does and the other one doesn't. That one doesn't and
that one does.
So you can either get a customer who gets
something for nothing or nothing for something. In this
case the customer got nothing for something on that
third debit to her account. The help desk's view on
that was, look, it is perfectly normal, business as
usual, these things happen, tell the customer in four or
five days she will get her money back. That's fine.
But two points. One, that was not referred to by Jane
Brewer in her application. It wasn't referred to by POL
either by mistake or deliberately in its response.
IAN: And that specific event had not contributed to any of
the losses --
MR WARMINGTON: No because it would have generated
a surplus.
IAN: This whole story falls outside the scope --
MR WARMINGTON: So I (inaudible) it up and got to the bottom
of it and then I put it in the report and Ian says, no,
it is outside the scope. And unsurprisingly we had
a bit of a row about it. My position was, hang on, it
is germane in this case, she was only down 8,000. What
I'm speculating, but it is not evidence based, is, if
this half transaction to her benefit (inaudible) -- if
the customer hadn't discovered it, she would have had
a £20,000 surplus that month.
CHRIS: Or (inaudible) when --
MR WARMINGTON: No. She would have had a surplus because
the system would have regarded her as having taken
£20,000 more than she did. We don't know whether the
14
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
backlog reconciliation process would have picked it up.
Probably it would and then a TC would have gone out.
But the point is, it is evidence of that phenomenon
occurring and we know that the opposite also happens
where a customer finishes up not paying for something
they did (inaudible) the opposite; where the telecoms
interrupt affects Horizon but not the link system and
then if they are paying then they will get something
through Horizon for nothing through the link. Because
we know that can happen, to me it was quite important
but because of the narrowness of the scope or the
limitations, we are in some quandary as to whether that
should be in the report. That is the sort of issue we
are dealing with.
CHRIS: Ian, I think the -- I think that (interference)
clearly where an applicant has raised something with
(inaudible) that ought to be explored obviously.
I think (inaudible) something -- a few things well could
be. They ought to be explored. If in those cases then
there is an issue which may or may not actually be of
relevance, my sense is that unless -- if the (inaudible)
four points (inaudible) but it is raised in the report,
my temptation -- my inclination I think then would be,
nonetheless, to focus on the issues that they have
clearly raised. Because the reasoning is that, it is
a bit of a rough and ready job --
MR WARMINGTON: It is a grey area --
CHRIS: -- draw a line somewhere and the whole process --
But it is not something that the mediator is going to
be able to make use of and frankly it is probably going
to confuse the mediator.
MR WARMINGTON: But that's what we are trying to cover. In
this case there was a further leap which made it germane
to our report. But it is not in our report though.
That is there was a really effective recorded interview
between the lady and good people in POL and brought into
that meeting was a systems expert, an IT expert. And
Jane in that meeting said: are you suspicious that
essentially what I just said had happened? She didn't
refer to that transaction. She had probably forgotten
it, but she said I have a feeling that some of these
giro payments in the link system were getting out of
whack.
She was reassured by the systems person that that
15
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
could not happen, that in fact there was no possibility
that the Horizon could fail the process of transaction.
It would either completely process it or completely
fail. And that is true, but it is not true about -- if
you are referring to Horizon that is true. If you are
referring to the completeness of the processing of
a transaction, using two systems, that is not true. And
that was the point that was (inaudible) in my report.
So she kind of had raised it because she had
raised it directly with POL but she hadn't put it in her
CQR and she did not [overspeaking]. They would have
picked up on that.
CHRIS: If the loss (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: And I had to say --
IAN: It is the evidence that the mediator will need to look
at in order to understand -- consider the issues that
are being raised.
MR WARMINGTON: Yes, and if I was a mediator I would say,
hang on a minute, if that was in a report, if the bloody
system can give a customer nothing for something, then
it could also give that lady £20,000 of premium bonds
for nothing. Put it that way round and if she had gone
back and thought that is bloody good I have got 40,000
of premium when I only paid 20,000, that would have
given the --
IAN: The risk of that is it is a bit like how long is
a piece of string? If you start sowing seeds of doubt
(interference) you can't actually nail down either the
numbers or the [overspeaking]. There has got to be
an evidential connection with the issues that are going
to the mediator and part of our role is to simplify and
structure that material because if we don't do that,
I think mediators are going to be sort of overwhelmed
with the --
MR WARMINGTON: But there is history of this. For example,
when this had first came out, a year ago, I wrote to
whoever it was then -- it wasn't Andy it was --
BELINDA: Simon.
MR WARMINGTON: Simon and said, look, I want to know if the
investigation team or whoever has been told by
customers, look, I completed this transaction and never
16
IAN:
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
got charged for it. If you have a file of those, you
need to disclose them because we do know of one or two.
One was reported in the newspapers for example and is
raised in evidence.
POL wasn't tracking that sort of evidence.
MR WARMINGTON: I was told there wasn't any. My point was
IAN:
that the last thing you want is the next time our report
comes out, you have these people coming out of the
woodworks saying, actually, POL sort of (inaudible) blue
in the face of that; one lady said she got £5,000,
something for nothing and she was told take a holiday
with the money. Now, that's fine but it wasn't POL
whose money was taken, it was the SPM's money one would
assume.
If there are cases like that, the last thing we
want is in another lot of splurge of publicity is people
coming forward and saying: yeah, I wrote this email to
POL and then POL is going to be embarrassed --
It is moving away from the individual application to
the generality --
CHRIS: My guiding principle on this is simplify it because
it is very -- a can of worms actually. If you follow
the string then you can end up anywhere. So my guiding
principle has always been to (inaudible) try to do
fairness by the SMPs as quickly and efficiently as far
as possible, so that's -- and so even before, I suppose,
any issues arose about quantum loss or how much, whether
or not -- my concern initially was this was building up
to take a long time and I rather felt that was not right
for obvious reasons.
Not right in general reasons for the SMP actually.
Actually it could be nine months later. A lot going on,
not writing -- but I do accept your point, it ends up
being rough and ready because you are not -- in
a perfect world, with the accessories resources you have
got (inaudible) that's not the nature of --
MR WARMINGTON: We do find this, to reassure you, we do find
it both extraordinarily helpful to reduce and simplify
in terms of the production of the final report and to
keep the tramlines as best we can.
CHRIS: I'm attracted by your idea to keep the mediator
involved, (inaudible) It would be nice to say here are
17
IAN:
the reports, what would you make of them professionally.
And how can we improve the process to the benefit of
ultimately the applicant, the mediator? This is not to
say that Kay's input isn't sort of helpful. It often
is. But she's not going to be acting as a mediator in
these cases and I think we are now at the point where we
are quite close to having cases that could be sort of
mediated and perhaps before we press that final
button -- it is certainly something I have done on other
occasions, when we have got everybody into a room like
this, we have all got the packs, the application, the
COR, the Post Office report, the Second Sight report and
we almost go through that as a sort of testing example,
to test the case. And get the mediator to say, well,
I don't find this very helpful or I really need this to
be cross-referenced to this and so on. And then we can
apply those lessons that are learnt to the rest of the
cases.
MR WARMINGTON: You have quite sensibly raised the point
IAN:
about, the way you tackle this stuff is not quite
random, but we just deal with stuff in the order they
come in. There's nothing comfortable about that.
That's why we struggle over the first report
(inaudible). It is actually the most difficult one of
the lot.
My comment was sort of tongue in cheek but it is
almost the applicants who are managing the process,
rather than the sort of Working Group.
MR WARMINGTON: You wouldn't necessarily want to deal with
Castledon as the first case. It is a 5 million-pound
claim. The big issue is why was he sort of -- why did
they go after him for a £26,000 debt when they knew he
didn't have two ha'pennies to rub together and why incur
£21,000 in costs etc? There is a counter argument to
that but that's where he is coming from (inaudible). Is
it a representative case? No, it isn't. It is an odd
one -~
CHRIS: -- any process --
IAN:
But also grouping cases together so similar cases are
heard by the same mediator. There are lots of options.
I think I have said in my introduction, this was an
initial brain storming session just to sort of capture
a few ideas and hopefully this will help.
18
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
BELINDA: I just wanted to make a couple of points
(inaudible). In relation to CEDR, I met with them last
week, (inaudible). The opportunity to get an idea of
the (inaudible) looks likes and I think it is fair to
say that CEDR have -- if you like -- this as a process,
and also doing it on this sort of scale is not something
they have encountered before. So they will bring their
expertise to bear, but they consider (inaudible) I have
got a letter from them in draft form to say these things
that they would like to recommend in terms of
(inaudible) this is a process-- and so I am sure they
will be happy to do that.
One of the things that they said, when I met with
them, their manager, said can you manage this process
now we are getting a clear idea of the timescales? And
this volume of cases (inaudible) for them too. Now they
want to (inaudible) that they can manage the custody,
I do not think they can but then (inaudible).
But one of the things that they said that
mediators rely on is (inaudible) they will get
(interference). But also then when it goes to
mediation, what it actually comes down to is a mediation
between the parties and they will anticipate getting
a mediation statement from each of the participants.
So I think one of the things that we have to be
a bit aware of is that, you know, the mediators will get
your stuff, so it comes together through (inaudible), it
comes together through your report and then it becomes
in part, I suppose, separate. And they think that they
will need that statement from each of the (inaudible)
because that's where you start to position the
mediation. So I think that's just something to
(inaudible).
IAN: One of the potential problems with that -- I agree
I think that makes sense -- is that we haven't built
that into the cost element of the whole process and
I think where there is a professional adviser, we
probably clearly expect the professional adviser to be
heavily involved in the preparation of that statement.
I am sure we will get feedback quite quickly but that
was not a requirement that was highlighted in the
training session in Birmingham and therefore there are
those sort of costs available to prepare that. Those
funds available to prepare that statement.
BELINDA: I think that is probably part of a wider
19
discussion (inaudible). And I think it is something
that will in the end be optional help to the mediators.
The other thing I wanted to pull out is the suggestion,
which they think is worth you to work through, are to
a large extent predicated on getting the majority of
cases in through the door, so that we can look at them
because if what we have (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: We are about halfway at the moment. We have
IAN:
got 65 applications in of which I have got six in the
hopper. So POL -- the Working Group hasn't had all
those yet but we are a bit under halfway at the moment.
We are convinced however that if we stick to the --
what I was referring to a couple of times -- the
minimalist format for the Second Sight reports, we think
we can turn them round quite quickly in a day or less,
purely because a lot of the work is then being reviewed
by the CGR, which as one indicated we highlight the
thematic issues from the start and it will become even
easier if we also had this additional step in between
with POL and possibly the applicant, what the key issues
are, because that then (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: Believe me that is a tough target.
CHRIS: It is introducing an additional cost -- at the front
it might say --
MR WARMINGTON: It is not incremental. Having had to go
through this once takes the same amount of time whether
I do it immediately or later after POL has gone through
it. We definitely claw back the time that would
otherwise be spent saying: Angela you didn't answer that
point, now we have to go back to the bloody people and
ask what they really meant. That's time consuming, all
that stuff, both in chronology and cost. So we are
definitely on a more efficient, faster process.
CHRIS: I am quite attracted to your, if you like, your
rules based approach to prioritise the cases, to
(inaudible) cases and the issue is, if you think that
through logically, and you (inaudible) classic
(inaudible) you almost get to the point where you say,
it has these (inaudible) there are these boxes and this
sum of money.
MR WARMINGTON: The step before that is you can probably
boilerplate some of the debt. That was how we got to
the (inaudible) report. If we are going to write
20
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
something on motor vehicle licenses because six people
raised it, the issue is because sometimes the DVLA
misprints the bar codes and misleads (inaudible).
Once you have written that up in one case, you
write it up again because you see (inaudible).
CHRIS: (inaudible) which you end up in the --
IAN: [overspeaking] you could to some degree, for example,
on that --
MALE SPEAKER 1: It is an interesting concept. It is
a little way from arbitration. [overspeaking]
IAN: The suggestion was that that could be used as advice
for the Post Office sort of team if only to force the
consistency of approach and each case in mediation will
be sort of dealt with sort of on its own. But clearly
having some rationale behind any offer that may or may
not be made, I think helps your audit trail and helps
the (interference).
BELINDA: So I think, sort of, linking that together with
what you said earlier (inaudible) cases, looking at
(interference) that every time you produce your report,
the postmaster deliveries (inaudible). So it is --
I think it is implicit in the scheme (inaudible)
documentation that the Post Office might want to take
things out as say Angela has been doing with the
existence of subpostmasters but not with, thus far, on
any cases where the (inaudible) there isn't already --
CHRIS: You are reminding me of a point I was going to make
which is (interference), would you do that on a drip
feed basis, as each case comes in one by one or would
you do it in batches, with the first ten or 15 cases.
IAN: My view is we haven't applied this analysis to the
total population. I think there would be a lot of
benefit for having almost a brain storming session.
Having a great big rig of 147 cases and categorising
them into say five buckets so that you can actually
start targeting cases with a view to sort of moving them
out of the mediation --
MALE SPEAKER 1: It is the complex route of mediation.
IAN: Because the problem is, it is a bit like putting the
brakes on a speeding train. There is so much momentum
21
in this sort of process, it is very easy to overlook the
commonsense solutions and Jane Brewer is perhaps a very
good example where if we actually paused the sort of
process and in some way, I don't know what that way is,
or what is the most appropriate way to do it, approached
her with a view to saying, look, we actually have a lot
of sympathy for the issues that you raised, can we talk
to you about alternatives? Rather than completing the
entire mediation sort of process and seeing if we can
actually shortcircuit or short cut that process.
(interference).
MR WARMINGTON: Stop getting the bush telegraph, sending
some good news out. But you don't want that news to be:
oh look, I managed to get £100,000 out of the Post
Office. That's not what --
CHRIS: Yeah I particularly expect (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: The news you want is: I had a meeting with
some really good people, they are really interested.
They absolutely understood what I was talking about and
we reached an amicable settlement. Thank you very much.
BELINDA: And to your point Ian as well, (inaudible).
IAN: Yes, yes, it is that momentum.
BELINDA: We see at the end of the day about, which is where
Chris started, about hopefully finding some resolution
and that ought to be the best way possible, as opposed
to necessarily pushing people in one end and (inaudible)
the other end.
MALE SPEAKER 1: I think there is a converse point which is
sort of (interference). [overspeaking].
MR WARMINGTON: Sorry -- [overspeaking]
CHRIS: I have gotten minutes to ... [overspeaking].
(interference) .
MALE SPEAKER 1: The good news story (interference) is
there's also realistically a bad news story with some of
these cases where you look at the size that's being
claimed, you think actually how can we get in a room and
agree?
IAN: The short answer is you are probably not and some of
those high value ones are probably not suitable for that
22
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
short cut process.
CHRIS: My question is are they ultimately suitable for
mediation.
MR WARMINGTON: Not if what you said earlier is true, which
is that we would be nuts to voluntarily settle at 5
million if in a worse worst case scenario in a loss case
is 1 million. Why would you do that? Unless you really
feel that you want the world to know that you have done
that. [overspeaking].
IAN: I have got a similar experience you may or may not
know, I was the defence expert for -- Claimant's expert
on 17 of the phone hacking suitcases and at a critical
point in the civil litigation --
CHRIS: For the arbitration scheme?
IAN: Yes.
CHRIS: Adjudication scheme?
IAN: Which was controlled by the court but we had various
decision points where you could actually put the
litigation on hold and it was almost sort of mediation
except the outcome was going to be binding, so maybe
(inaudible) with our kind of arbitration. But it
recognised that, as further information sort of came to
light or as the case progressed through the system, it
was entirely sensible to search out alternatives because
going all the way through there was going to be some
phenominal expenses. Claimants said they wanted
resolution of the issues. So it actually had many
parallels with the SPMRs, but equally the very high cost
claims, it probably is unrealistic to expect that
someone who has put in an application for 5 million is
going to settle for 5,000. And maybe we just --
CHRIS: (inaudible) .
IAN: I think it is like the old sort of joke I suppose,
which we are often asked as fraud investigators, well
what is the minimum sort of value of a fraud (inaudible)
commit so you can retire for the rest of your life? So
even though people may feel that they have got
a £5 million claim, they may actually be happy to settle
for 25,000 or something like that. What I don't know is
which is the most appropriate sort of point.
23
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
CHRIS: Yeah.
IAN:
But I do think that classification, and looping and
simplification is the answer, not accepting that every
case is so unique that it just sort of moves forward on
its own and I think that's one of the dangers of the
Working Group's approach at the moment.
MR WARMINGTON: One of the things we haven't done and
I personally (interference) critically important when
making decisions, what would ordinarily happen if I were
(interference), if I was working for CitiBank and I had
the situation; you would go through a process of saying,
right, let's actually now fess up to what the situation
is. And I would say something outrageous like: I have
to tell you in a lot of cases the investigation
department operated in accordance with the contract,
which is that it didn't have any responsibilities to
investigate. But there was this enormous expectation
gap because the SPM didn't realise that and was calling
for the investigation work to be done and it wasn't
being done and as a consequence (inaudible).
What is our position on that? And we would debate
that answer. Our position on that is tough luck, we are
going to tough it out, we are going to say the contract
said we didn't have any responsibilities to do that, why
should we have volunteered that? Where is the money
going to come from? If every person in the network
12,000 people called up at the weekend and said: I have
£5,000 (inaudible) and I want the investigation team
here tomorrow morning on the dot, it wouldn't be viable,
we would not do it. And in many cases it is because one
of the assistants had stolen the money and (inaudible).
So what is our position on that? We don't know
that because we are at arm's length, we raise the stuff,
we don't (inaudible) reaction. Similarly on things like
scratch card (inaudible) ATMs, these big differences
that were occurring, the shortages, (inaudible) surplus
deficiencies, deficiencies coming up of £100,000 plus,
in two cases a multiple of billions of pounds came up.
Of course that was spotted as being (inaudible). You
can't have a shortfall bigger than the amount
(inaudible) contained and if you have a shortfall of
85 billion, guess what, it is probably a mistake. But
if that shortfall comes up in a different branch two
years later, then there's something in the mechanics
that is driving the operation. (inaudible).
24
IAN:
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
Now, what is that? Generically that is down to
a gap between the (inaudible) and the Horizon. In the
same way there was an air gap from February 2012 between
Camelot and Horizon. That has been breached by a system
called PNG which they introduced in February 2012. By
the same token, a clearing bank wouldn't have that
problem. Its ATMs is connected to its systems. There
is no air gap. Therefore you can't have that phenomenon
name, that asynchronistic situation occurring. It does
get quite complex. (inaudible) they do it.
If they close early on a Saturday and then they do
the closing, and they should not, they do it on Sunday
and they shouldn't, it is all a bit complicated.
Whereas if you like Angela, who is super bright, they
are not going to make a mistake like that. But some of
them are. They are going to make a mess.
Now what's -- we don't know what the corporate
position is going to be on that (inaudible). Are we
going to say, look (inaudible) therefore (inaudible) and
we gave them some training, so we gave them training on
that, that's why we got them (inaudible). If you like
the difficulty we have got is we are raising this stuff
in isolation against a pretty defensive response and
I wouldn't ordinarily have that.
You would normally say actually there was
a problem there, this is going to be our position. At
that time somebody raised a problem in February 2011, we
know that's how the system worked in that time. If they
rose the problem in February 2009, we know that's how
the system worked at that time. We are relying on that
at the moment.
In terms of classification of cases, I mean another,
to my mind anyway, obvious category are these cases that
occurred outside of document retention period.
CHRIS: Yes. (interference) .
IAN:
Shouldn't we just sort of recognise that and apply
some sort of short cut either into mediation or into
some other maybe face to face engagement --
CHRIS: That is a very sensible idea because -- and I'm glad
somebody has raised it because it is a little bit like
the Emperor's New Clothes. It has been called first.
We are in a ludicrous situation. People are going
through enormous processes [overspeaking]
25
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
MR WARMINGTON: It all happened in 2004 ten years ago.
{overspeaking] .
IAN: The train is charging down the tracks at 100 miles
an hour and it is not a sensible way to operate.
BELINDA: It is not and if you think of it from the point of
view of the subpostmaster, chances are they will go
through this process and then what they see coming out
the other end, if I were them I might say --
MR WARMINGTON: Well, what was the point of that?
CHRIS: Castledon when he sees the whole response and when
Emma aver on his behalf sees the whole response and
reads for the 12th time in the same text: we can't do
this, same (inaudible) same sentence, we can't do this
because it is beyond our normal retention period, they
will react in some way to that and that reaction point
was never built into either the cost of this or the flow
chart.
MALE SPEAKER 1: To write that sentence is quite expensive
because someone has to interrogate the system in case
something has been retained (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: We get that bridge in the response, it talks
about the various repositories of information.
IAN: Because what we might find as we dig into the
population of 147 cases, we may find other examples of
commonality that, again, we may have this light bulb
moment that there may well be an alternative solution
and it is not necessary to go through the full whole POL
investigation, Second Sight investigation, preparation
for mediation and printing of packs and everything else.
BELINDA: So a good example of this and this is one you
raised with the POL that (inaudible) in the system and
there was one -- sorry I didn't (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah, you are anonymising in your mind.
BELINDA: That was the one that was (inaudible) 2006.
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah, bugger all.
BELINDA: The cost of [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: Yes.
26
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
BELINDA: For some reason (inaudible). And that's neither
for the case in point and I can't for the life of me
remember why nobody didn't just dive in and grab it out
and do something --
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah, sensible.
BELINDA: Because it costs the Working Group I suspect
(inaudible) to discuss that one would be more.
MR WARMINGTON: When we were dealing with the 19 events that
came through the JFSA, that was because we used out
(inaudible) none of you were aware of. When we went
into the meeting and the tigress leapt at my throat and
I'm talking about Kay and she said something like, it is
obvious to us, it is going to be a white wash, how do
I know you guys are competent to do this work? And then
we said, look, we have been hired to get to the truth
and we will get to the truth, if there is any reason why
I personally have stopped you getting to the truth,
I will throw in the towel at that point. And then she
said and Alan said (interference) Horizon is full of
holes and you won't want those. And I said (inaudible).
Regardless of the value (inaudible). If you have got
(interference) on these old cases (inaudible) if you
have got current stuff that you really (inaudible) we
will want them and that's how (inaudible). So, in those
cases we were interested in the principle whether the
system could (inaudible) transactions regardless of the
amount.
IAN: It does (inaudible) to go through the separate cases
and to see how the confirmation cases can
(interference). It may be that there is a suggestion of
a number of different --
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah.
MALE SPEAKER 1:
IAN: As a natural sort of process (interference). What we
do with that suggestion and process I suppose
(inaudible).
CHRIS: Basically it is a variation of mediation scheme or
whether it is just (interference) .
MR WARMINGTON: (interference) not immediately I suspect
their input on that may be useful.
27
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
IAN: I see CEDR as an external process providing sort of
that -- I think some of these opportunities and I don't
know exactly what the mechanisms could be. But I would
hope that it might happen on a direct one-to-one basis
without using sort of CEDR. It is not their area of
expertise. [overspeaking]. Can I mention one other
thing that you touched on and obviously it is incredibly
sensitive to the material. But the advice that you had
presumably from your external lawyers on the quality and
so on, you may want to explore whether there is some way
that either communicating those points, those
principles, those sort of calculations, may in some ways
sort of bridge the gap. Because you know we mustn't
lose sight of the fact that if an external independent
firm has come to this view, there must be at least some
merit in that sort of process. And it is how you
communicate that and whether indeed mediation is the
appropriate sort of way to do that.
Once again they may be more suitable for you know
one-to-one let's call them negotiations sort of face to
face, just putting cards on the table on a WP basis.
CHRIS: As you rightly said it is a tricky message to get
over actually, isn't it?
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah. This would be (inaudible) weapon,
whether it would help you rather than us to meet with
say Emma or I suspect with anybody from Howe & Co, just
to get a feel for why they are coming with such big
numbers [overspeaking]. Because they are pretty
sensible people.
BELINDA: And it would be helpful to understand their
processes. So if they say see this as a -- we come in
high because then (inaudible) .
CHRIS: Actually it is probably very simple. I have looked
at some of those calculations. I have been involved in
those calculations in other cases. I think the
difference is fundamentally one of liability. You know
no one is disputing that Castledon, for example, has
been put in a catastrophic position. He was made
bankrupt.
IAN: Tragic. So if there was a full liability for that
lying with Post Office, the numbers would come out
presumably in a similar sort of level. But what
I suspect your legal advice is, is more on the liability
sort of side rather than sort of quantum and that you
28
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
know the actions the Post Office took at the time were
appropriate in the circumstances. I don't think
re-performing those sort of calculations or
understanding those calculations is going to assist
because they are very, very straightforward.
MALE SPEAKER 1: They are. There is two types I think as I
understand it. There's -- well, did the historic
(inaudible) by the relevant standards of (inaudible) at
the time, did the Post Office act appropriately?
Yes/no. If it is yes then end of story. (inaudible).
Even if it didn't, then you have got to follow down your
strict: what was the cause, what was (interference)
before you cease to be responsible for the loss.
(inaudible) some of the claims (inaudible) case in point
(inaudible) but seems to throw in lots of extra bits
without any particular explanation.
MR WARMINGTON: No explanation at all. The truth of
IAN:
(inaudible) is that (inaudible) his father in law is
quite wealthy and runs some supermarkets and the family
has essentially been propped up by the father-in-law for
the last ten years. And Castledon was an electrician,
has gone back to doing that work, but he was precluded
(inaudible) spoke to hi,m last night. He is working on
a (inaudible) power supply for a hospital, but he finds
it very difficult to get approval to work on his old --
he used to be in the Air Force -- to get clearance to
work on high security sites. I don't see why he should
because he received no conviction but he describes the
problem is the fact that he was bankrupt.
I would think that's ever so easy to solve. He
shouldn't be precluded from getting security clearance
because he was bankrupt, why is that relevant? So
I think probably clearing it for him to make a living,
getting that out the way, I'm not getting involved in
this stuff, is probably raising something which is --
which was a problem and probably isn't now. I can
imagine if he wanted to get work immediately after
declaring himself bankrupt in May 2007, he probably
might have had a problem, but I can't see how that can
(inaudible) now. But that's detail.
Chris, what I was trying to do with you was capture
a brain storming session with you. And I think as
I said in my introduction, not all of it is going to be
practical or even sort of sensible but I think
(interference) .
29
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
I think the action for us is to take away these
parameters and other ones that we (inaudible) in order
to try to sift through the body of cases we have later
on so far.
MR WARMINGTON: One thing that was raised -- and we didn't
bottom it out in the previous face to face -- and it was
to do with the length of time that investigations take
to reach a decision whether or not to proceed, in one
way or another, and whether that is communicated to the
applicant or was communicated.
And Alan's opinion on that (interference) where it
took a view and if you remember Angela was sort of
shocked. [overspeaking]. Tony would be shocked at
that. Why would it take you know more than two months
to decide whether a case was worth pursuing? If at the
end of it a decision is taken not to pursue, I can
understand why they -- the investigation team might not
feel ready to communicate that to the other side. And
I suppose, once they haven't, then two years go past and
somebody says: we never did speak to those people, did
we? And there are the people at the other saying,
I don't know, there's the bloody great sword of Damocles
(inaudible) come back after you for the money or to
prosecute you.
Now, that area is all pretty woolly. But it is
woolly to the point that, Alan is talking about the
worst case situation, which would be quite damaging to
POL if the cases that Ian has described, where a person
has been suspended without pay, ruination follows, and
at the end of the day there was a deafening silence from
POL and nobody knows what happened but actually it just
got shelved and nobody went back to looking at it.
Those are quite serious.
Suspensions that lead to nothing as opposed to
what Ian was referring to, which was suspensions that
lead to prosecution which is what (interference) both
are in the more serious bucket.
CHRIS: -- suspensions are pulled is more understandable
because (inaudible). You look again --
MR WARMINGTON: But what can come out in the press is going
to be: look, POL put itself in a position of being, not
mediators to the CPS, they had the power to prosecute,
and it is not wielding that power appropriately. It is
acting irresponsible.
30
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
IAN: Can I just check, in cases where there has been
a suspension, it has been investigated, there may have
been some civil recovery of the debt and then they are
not informed they are going to be prosecuted
(interference).
MR WARMINGTON: Suspended without pay and then there are
people out there that don't know if the Post Office is
ever going to come after them for the debts. Then the
next one down the road is they have been dealt with
civilly and they are waiting for a decision on
prosecution. That's extremely rare because there is
virtually no [overspeaking].
IAN: The process had always been [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: I don't know of any case that's in that
CHRIS: Civil approval [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: The biggest problem is on the civil
prosecution side. It goes into what we had on the
mediation cases. We can't progress mediation. Why?
Because in the hands of the investigation team we have
not made clear yet whether they are going to prosecute
or not. [overspeaking]. Even if the person who is the
target of the prosecution is not the applicant or the
subpostmaster, that won't (interference).
IAN: It does beg the question as to whether or not you are
suspending people prematurely or inappropriately.
CHRIS: It is a precautionary suspension. We are going to
precautionary suspend you. That's the phrase.
IAN: We asked the question: why have you been doing that?
And the answer was: because we can. It seemed to have
fallen into a standard sort of approach.
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah, a more rational argument would be:
there is thousands, scores of thousands of pounds worth
of public money in the branch; we are precautionarily
going to suspend you because we don't know whether we
can trust you is what --
CHRIS: Which I thought was the argument all along.
MR WARMINGTON: And there ought to be a limit on how long we
suspend you without pay. The way it is worded in the
contract is it is more or less optional whether it is
31
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
without pay or not, and the statement is made that in
the event you are cleared you will get back paid. But
of course a lot of them are saying, I never did get
paid.
IAN: It rather explains what the policy was
(interference) -- an option available to POL presumably
is to put in a temporary SPM to keep the whole thing
ticking over.
MR WARMINGTON: If they do the suspended one has to pay for
them.
IAN: Yes, but somehow you know be a bit more flexible in
terms of the --
CHRIS: That's [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: Angela is really tackling that problem.
IAN: It is outside the scope of the mediation exercise.
MR WARMINGTON: I think something probably got lost.
Royal Mail has a -- you can read the history of
investigations and the security team. It goes back to
the 1600s and something and of course originally there
would have been a lot of theft and interference with the
mail, hence the (inaudible) and so on. So it is
a bloody serious issue being a subpostmaster and being
accused of manipulating the mail or the money. And you
can see how it all evolved but if you take that now into
the context of generally accepted corporate life, it
doesn't fit somehow. It just doesn't fit with the way
almost every other corporation would work in that
scenario, certainly with its staff it wouldn't work that
way. If you like, if you suspected us as subcontractors
of defrauding you, you could, for example, say: I'm not
going to pay you anything, I'm not going to pay your
bills.
IAN: The tabloids would certainly pick up on the sort of
dual role of Post Office as a prosecuting authority,
which I think normally would require you to exercise
some of those functions even more sort of carefully
because you really are being (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: Then if, one or two of the EPAs, they have
not done so in the reports yet, say we are in section 6
of the human rights, you are actually carrying out --
meeting out punishment before there has been any trial.
32
If you can effectively trash a person's life but then
not bother to even investigate it; that's really what
they are saying. That's the worst case scenario.
CHRIS: Personally I'm not aware of any cases where
a decision has been taken to impose some form of
suspension without there being a follow up. There is
perhaps a separate question. Is the follow up fast
enough?
MR WARMINGTON: But the wording is always the same. It has
obviously been boilerplated, which is that the person is
called in and presented with an opportunity "to tell us
why you should not be summarily dismissed". That's the
process.
So the person has an opportunity to talk in their
own defence. Then you get an issue of: they are only
allowed to bring in a friend who is an employee of the
Post Office. So one or two of the professional advisers
all wound up on that point saying, hang on, you are not
allowed to bring a solicitor in, you are not allowed to
bring somebody in who is not, if you like, already
biased in some way. [overspeaking]
IAN: We are straying a bit from the point.
MR WARMINGTON: The purpose is to reinforce the notion that
Ian has come up with, which is that let's look at the
best case and worst case scenarios or situations and
deal with them in a more structured way, rather than
just dealing with them randomly as they come in.
CHRIS: I think this is a useful brief for this scenario.
(inaudible) and set up a workstream internally to
process the cases we know about in sufficient detail
(inaudible) and see what the various classifications
come up are looking like.
I think your point is a good one of having -- when
that (interference) ask the question of (inaudible) you
know why? Because on the face of it our analysis is
that it looks like (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: Yes, yes.
CHRIS: And if the mediation is bound to fail because there
is such a huge gap, we might as well take them out of
the process right now, rather than wait three months and
then --
33
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
IAN: I'm very conscious that puts you in a very difficult
position because one of the things you are not asked to
opine on, but perhaps you might like to opine on, is the
process (interference) .
MR WARMINGTON: I know taking just one of the advisers, Bill
Clayhorn, I know that in two of his cases one client was
moaning at him for not making the amount big enough and
another was surprised at how big it was. So there is
room for discussion on that side.
CHRIS: Do you think (inaudible) discussions.
MR WARMINGTON: (inaudible) two very, very sensible people,
Emma Porter and Bill Clayhorn are eminently reasonable
people, but they are accountants (interference) Howe &
Co (inaudible) finance directors and accountants and the
other is --
IAN: I think if you talk to the senior accountant at Howe &
Co. Martyn Howe, is it? Martyn Howe I got the
impression is quite sensible and he would welcome that
opportunity to dialogue.
CHRIS: Dialogue in terms --
IAN: A good rapport in terms of the quality of work, but he
is not necessarily the person to speak to because he has
got this chip on his shoulder about his father. Some of
the others are all over the place.
CHRIS: Belinda, at the moment I have only shared this with
Post Office, there is possibly an argument that
(interference). I mean my view at the moment is that
I think it is more appropriate for the Post Office
internally sort of considers these ideas. But you know
at the appropriate point I will be more than happy to
put these (inaudible) through as well. I do not know
what your thoughts are.
BELINDA: I would agree with that and it seems to me that
the constitution of the Working Group (interference) in
actual fact is something that is thoughtfully worked
through, as opposed to something that is rather
conceptual which is [overspeaking] and that seems to me
to be the best way forward.
In addition to that, I think that we have got --
we are getting to the stage where the Working Group is
starting to see a package of documentation and I think
34
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
that might make it a little easier to see, if you like,
the scale of the challenge into the (inaudible) at the
moment and if they see the original CORs but in actual
fact (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: They have not seen the full responses.
BELINDA: I don't know what case it would be, about the
content (inaudible) we discussed. But I do know from
(interference) that when this original idea was
conceived, Kay was very much in the camp, and was being
quite vocal on the point, that this was about resolution
and it was more in line I think with where POL's head is
and all of a sudden this thing has sort of grown
exponentially in terms of (inaudible) flames. I don't
know where Kay's thinking is on that but I think
(inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: But it is important to realise and they
IAN:
probably do -- Ian and I were speculating once or twice
after coming out of the working room, calls and
particularly face to face just how amused Alan has been
on various points [overspeaking]. (inaudible) I got to
know Alan quite well. I said Alan what's your game?
(interference). I can tell you what his game is.
Alan's game is that he doesn't care about the state of
the -- as far as he is concerned, he is not expecting
a mediation process to be successful. He thinks it will
be a committal. A complete and utter waste of time and
that will emerge once half a dozen cases have gone
through and not settled because of sort of apologies and
token amounts being offered.
And he wants to -- he has his finger (inaudible)
over a red button on his desk, which has the BBC and
News of The World -- sorry -- and sort of Daily Mirror
and so on next to it and I think he is almost -- it is
a bit like Dr Strangelove, he kind of wants to press
that trigger.
The impression I have got is that he is using
mediation for the potential benefit that any new
information that comes up through mediation can still be
used in litigation and that he is expecting the
mediation to fail, but the reason that he is going along
with it is early disclosure basically of stuff that
probably would come out in litigation and therefore,
arguably, it would shorten the --
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah, he has gone so far as to say to me in
35
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
the past: I don't care about the individual cases,
I really don't. I'm not interested in the individual
cases. What I'm interested in is to have POL concede
that there were issues along the lines described and
maybe others with the system, which is what he had said
13 years ago, when he first encountered the system
pre-Horizon 1, pre-Horizon, just as Horizon was
launched.
That's what is his bee in his bonnet. It sounds
as though I was speaking little of him, but I actually
hold him really highly in regard personally. He has
campaigned on this -- he is right on a lot of issues and
actually POL could have saved itself an awful lot of
money on our work if we had just taken the report that
he wrote ten years ago because a lot of it is right.
[overspeaking]. He wrote it (inaudible). But there are
elements of that that are still true now and so I think,
if he had been listened to more at an earlier stage,
that could have ended quite a lot of (inaudible).
Because I think there really were issues and some of
them haven't been fixed. In fact my input from the coal
face is that some of the things we have raised with the
(inaudible) have resulted in fixes to the software,
which nobody has told me about, I didn't know about, and
in a sense that's an admission that there was a problem
because it was fixed.
So, for example, the proximity of the ease with
which it is possible to process a cash withdrawal as
a deposit has been fixed and that's the sort of the
thing where you know at one point --
BELINDA: Sorry, we are not exchanging (inaudible) notes.
MR WARMINGTON: No. I don't mind if you do. (inaudible)
Those things at one point, when I realised this, I had
composed -- and I haven't released it to you -- an email
which said, right, what I need from you, in terms of the
point I have always had that an investigations team
ought to be a driving force in improving systems to
reduce their potential for error as well as fraud.
Ordinarily an investigation team would have
a stream of recommendations for a systems change. At
one point (inaudible) I had an email saying, as part of
what we are doing on job 1, I want to know all the
changes that were made that emanated from your
investigation. And I expected the list to be extremely
short because I don't think that's going to happen.
36
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
My guess is that that's not going to happen and
ordinarily that would have happened because, if 20
people said "I have a problem with deposits being
processed -- withdraws being processed as deposits", the
investigation team would, on receiving the 13th one
would say: there is a problem here, let's have a look at
it and (inaudible) there is a problem let's fix it. And
the recommendation (inaudible).
I don't know whether that process takes place, but
I suspect it doesn't or hasn't. It is now because
I think Angela is on stop of that stuff.
IAN: Can I just touch on one issue that I mentioned
earlier. On Friday, the face to face meeting, Angela
had already put us on notice (interference) set aside
the report. We think what we produced is right and
Angela [overspeaking]. Sorry, Kay. We think what we
are doing is the right investigation and clearly
anything other than that is going to have quite
significant sort of time and cost consequences.
Have you had a chance to sort of consider --
CHRIS: Very briefly. In the meeting pre lunch yesterday
and pretty much all day --
MR WARMINGTON: It is probably better to triangulate once we
deliver to you [overspeaking] there are different issues
there and it is difficult to make a decision on 2. It
would make a lot easier to make it on 3.
CHRIS: It is a general principle to -- let me go back and
come back to you and consult you, but I don't -- I'm
(inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: When I said in the meeting with POL, I said
I'm less worried about the bottleneck aspects in our
team now than I was three months ago, that isn't just
because of the arrival of Chris. It is principally
because if we follow the recommendations in Ian's
(inaudible), I'm pretty confident that we can produce
these reports in one working day each. I'm not
guaranteeing it, but originally I thought producing
a report in less than 3 working days would be absolutely
impossible, bearing in mind all the stuff we have to go
through, do it then we have to go to POL again and you
miss something and then sometimes you want to find you
are writing something, where the hell is that? Where's
the evidence of that? It is not uncomplicated. But
37
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
with the method that we are proposing, it is viable to
do that and otherwise --
IAN: Also that the work can be spread over a longer period
of time and in effect start writing the report as soon
as we get the COR which highlights the issues -- so it
is not going to have the impact that POL was sort of
concerned about, because of these internal changes we
have made to the process that we will follow. So we are
convinced we are not going to be in a bottleneck and
that should be a concern, providing the Working Group
support our recommendation to go for this more executive
summary sort of style of report, that sits on top of the
CGR, sits on top of the POL report. It doesn't attempt
to replace it, which is pretty much what Kay was
starting --
MR WARMINGTON: When people like us say, "No, we can handle
it," even if we know we can't, we will always sound self
serving, we are trying to (inaudible). the golden goose
as it were. It isn't that. If we really thought --
that is in my company's corporate ethics -- we thought
that PriceWaterhouseCoopers could do a better job for
you on the stuff by relinquishing your cases, something
like that, we would not hesitate to recommend that. But
we don't at the moment. It is not easy to get into this
stuff, to get enough knowledge of what's happened to be
able to deal with this case.
IAN: We made (inaudible) last Monday that this is not
a question (inaudible) the volume of cases --
MR WARMINGTON: The body that we have thrown now, Chris, is
one of the brightest guys I have ever worked with.
Again he catches up real quick. We have worked with the
sort of investigators you get from big firms and they
would not be able to cope with this stuff at all.
CHRIS: [overspeaking] .
IAN: (inaudible) MPs, will require a separate engagement
letter.
MR WARMINGTON: Or --
IAN: Our representatives have seen all the (inaudible). So
my sort of (interference) was pretty much it remains
(interference) but actually I'm not authorised, I have
no capability of any other type of work you can engage
with. I will make the obvious point, which is MPs are
38
individuals, they don't represent a collective
(inaudible). Unless they (inaudible) the House.
I think it is simpler that this just deals with
mediation and POL has already given us some assurances
in terms of what we may or may not (inaudible)
particularly on confidentiality and so on. I think the
sensible approach is use this just for the mediation and
then --
CHRIS: Yeah --
MR WARMINGTON: We just want to make sure -- and I think
Arbuthnot has been reassured of this point by Alison and
POL -- I have got to be able to answer Arbuthnot when he
says -- you know -- is there anything you haven't told
us? Is there anything you are precluding from telling
us by any constraints put you on by the Post Office?
And you don't want to be saying: yes, there are things
I can't tell you.
CHRIS: Right. I think if you do, that's not
(interference) .
IAN: My understanding is James is concerned about two
issues. One is an undertaking that the Post Office will
allow Second Sight to look at anything without
restriction and (b) anything that we -- through this
approach think is relevant can be communicated to MPs.
Now James Arbuthnot thinks that he has had that
assurance orally in previous meetings. The last message
I had from Jeanette, which is about a week ago now, was
that she had raised those issues and it was (inaudible).
Those points came back as (inaudible). [overspeaking].
MR WARMINGTON: That is a separate issue but it is worth
just checking in. The cover-up King output, in regard
to cases where there had been a restriction of
disclosure or something like that, and we had two
different numbers, 11 or 21 cases involved.
CHRIS: 21 [overspeaking]. It was 21. [overspeaking].
Then it moved --
IAN: Because at one point I remember when I joined and you
said (inaudible). I thought bloody hell.
CHRIS: -- it was definitely [overspeaking].
IAN: -- because you actually said, John Alan your typing is
not one of your strong points. [overspeaking].
39
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
CHRIS: -- just to [overspeaking]. 6.2 is the
(interference) against us.
IAN: Yes.
CHRIS: I'ma bit stuck on that because that is a mandate
from the board. I can't really push that away.
IAN: What I felt was it needs to have a time period, else
it could create a pretty sort of silly situation.
I have mentioned the example of civil litigation and
single joined experts as an example. I mean, I have
spoken informally to a couple of others (inaudible)
organisations and they told me that typically they would
have a time limit of 12 months after the completion of
the (inaudible) engagement. I don't know whether that
would --
CHRIS: It is not my point [overspeaking] but I can take it
up with I suppose POL in the first instance and then
(inaudible). It is a board point.
IAN: If you think about that. Section 8, publicity.
CHRIS: Basically you want me to (inaudible).
IAN: We have already signed a confidentiality -- haven't
we? The new confidentiality agreement. And I felt that
that gave you all the protection that you needed and as
section 8 is drafted at the moment, it is duplicated
that, but also sort of extending it into areas which
could potentially sort of, you know, cause us difficulty
or frankly just silliness.
I mean the example I used was, if we did agree to
this, either Ron or I on our professional CVs, could
never refer to the work done with you, despite the fact
that you have issued press releases about us and it has
been mentioned in the House and so on.
CHRIS: But without the prior written consent of the Post
Office and it was -- a bit like law firms or accountancy
firms. A press officer could I put in our corporate CV
(inaudible) the answer is verily no.
MR WARMINGTON: I think we also raised that on our website
right now, the only reference we have is that there is
a mediation link on it. We don't intend to -- and
I would be perfectly happy not to put anything else up,
except where we are asked to do that.
40
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
IAN: Again, even the press release from the Post Office,
the link to our report on the Post Office website, it
makes it all very sort of public and it just sort of
struck me that this was sort of imposing, frankly,
a rather sort of ridiculous situation that we couldn't
even say that what the Post Office has published on its
own website is correct.
MR WARMINGTON: I mean just being really -- for example, if
I signed this today, tomorrow night I have a dinner
party with a dozen or so people, with Teresa May, and
for sure she is going to know about my involvement on
this and she is going to say: how is the Post Office
case going? And I'm going to have to say: I'm not
allowed to tell you. I am not being facetious at all.
CHRIS: We are not [overspeaking].
MR WARMINGTON: -- I would not be allowed to say.
IAN: -- that we are doing work with the Post Office.
CHRIS: I understand. (interference).
MR WARMINGTON: I can tell you what our advertising budget
is, zero. We don't advertise. I am happy to be
constrained on that front but not to the point where we
inadvertently fall over our feet on something.
CHRIS: It is probably the details on that. If you can say
we are obviously engaged by the Post Office. Everybody
knows that.
IAN: What about leaving 8.1.1 but deleting 8.1.2?
CHRIS: That's fine.
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah, I would be happy with that. It is
only going to impact you because at the end of this I'm
going to retire.
CHRIS: So this is... (reads to himself)...to be open and
honest with James Arbuthnot.
IAN: It is mainly an MP point.
MR WARMINGTON: That was the key point. We wanted you to
recognise job 1, the sort of primary investigation.
IAN: Or at least put us in the position where if James
41
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
calls us in for a meeting, which he does every few
months and with all the people (inaudible) the meeting
on March 24th, I don't want to be in a position of
saying: I'm sorry I can't answer that question. And
I think that potentially would cause a lot of harm.
CHRIS: The converse though is that you would never expect
to discuss specifics of any individual case.
MR WARMINGTON: We are not allowed to. They have made it
very clear that we are not to mention [overspeaking].
Hang on. Arbuthnot is expecting us~--
IAN: It is a slightly different point. One of the
principles is that we can discuss the specifics of the
case, but we must do so on an anonymous basis, we cannot
identify the constituent.
MR WARMINGTON: Which is the way we dealt with the interim
report but originally and this has never been reversed
Arbuthnot committed to the other MPs that they would
have an opportunity to meet with us and their
constituent when the dust had settled, so that they
could close their books on each case.
CHRIS: My personal view, re-reading this is you have got
all the protection in place that you need through the
confidentiality paragraph and the section we have now
just agreed on for publicity. I think section 9 should
come out and separately we ought to have what I might
call a side letter dealing with the MP sort of point,
once you have finalised the minutes and reached
agreement following the meeting of POL analysis.
MR WARMINGTON: I would be very happy with that.
Notwithstanding just to make -- in the interests of
clarity and cognizance of the fact we have signed
an engagement letter, this is to make it clear to you
that we understand that you will be dealing with the MPs
and blah blah blah.
IAN: Let's not try and draft it -- [overspeaking].
MR WARMINGTON: Basically saying --
CHRIS: That sort of works.
IAN: The proposal is take 9 out and that has the advantage
of leaving us only dealing with mediation, but recognise
that there is still a need to deal with the MP point,
42
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
but we can actually do that outside of this contract and
by way of side letter, once you have reached agreement
with James Arbuthnot --
MR WARMINGTON: And on that basis we would be happy to sign
it.
IAN: You had one more point actually. [overspeaking].
MR WARMINGTON: I would be happy to sign it.
CHRIS: I do not know what your internal corporate
relationship is --
MR WARMINGTON: We are both directors of Second Sight, but
it is Second Sight that's contracted with -- obviously
we wanted to avoid the personally [overspeaking].
CHRIS: [overspeaking] you are both directors to sign.
IAN: Of course there are other directors of Second Sight.
What we were told when I first queried this was that
this was actually -- part of this was a hang over from
the previous draft, with the intention throughout
[overspeaking] personally and to be signed on behalf of
Second Sight and Ron would normally sign that on behalf
of Second Sight.
So that gives you more protection I think
[overspeaking]. 6, 8 and 9 has gone. Well, we have
individual confidentiality agreements with you and with
each person who has access to confidential information.
8 has gone and 9 has gone.
CHRIS: Is it worth just annexing to this the fact that we
have got the complete agreement -- [overspeaking].
MR WARMINGTON: If you want us to sign fresh ones
[overspeaking].
IAN: [overspeaking] our word-processing they must be
somewhere, a hard copy.
MR WARMINGTON: Produce that and we will sign at the same
time. (interference).
IAN: On the side letter or further --
CHRIS: Yes. That would be fine.
43
IAN: Can I just mention two other points. Chris Hollyoak
signed a confidentiality agreement saying that he has
access to (inaudible). And we were proposing
(interference) meeting on Friday just for the Working
Group to meet and vice versa and also copying him in --
CHRIS: You will travel back --
IAN: I think we mentioned it to you Belinda.
BELINDA: One of my conversations --
IAN: (inaudible).
BELINDA: Why don't I just drop hima line --
IAN: Yes.
BELINDA: (inaudible) why don't I just drop Tony a --
IAN: The point is we would like to bring him along and as
a courtesy we are notifying the Working Group.
CHRIS: He will be, not amused, but he is not going to be
sort of jumping around and saying all sorts of stuff
until (inaudible).
IAN: In the same way that the Post Office has brought
various other people along at various times. Then, the
other point, which I think Ron you wrote to Belinda
about was getting Helen on board in terms of providing
administrative support.
MR WARMINGTON: It does sound like I'm trying to employ
(inaudible) as well.
CHRIS: (inaudible) which is my -- I do not think it is
(interference) .
MR WARMINGTON: And that is what we are doing.
CHRIS: But what we will need is a confidentiality agreement
because we don't want to expose --
MR WARMINGTON: So I won't charge you for Helen 's time, all
right? I will pick that up out of the company, which is
what I have been doing, but I do need her to have access
to -- you know if I'm going to get her help on issues,
one is
44
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
IAN: So it would be access to Helen and have her sign
a confidentiality agreement.
MR WARMINGTON: I will mention it to you, she has been the
Vice President of CitiBank, she has handled --
CHRIS: It will be done. (interference).
MR WARMINGTON: I think that's partly (interference) .
IAN: He has been very helpful in getting us to where we
are, and it would be a shame to lose his goodwill. But
equally maybe there is a communications issue in terms
of, for example, in these matters we touched on, in
terms of the external review of liability and so on.
The other thing we know he is going to be doing is
he is waiting for your next annual accounts to come out,
due at the end of this month, and he will be actively
looking for any reference to contingent liabilities and
so on. If he doesn't find those, he will probably raise
that, but you know take it one step at a time.
MR WARMINGTON: I think that speaks volumes really about his
mind set, what his mindset is. It is a pity that these
issues weren't -- I'm not privy to the discussions which
took place at the time (inaudible) the parties coming to
wildly different expectations. But it sounds a little
bit like Helen's expectation was this scheme would
result in a forensic examination of every factor
relating to the system.
CHRIS: Yes. Because he came in as part of job 1, as the
primary investigation. The mediation process was bolted
on the side of that.
IAN: Remember the JFSA agreement was signed by Second Sight
JFSA and the Post Office. That was one of the
objectives. Now, you know we had not rescinded that
sort of agreement and I think there is generally real
confusion as to the status of what we are calling --
MR WARMINGTON: That's why he said at the last meeting, and
I heard him say, and I knew exactly where he was coming
from, that the (inaudible) to do with scope was to be
taken as incremental to what had already been raised.
IAN: It is why it was music to his ears that Kay said
publicly in the meeting this is not designed to give the
truth, this is about horse trading.
45
SSL0000131
SSL0000131
CHRIS: I was wondering the reference to the signed
agreements --
MR WARMINGTON: Raising concerns with --
MALE SPEAKER 1: Do you mean the bit raising concerns with
the Horizon documents that refers to the terms under the
deal?
MR WARMINGTON: Yes.
MALE SPEAKER 1: You need to look at the totality of that
document. [overspeaking] he had put together -- clearly
spent a lot of time doing it and see my concern is
I think there is genuine confusion about job 1 because
the way it was pitched to me by (inaudible) was this
supersedes -- this is the thing that came out of job 1
and job 1 has been put on the shelf.
MR WARMINGTON: To a certain extent that was how it was spun
to MPs but the feedback we are getting is that they are
beginning to sort of realise that some of the issues
that they had raised, even if mediation is 100 per cent
successful, the process is not going to address some --
MALE SPEAKER 1: Mediation almost never was going to get
that is not the nature of the mediation.
IAN: I think a risk that you need to be aware of and this
may come to a head on the 24th, is whether or not the
MPs feel that they have been misled in some way because
they were asked to take on trust almost the proposal for
sort of mediation and I think they are only slowly
waking up to the fact that it is actually not going to
solve or address all of the issues that were raised by
them --
MR WARMINGTON: That is right. And that's why I reacted so
critically (interference) aggressively to the suggestion
that there would be a gagging order effectively on each
mediation settlement, which is fine, you don't want
people going out and saying I got 500 quid.
(interference). Obviously you don't want that to
happen. But, effectively, what would happen is you have
precluded the opportunity for people to talk to their
own MP, that really would have been a red rag to a bull,
people like Mike Wood. If Alison Hall had gone back to
him and said: actually I'm not allowed to tell you how
the mediation session went, he would go absolutely
ballistic.
46
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
So when I -- Belinda, I do not think
(interference) what I was reading into that was, you
don't want to go down that route and you didn't go down
that route but it looked as though there was a risk
that, in the efforts to contain the results of
a mediation within that mediation, that was going to
preclude the opportunity for the applicants to talk to
their own MPs. I'm not overreacting to it now, it is
just that when I first saw it I thought that's not going
to work.
BELINDA: So I suppose the relationship between a MP and
their constituent is driven by the desire of the
constituent.
MR WARMINGTON: Yes.
BELINDA: So I think that if a constituent entered into
an agreement, then, it is a matter for them about
whether or not they choose to --
IAN: I think where that argument falls down slightly is the
MPs, rightly or wrongly, feel they are responsible for
creating this process and putting Post Office under
pressure to agree to (a) the concerns with Horizon, sort
of issues, job 1, and (b) sort of mediation. MPs
rightly or wrongly feel some sort of ownership of that
process and I can't help feeling that any lack of
disclosure to them is likely to sort of aggregate the
situation slightly.
Mind you, I also feel that the Working Group
meetings have (inaudible) feedback from mediation
(interference). I think there is quite a strong
argument that says if the Working Group is genuinely
going to sort of manage the whole process, we do need
better feedback from mediation.
MR WARMINGTON: The way I want to put it to reinforce that
is, for sure people will find out (inaudible) secrecy,
they will definitely tell them and we finish up with
a situation that the only member of the Working Group
that really knew -- Tony would know what the outcome
was, we wouldn't know, that's okay, but POL would know,
Alan would know. So the only one that wouldn't know
would be the (interference). That probably isn't
sustainable.
BELINDA: So Alan would know what anybody chose to tell him,
which is not necessarily the same as --
47
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
MR WARMINGTON: What actually happened.
BELINDA: So CEDR would (inaudible) because there is a sort
of fundamental principle of communication and what they
(inaudible). And so CEDR even amongst themselves would
not [overspeaking].
CHRIS: Kay said recently she argued against Alan quite
vividly and (inaudible) --
MR WARMINGTON: Ordinarily if a settlement is reached then
a settlement is reached and a contract is drawn up
between the two parties and would binding otherwise you
wouldn't pay the money. [overspeaking].
IAN: Let's assume a hypothetical mediation, agreement is
not reached but one of the reasons for agreement not
being reached was POL making a derisory sort of offer of
£500 when the applicant was looking for 5,000 or 15,000.
I would argue that that information should be
communicated back to the group because it actually has
consequences in other cases.
MR WARMINGTON: We're probably not going to solve that
today.
BELINDA: So what CEDR have suggested, which is what -- so
CEDR had been drawing up their (inaudible) practice
guidelines and to make it specific to the scheme because
(inaudible). CEDR say what they do in the (inaudible)
mediation scheme, which is different because there are
a different parts of it, but, they report to (inaudible)
people in terms of chunks of cases. So (inaudible) 30
cases, agreement is reached in X number and what they
are looking at is what they think in statistical terms
what they might be able to (inaudible) it is a Working
Group to (inaudible) .
MR WARMINGTON: The lesson we have learned from this process
even dealing with these 30 cases is (inaudible).
IAN: We are all assuming that all parties are going to act
in good faith. If, in the hypothetical example that
I mentioned, that the Post Office was only offering
a token 500 quid, I do think that that is something that
we need to be aware of.
BELINDA: I suppose if you sort of even that out, we have
been talking about expectations right at the other end
48
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
of the scale and I think, you know, there is the sort of
outsourcing of the investigation and your layering on
that and I think there has to be a degree of trust of
all parties(interference). Especially with some of the
challenges we are facing is (inaudible) principle on
mediation. So you wouldn't go into the mediation if you
didn't think that there was some reasonable --
CHRIS: (inaudible) cases where, after serious consideration
and discussion with the adviser, we determined actually
we are never going to --
IAN: (inaudible). This is the outcome that will happen and
(interference). The mediation meeting will flounder on
the following, the Post Office will say it is a ten year
old case and we don't have any data. Sorry you haven't
been able to produce any evidence that convinces us that
the multiplicity of power failures and (inaudible), we
can't associate the generality of the circumstantial
events with the specifics of the loss suffered. And the
individual is going to say, so basically the burden of
proof is on my shoulders again to prove myself?
CHRIS: I generally think that is the most likely case
(interference). [overspeaking]. We looked at this, we
are terribly sorry (inaudible) circumstances, you are
asking for 500,000 or so. We just don't -- with all
(inaudible) we just don't feel we can (interference) .
IAN: If what I was proposing was to happen and what will
get out there is that POL is saying, look, we didn't
investigate it at the time, couldn't be bothered to
investigate it at the time, and we subsequently
(inaudible). That's what the press will --
CHRIS: I don't think that is the most likely scenario.
MALE SPEAKER 1: (inaudible) the investigation reports,
there is an element in the report that we have acted in
good faith and you have seen more of that than --
MR WARMINGTON: But the argument is (inaudible). As the
global head of security (inaudible) we do not
exaggerate, I do not do that. What I'm saying is, if
the individuals are saying: I cannot now hold this
burden, carry this burden of proof because
(interference) I don't have any data, POL has all the
data, I don't have any. If the response was in
mediation, what has sometimes happened in the past,
which is you got to prove that you have got a good claim
49
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
but you haven't cleared that hurdle, therefore we are
not going to do anything. That is what will back fire.
That was the reaction.
BELINDA: I think if we separate out, so you mentioned
a couple of times the press and the MPs. I think there
is an issue about the fact that people will bring
different views and I think it is incumbent upon
everybody that's involved in this process to act in good
faith and not to be influenced by what other people
might do with that. Either making (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: Yes. I agree.
BELINDA: The story is the story.
MR WARMINGTON: The truth is the truth.
BELINDA: Yes but there is no pleasure for the press
(inaudible) news story. I think there is something
about, you might just have to back it up and do the best
that you can and act in good faith. I think there is
a -- I think the beauty of what you are suggesting here
(inaudible) is that what we can start to do is to
categorize those cases and --
IAN: Start to manage.
CHRIS: Start to manage them.
BELINDA: So that we don't get into a situation of --
IAN: Always being on the back foot and reacting.
BELINDA: We might take a generic approach to all of the
really old cases. Now, until we have put these in their
individual buckets, it is a bit difficult to know.
I think, and I cannot envisage, this is with my Post
Office hat on, I cannot envisage the Post Office knowing
we are going into mediation with something, knowing that
there is (inaudible) bridging that gap and I think that
is the essence of what we have been over [overspeaking]
IAN: We are definitely on the same page. I think there is
quite a strong argument for maybe clarifying the
position on some of these very high cost claims and
actually saying, look, this is not suitable for
mediation, the gap is too big, you better sue us.
BELINDA: That is the beauty of your buckets because we can
50
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
start to break things down.
CHRIS: After discussion with the professional adviser. You
can't necessarily assume that because the claims are --
MR WARMINGTON: That's why I recommend Bill and Emma because
they are pretty reasonable people. They are very
sensible, calm, highly experienced people that you can
do business with.
IAN: And by extracting some of those categories you will
get a much better result of mediation because you are
dealing with, not the outliers which are going to be
produce random or other representatives results, you are
genuinely dealing with the middle sort of population
where mediation is a much more suitable forum.
BELINDA: Yes and if there is another path, ie the Post
Office take cases off (inaudible) and doing something
that is mediation but not through the process
(inaudible) and then, as you say, there might be some
outliers at the end of it (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: One of the conversations we had, we are used
to having this conversation, is that ordinarily as
investigators our job is to get to the truth and
communicate that truth to the company, to the client, if
you like. Once you start to become overawed by the
consequences of the investigation and we try to sort of
deal with consequences, it gets horribly muddled. You
don't want us doing that. We are trying to help on that
but the truth is the truth and I think that's possibly
where something has gone wrong in the past, where, in
fear of what the consequences might be, the truth
doesn't always get sought and therefore that's put the
cart before the horse in a sense. First you get the
truth and then you work out the legal consequences and
manage it, there is no point wearing (inaudible) leave
no (inaudible).
CHRIS: I actually have to go...
IAN: We are at 4.15. We are on course to disclose another
(inaudible) report on Friday. However, we will not be
in a position to disclose what we previously called the
thematic report because there is some new issues that we
think need to be sort of bottomed out before we can
properly release that and I will be putting that in
a note to the Working Group.
51
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
CHRIS: So Kay (interference) .
MR WARMINGTON: We are all disappointed about that. We
would love to -- we would like to have been able to do
that even today, we saw bottoming out some stuff --
BELINDA: When might you add --
MR WARMINGTON: It's got to be soon. A couple of weeks.
CHRIS: [overspeaking] .
{overspeaking]
MALE SPEAKER 1: The sun is shining --
BELINDA: It is. So on that basis --
IAN: Because these are the thematic reports (interference).
BELINDA: [overspeaking] (interference) might feel that in
actual fact this meeting might be better held
(inaudible).
IAN: I think already there is a lot of items on the agenda
that we need to deal with face to face. There is the
two letters from (interference). There's probably quite
a lot of detail on the format style of our individual
reports --
MR WARMINGTON: I would like a steer on this £20,000 issue.
Is it going to go in the report or not?
BELINDA: Sorry, I thought you discussed that amongst
yourself.
MR WARMINGTON: No, we need a steer from the Working Group
on that. It is a choice whether it goes in. Here is
an issue sort of tangential --
IAN: I thought we had bottomed that out, we agreed it was
not appropriate for the individual report then it is
a matter of how we deal with residual issues from what
we have called job 1. And it is that that is slightly
hanging in the air at the moment, but I'm not sure that
is actually a question for the Working Group because the
Working Group is looking exclusively at mediation.
MR WARMINGTON: Alan's position on that staff because he
hasn't looked at that transaction of course, is that we
52
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
have a responsibility to act as primary investigators
for the applicant by reason of what was in the original
documentation. That is beyond what any of us think is
correct. That means --
IAN: It is Alan therefore that needs to raise that.
MR WARMINGTON: Alan will raise that. It will either be
raised --
BELINDA: You are not acting for -- there are two things in
my mind. And it is probably too late in the afternoon
to bottom them. But, you are not acting for the
applicant and you are not acting for the Post Office,
you are providing independent --
MR WARMINGTON: Yes.
BELINDA: You are providing an independent [overspeaking]
IAN: -- investigation service.
MR WARMINGTON: But Alan's (inaudible) it is in the document
(interference) it is another document, he is quoting the
original raising concerns with Horizon saying what will
we do.
IAN: Well Alan needs to raise that with the Working Group.
MR WARMINGTON: And that is a face to face issue because it
impacts the way we write the report and it impacts more
because it impacts the way we deal with the applicants.
MALE SPEAKER 1: For me I was thinking how do you have
a productive conversation which lands with an outcome
that we can resolve and move on, for me that would be
very difficult to do stepping back with the different
hats people wear without the generic automatic reports.
MR WARMINGTON: What I have done is I have got a section --
in fact I can send it -- I have got it ready to go, Ian
and I (inaudible). The bit on the £20,000 transaction.
In fact I sent the text of it to Angela today to say,
I have got to deal with this issue somehow. I need to
know what your answer is.
IAN: But Ron we can't deal with that until we have got
an answer to job 1 because that is a job 1 issue, not
a job 2 issue.
53
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
MR WARMINGTON: I'm okay with that, what I'm saying is here
is an item that has emerged. It is very simple. Here
is an item that has emerged. Here is the description of
that item, how does the Working Group want me to handle
it? That's all I'm asking.
IAN: I'm not sure it is a question for the Working Group.
MR WARMINGTON: I do not need the Working Group's input with
regards to job 1. I know how to handle job 1, that's
within our remit.
IAN: But we have already decided this afternoon that it is
not relevant to --
MR WARMINGTON: I do not think it is for us to decide. What
I'm saying is here is a write up. It will be dealt with
in job 1, does the Working Group expect me or us to put
it -- how does the Working Group expect us to handle it
or does it want --
IAN: No, it is not for them to answer that question --
MR WARMINGTON: We have got to deal with the issue
concerning -- Alan's position is --
IAN: If Alan feels it must be raised, it is for Alan to
raise it. It is not for us to raise it.
MR WARMINGTON: How will Alan know it exists (interference)
he doesn't know that the point exists yet. I know that
it exists.
IAN: With Alan we are going to have the discussion --
sorry --
MR WARMINGTON: Sorry. Here is the situation,
(interference) to aver, one of the best investigators
around, Emma is going to get POL's report and is going
to say hang on a minute --
IAN: If she thinks it is relevant. She will include it.
MR WARMINGTON: Hang on. Hear me out. (inaudible) what
about the £20,000, why didn't POL mention that in the
response, it is relevant for the reassurance he was
given. She is going to be able to say, why the bloody
hell isn't that in Ron's report? And we are going to
say, don't worry, it is going to be in the thematic
report or whatever. She is then going to raise that
54
point and the issue then is --
IAN: When is she going to raise that point?
MR WARMINGTON: She is going to raise it in the Working
Group, in the mediation. She is going to raise it in
that process which doesn't exist in the flow chart --
IAN: The position that Belinda touched on which is the
Position Statement to the mediator?
MR WARMINGTON: There's obviously going to be a step in the
POL report because --
IAN: But why should she put it in that if she hasn't raised
it in her report?
MR WARMINGTON: Because it wasn't in her report. Ian, you
are one of the smartest guys I know but you are being
bloody stupid.
IAN: I'm being very logical --
MR WARMINGTON: No, you are not. Why didn't she raise it
because the only place she can find it is in POL's
evidential report that it submitted to us, which she
hasn't seen yet. She couldn't possibly have known about
it because it wasn't in the material that she had. She
would now get that material and although there is no
budgeting or costing or any flow chart box for her to do
that work, you can bet your sweet life she will.
IAN: She has the option to raise it either orally in
mediation or either --
MR WARMINGTON: What I'm saying is how does the Working
Group want to handle it? Do they want to get it as
a surprise going into the mediator, because sure as hell
that's how it will come up? Or do they want, here is
the write up on that. Does the Working Group -- if we
are -- if I showed that to Alan, he would say something
like, the report should be for the board; should be in
the case report.
IAN: We have already agreed it shouldn't be in the case
report.
MR WARMINGTON: He hasn't had a say in that. He is a member
of the Working Group.
55
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
IAN: But we are independent investigators, we decide what
goes in our report not the Working Group.
MR WARMINGTON: But I'm saying I want a steer --
IAN: Hang on -- we agreed it is not going in the individual
report.
MR WARMINGTON: You have agreed and POL has agreed it is not
going in the individual report. I'm not convinced that
I -- that that is not going to cause a problem with one
of the members of the Working Group.
IAN: That is not relevant. Our report stands on its own.
If a member of the Working Group doesn't like it, they
can raise it. It doesn't affect the -- it is our
report --
MR WARMINGTON: In that case, I'm going for the first time
ever, I'm going to disagree with you. I'm saying that's
going in the report.
IAN: The individual report?
MR WARMINGTON: Yes, because she was reassured by a POL
systems guy that --
IAN: Who is she?
MR WARMINGTON: Jane Brewer was reassured and the documents
are in the evidence pack, she was reassured that the
system could not lose -- create a discrepancy. It did.
And it was in the POL evidence pack that it did and
I cannot ignore it. Now --
IAN: Let's wait and see what response we get back. Then we
can reassess --
MR WARMINGTON: What I have said to Angela is, here is the
situation, it wasn't picked up, it wasn't mentioned in
your response, I need to know what POL's position is on
that because it contradicts the reassurance given and in
this sense it can't lock in on the decision on whether
or not to (inaudible). Now I'm not being an awkward
bugger on that I really -- in order to be able to handle
issues like that that come up, not in every case, but we
will have a hundred issues like that coming up. I want
the steer that is backed by the Working Group.
IAN: It is not appropriate. As independent investigators
56
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
we should not be asking for a steer on investigative
matters. We have got to decide what is relevant. It is
not for the Working Group.
MR WARMINGTON: In that case you and I disagree. What I am
IAN:
saying is -- and the instruction that went out publicly
to the world on what we would do, Alan's position on
that --
Are you talking about job 1 or job 2?
MR WARMINGTON: I'm talking about job 1. No, job 2. I'm
IAN:
talking about the reassurance raising concerns with
Horizon.
That is job 1.
MR WARMINGTON: Sorry. Right. What it said is that, if you
IAN:
raise any issues, the investigation may -- I can't
remember the exact wording -- may well raise issues
[overspeaking]
That was job 1 Ron. That was not mediation. We have
not even considered mediation. At this point, that
raising (inaudible). What we are now doing is operating
under a different rules of engagement.
MR WARMINGTON: So what we would have is an investigative
IAN:
finding related to job 1 on a case going to mediation,
which would have components which would -- went beyond
those --
That is a separate issue and that's what we have
raised with Chris this afternoon that we need to think
about and hopefully will be reflected in the side letter
by Paula, once you have reached agreement with the MPs.
BELINDA: So in actual fact you will end up in a dilemma if
you put this to the Working Group because if Alan says
one thing and Post Office says the other, so you --
MR WARMINGTON: I guess what I want is I want to be crystal
clear in my mind how we are going to deal with issues
like that, where the individual in the application and
the professional adviser, if there was one, there wasn't
in the Jane Brewer case, did not raise something that is
screamingly obvious from POL's response.
BELINDA: I was hesitant -- I have been hesitant to raise it
because I think we have got (interference) but I think
57
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
one of the difficulties is that there is no real clarity
and there is an issue that's (inaudible) with my Post
Office hat on, there is no real clarity (interference)
and that the dilemma that the Post Office has to handle
is, in actual fact, the Post Office is paying for job 1
and has no clarity or visibility about what it is. If
you think (interference).
MR WARMINGTON: Yes.
BELINDA: -- that to me --
IAN: (inaudible).
BELINDA: So if I go back to my days in Government --
MR WARMINGTON: Yes, yes.
BELINDA: -- that is an incredibly unsatisfactory position
and a very unsatisfactory position I would say for the
Post Office.
MR WARMINGTON: Yes.
BELINDA: So I think there will have to be a conversation
about what job 1 consists of --
MR WARMINGTON: And who the client is.
BELINDA: And who the client is because the client is the
Post Office.
MR WARMINGTON: Well --
BELINDA: [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: In a legal sense it is.
BELINDA: In a legal sense. Now there is a real dilemma
here because no MP will take responsibility for --
MR WARMINGTON: And they don't have a contractual power --
BELINDA: -- so the Post Office has to be a tad careful
because it will be damned if it does and damned if it
doesn't and that is, if the Post Office (interference)
trying to (interference) in some way (interference) of
what independence means in this context. And I have
been involved in setting up independent inquiries for
Governments and the Government sets the terms of
58
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
references for managing the contract to ensure that that
is delivered and that is very clear. It seems to me
that for this to work there is a quite a bit of
[overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: Yes and there was all sorts of vitriolic
statements at the beginning from people like Andrew
Bridgen and others which is that it is completely absurd
that the Post Office should be the task master.
IAN: We have a meeting with MPs on 24th. We need to get
this resolved by then because if the MPs feel there is
a sort of a gap --
MR WARMINGTON: Exactly. I'm glad we -- (interference) .
IAN: I have been saying for three months now, we need to
resolve --
MR WARMINGTON: I cannot professionally tolerate or morally
tolerate a situation where I have written a report on
a case and it has a great hole in it relating to
something really relevant to job 1. How do I feel about
that? It stinks.
IAN: The way to do that, as we have done this afternoon, is
to put pressure on POL to resolve that job 1 question.
MR WARMINGTON: That's why I cite this particular example of
the transaction.
IAN: But trying to squeeze it in where it doesn't fit is
not the way to deal with it.
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah, I'm not trying to --
BELINDA: [overspeaking] trying to resolve that job 1 issue,
I think that, as Chris said, he was of the understanding
that it had been subsumed (interference) being discussed
is (interference) speak to James Arbuthnot and update
MPs.
MR WARMINGTON: Yes.
BELINDA: But I'm not entirely sure that POL on its own can
resolve the job 1 issue.
MR WARMINGTON: No, they can't.
IAN: I think you are right. I think the bigger point is
59
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
maybe the way to deal with it is for you to go back and
revisit raising concerns with Horizon and look at that
document because there is definitely unfinished business
relating to that and to a certain extent we are almost
like ostriches with our heads in the sand. We need to
address that, we need to ask where does that unfinished
business fit?
The options are either there needs to be a sort of
separate engagement letter relating to that or we need
to tell MPs: no, we are not doing any more raising
issues with Horizon --
BELINDA: What's happening --
IAN:
The example -- one quoted is a good example, we have
come across prima facie evidence of single sided
transactions. We formed the view it is not relevant to
the individual sort of mediation but it does raise
a fundamental -- potentially raises a fundamental
question about the reliability of Horizon and that's
what the --
MR WARMINGTON: Horizon in the broad sense.
IAN:
Yes and that's what job 1 and raising concern for
Horizon is all about, which is completely different from
mediation which is resolving, in effect, disputes
between individuals sort of (inaudible) and the Post
Office. (interference) doesn't really lend itself or
support that individual sort of case and therefore it is
not going to form part of the individual sort of report.
But it does potentially add something to the wider
question of problems with Horizon and (inaudible).
Ron is right, we don't want to lose sight of it
but we haven't got a bucket to chuck it in at the moment
because we haven't got a clear answer on completing the
unresolved issues from raising concerns on Horizon.
MR WARMINGTON: Job 1 was really 27 cases. It had 19 JSFA
cases. Job 1. What I'm getting at is these 27 are
subsumed within -- in fact it would be better if I put
that 27 and that 19 because these 19 were separate.
That is the 147. So, 120 others --
BELINDA: So why is (inaudible).
IAN:
Some of them are.
60
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
MR WARMINGTON: Slightly. One or two of those are
slightly --
IAN: Several (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: All the 27 MP cases made it into the cut of
the mediation process. So is that job 1, dealing with
those 27, or is job 1 all of that lot? Is that job 1?
And then, within that, if in one of these cases, Jane
Brewer, is therefore part of job 1, whatever definition
you have of it, if I come across something which is
germane to her -- if she has raised four issues in
her -- in my report -- but there is one extra, which is
this item. The one extra is part of job 1, it is not
part of job 2 (interference). We are quite right to use
the tramlines as I referred to it, which -- Ian's good
idea of making sure that everything that comes through
gets categorised as part of thematic issues and we keep
it nice and simple. This item you could regard as not
having been raised by her, but I could take the view
that she did raise it. Mostly, it is the 60/40 she
couldn't raise it. She raised it (interference) in
a contextual way.
IAN: (inaudible) and it exceeds the value of her claim.
MR WARMINGTON: It negates it. But the argument would be,
if it could lose a credit, if it could gain a debit, it
is bloody obvious that it could lose £7,999 on another
transaction.
IAN: I think the helpful way to look at it is just to say
there is unfinished business in job 1. It is
unsatisfactory not to have some sort of resolution of
the issue.
MR WARMINGTON: And I cannot put my name to a report related
to an MP case that is part of job 1 that also is part of
job 2, that's got a big hole in it. That's the problem
I have got. Especially if it goes to somebody as good
as Emma who is going to say -- I know her very well,
I've known her 30 years. What's Ron been doing? He
can't see his hand in front of his face. This is the
biggest issue in that case frankly.
IAN: But it is not part of the mediation.
MR WARMINGTON: I understand that. You and I are not that
much different --
61
SSL0000131
SSL0000131
IAN: That is why you have got to (inaudible).
MR WARMINGTON: It is passion coming up not anger.
MALE SPEAKER 1: That must be absence of generic report yet.
So when you set out [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: This is covered in the generic report.
MALE SPEAKER 1: But this is what I mean --
MR WARMINGTON: One sided transactions is in the generic
report.
MALE SPEAKER 1: It would be difficult taking a case on the
call on Thursday, it would be difficult to get sensible
engagement on structural [overspeaking]
IAN: No, it won't because the individual report stands on
its own, keep them separate from the generic report.
Ideally, yes, it would have been better arguably
(interference). But already the issues that
Helen raised I think there is an sufficient to debate
the individual reports on Friday.
NEW SPEAKER: I wonder if we will end up rehearsing the
argument from Thursday but then reserving the
position --
MR WARMINGTON: We will just cope with it.
IAN: I think you have to separate the two. Because the
individual report is looking at the issues that are
specific to that sort of individual case. The thematic
report is looking at other issues, some of which are
completely irrelevant to that case but relate to a wider
issue of our investigation.
MR WARMINGTON: So in the generic report, there is a section
dealing with one sided transactions. The question we
are dealing with is do we say, in the generic report
this could happen. Yes, we have? Or do we say there is
a very good example of that, we can't name it because we
have to anonymise it, but here is a very good example of
that happening. But hang on a minute, somebody could
say, the person and she will, Emma, and Jane Brewer --
IAN: But we made the decision rightly or wrongly that it is
not relevant to Jane Brewer's case --
62
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
MR WARMINGTON: I'm just trying to see it from their
position. If we mention that in the generic report,
that particular thematic report, if we mention it in the
thematic report and they recognise that transaction and
Emma and Jane say to each other "that's our item, that
came up in my case, where is it in our report?" We need
to have a very, very clear answer for why that is the
case.
IAN: The answer is Second Sight who have got absolute
discretion as to what goes in and what doesn't go into
the individual reports, we collectively took the view
that it was not relevant to mediation.
MR WARMINGTON: We have not got there because you have
collected, and I haven't come to it yet.
BELINDA: So I think --
MR WARMINGTON: By the way, we don't disagree on very much
but when we do disagree it is like two great pieces of
concrete hitting the ceiling.
BELINDA: So having done a number of independent reviews
myself, not in relation to specific (inaudible) you know
and having been (inaudible) there is something for me
about -- this is what I'm asked to opine on. A lot of
other people might try to put pressure on me to include
other stuff (interference). This is my (interference)
and I make the decision and I sorted this out in the
(inaudible) but at the end of the day, if I am worried
about what anybody might say about that, bearing in mind
that (inaudible) views, then you know I have to get my
view and I have to stick with it. So I agree with Ian.
I do believe, and this is (inaudible) point of view,
some clarity around what job 1 entails because the Post
Office [overspeaking]. I think that's (interference).
And until we get to that point I don't know.
IAN: We probably need to close the lid to the MPs because
we are probably further ahead and down the line than
they are and what I don't want (interference) which the
MPs are having (interference) having a go at the Post
Office because we have ignored that job (interference) .
MR WARMINGTON: And it would be helpful to get -- again we
don't want to hold up the reports forever, but the
reports are impacted by this particular (inaudible) the
thematic report and the report on case 14. Angela has
yet to respond to that. I actually sent them a letter
63
SSLO000131
$SL0000131
out a long time ago (inaudible). I reminded Angela
about it today. Because in the two extremes, let's say
Angela said to me, "Pity you noticed that, we left that
out because we thought it was a bloody good example of
the system screwing up and we didn't want you to find
it." (inaudible) but at the other end she might say,
"Well, actually, we noticed it there but we didn't raise
it for this very reason." I don't have that input yet.
I asked for it a long time ago. What we are saying
today it is urgent and I need an answer on it. Until we
get that we shouldn't (interference). It is a really
good example of something that (interference).
BELINDA: (interference).
MALE SPEAKER 1: (interference). What Post Office, what
would be (interference) should be acting in
(interference). [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: I will tell you how pleased I am you said
that.
IAN: It is unfinished business from issues with Horizon and
if you approach it in that way, I think dealing with
unresolved issues with MPs will also be easier to deal
with.
BELINDA: There was (interference) in that: how is that work
being accounted for; delivered; and what's the timeframe
for it? Because this can't be easy. This cannot be
something that goes on forever. That is not to say --
MR WARMINGTON: We need a poll position on that.
BELINDA: That is not to say there is any desire to stop you
getting there (inaudible) has to be --
CHRIS: Yes, we tried out for (interference) .
MR WARMINGTON: Yeah.
BELINDA: So as a job it seems to me that (interference) who
is paying for it --
MR WARMINGTON: Not much of lack of clarity on that.
BELINDA: That is right.
MR WARMINGTON: But you are right.
64
BELINDA: [overspeaking]. I get your invoice. I have to
organise them and there is some work that you are doing
that I'm totally blind to and that gives me
(interference).
MR WARMINGTON: Of course. Yes.
IAN: I think the MPs' position is, if mediation
(interference) all gone through, all the applicants were
happy, that would probably be the end of the matter. We
suspect that's not going to be the outcome for the MPs
and that would then (interference) or remind the MPs of
a (interference).
BELINDA: (interference) between the Post Office and the
MPs. The Post Office (interference). We are doing our
business improvement programme (interference). We have
spent a considerable amount of money. (interference)
JFSA have been involved (interference) there is then the
(interference) .
IAN: I agree that (interference) office and MPs need to
close the loop on that.
MR WARMINGTON: We are still dealing with -- understandably,
on a sort of contingent basis, that we are raising
(interference) position. If we can save them money and
a lot of agonising, if, for example, on that matter of
the one sided transactions, if Angela came back and said
-- and I don't know if she will -- you are right, we can
actually lose a transaction, half a transaction in such
a situation and --
BELINDA: Sorry, I know we had this --
MR WARMINGTON: Then we wouldn't have to keep proving
[overspeaking]
BELINDA: [overspeaking] at the moment that the Post Office
is being defensive. So I come to (interference) and
I have seen the investigators and you know Angela, and
I do know [overspeaking]. They are good. But I think
that the fact that a business reserves the right to not
defend itself, but to say this is it, this is the
approach that we have taken and we stand by that
approach, doesn't mean that it is automatically
defending [overspeaking]
MR WARMINGTON: Perhaps I'm being clumsy with my words.
What I'm getting at is I would like to think that you
65
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
and (inaudible) are sort of saying what are the generic
issues, what are these thematic issues, what is our
position on these within the Post Office? Has there
been a problem? Is there a problem? Has there been
a problem with the ATMs?
BELINDA: And we are doing that.
MR WARMINGTON: I had that conversation with the lady --
when I said I need to get to the bottom of this
(interference) and I said show me evidence of multiple
retractions, more than two on a day and she could, she
was having shortages on Horizon with a multiple
transactions. (interference). I had a £3 million ATM
where it was all to do with (inaudible) and explain to
you how you do it. I contacted the DCU and they said
yes there is loads of (inaudible) with getting money out
of ATMs. I said hang on (interference). Who do I speak
to? This lady was put onto me. Now I spoke
(interference). If I said (inaudible). Yeah, yeah. So
if I needed proof of partial transactions (inaudible).
Of course I'm an investigator, so I said to her, well,
when was that? And she said two years ago. Now, at
that point of course I'm saying, well, hang on, if the
problem was two years ago, when was that fixed?
13 months ago. So I now need to know what it was that
was being worked on and what the outcome of that was.
Angela is going to send me that. But that --
BELINDA: (inaudible) send you a note on it. I think what
you are dealing with and you will know this from your
own experience, is a big organisation with loads of
products and services and getting information from
a number of people to say in actual fact (interference)
but it is getting a position to say this is the
latest --
MR WARMINGTON: Well, Angela has probably done all she
IAN:
could, which is to say that we fixed -- 7 years ago a
document came out saying you can only have two partial
transactions and the machine closes down. If that is
the case how can you have people reporting 12
retractions in a day? So what was happening? Of course
the user manuals, which I have read in detail, they are
not going to say exactly what happens. I know what used
to happen because I dealt with it. Put your credit card
in --
You asked the question, the ball is (inaudible) and we
have to wait for that answer and then we can deal with
66
SSL0000131
$SL0000131
it.
BELINDA: And I think we have got it.
MR WARMINGTON: What have we got?
BELINDA: I think Angela responded.
MR WARMINGTON: But I posed six questions and six more
today.
IAN: If anybody can get to the bottom of it, it has to be
Angela, and we just have to wait --
MR WARMINGTON: Some of it may have to go to the Bank of
Ireland because it is technically [overspeaking]
IAN: Yes.
MR WARMINGTON: It is bloody horrible stuff this.
BELINDA: It can't be the worse thing you have ever worked
on.
MR WARMINGTON: No, certainly not the worse thing. I had
six cases involving witchcraft in Africa.
IAN: (interference). That was interesting.
BELINDA: (inaudible) .
MR WARMINGTON: (interference). Great, all right, thank
you. Much appreciated for that.
BELINDA: I will (inaudible) to Tony about this. I will
leave you two to (interference) .
IAN: Will you send me some (interference). I will send you
all the details that we need on that.
BELINDA: (inaudible) to Chris.
MR WARMINGTON: Yes.
IAN: And change contractor to employee.
MR WARMINGTON: Fine, no problem. Thank you very much.
IAN: We will probably see ourselves out.
67