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a message from Mark: Postmaster Litigation Against Post Office - High Court Trial
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om2in the loop
1 December 2018 I Reading time 4 minutes I Please share with your team — this email will also be
separately sent to those in branch facing roles
Dear all
Postmaster Litigation Against Post Office - High Court Trial
You may have seen an article in today’s Daily Mail about the Post Office and the
ongoing trial about the contract between postmasters and the business.
The article in the Daily Mail makes a number of points and allegations about
the conduct of Post Office in relation to some of the cases brought before the
court. There has been other media coverage about the trial in recent weeks.
As many of you will know, this has been a long-running dispute. A campaign
group called the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance was created several years
ago and in response we set up an independent inquiry and a mediation scheme
to try to get to the bottom of the allegations.
The trial is the first of three to be heard over the next 12 months. This one
focuses on the contract between agents and Post Office. There will be a trial
about the Horizon system in 2019, and then a further hearing later that year.
There is no denying that the Daily Mail article makes disturbing reading, and for
those of you not close to the issues, you may have many questions and
concerns. The people featured have undoubtedly faced some significant
challenges, with some very sad outcomes.
We are ina difficult position in terms of what we can say publicly about the
issues at the heart of the trial. It is tempting to comment in detail on what is a
selective representation of evidence in the trial and other elements, but it is
only fair to all parties to focus on the legal process.
Our position, as set out in the statement we have made to the media, stands
(which is below and which was not reflected fully by the Mail) — we are
defending our position robustly and confidently, but with empathy: ever since
this campaign began we have sought to do the right thing by the people
involved and in relation to the best interests of the business and our customers.
We have also said we will not comment publicly on the issues raised by specific
cases.
It is also worth stressing that over the years we have made significant efforts to
address these issues: we set up an independent inquiry and a mediation
scheme, and have met with all parties concerned on numerous occasions. We
have introduced improved support and training for branches and continue to
do so. Nor have we ever said we always get everything right — but what we are
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clear about is that as an important national organisation, we have always
sought to act honestly and appropriately.
We believe it is right for the legal process to play out in court and so we will not
pro-actively engage with the media. We do however recognise that these
issues are important to our people, from current postmasters to colleagues in
field support roles and beyond.
If you do have questions or comments please don’t hesitate to raise them via
email communications.teat GRO i
Please do cascade this message to your teams and, for those in branch-facing
roles, please do discuss it with postmasters and others who may raise it with
you, and don’t hesitate to feed back any questions or comments. Background
facts and some questions and answers about the litigation can be found here.
Best wishes,
Our statement
The Post Office is robustly defending its position in the court and welcomes the
opportunity to do so. We take these cases extremely seriously and we have
worked hard over a number of years to address the issues raised. We have
conducted thorough investigations and sought to resolve some of the claims
through mediation.
It’s important to note that the claimants represent a very small proportion of
users of our Horizon computer system users since 2000.
Our employees and postmasters are important to us and we take our
relationships with them very seriously. We have confidence in our network of
11,500 Post Office branches and the systems underpinning it. The Horizon
computer system is operated successfully by thousands of employees,
postmasters and their staff to process 47 million transactions every week.
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