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Telecon Tim McCormick RJW 26102015
WARMINGTON: Well, we've got other anecdotal examples
of that. You know, between you and me, you know,
there's got to be blood in the gutters at the end of
this, and it needs to be board members, seniors
members of management. Now, what we're building up
to is the baroness said to us, to Ian and myself,
she's instructed Tim Parker to get to the bottom of
this matter and to report back to her, which is
good. She wasn't going to see us separately. She
just wanted him to see us.
McCORMICK: Yes.
WARMINGTON: But, because of pressure by Arbuthnot,
Bridgen and Kevan Jones, she conceded that she
probably ought to see us, and she did, and we gave
her both barrels.
McCORMICK: Yes.
WARMINGTON: We have yet to be invited to see Parker,
and it will remain to be seen whether he's going to
just sandbag the issue like everybody else has, or
use it as an opportunity, which is what I would do,
to clear the stables out.
McCORMICK: Yeah. Unfortunately I've pre-empted
that, maybe unfortunately, by copies and email and
that. I did send it to Alan and I got a very terse
reply. I sent an email to all Post Office Limited
directors and senior management.
WARMINGTON: Right.
McCORMICK: Saying that, come the arrival of the new
Chairman --
WARMINGTON: Yep.
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McCORMICK: -- Paula Vennells will be under extreme
scrutiny and may well be asked to leave as a result
of the ongoing investigations, blah, blah, blah.
WARMINGTON: I bloody well hope so.
McCORMICK: It's time.
WARMINGTON: Yeah.
McCORMICK: "Hang your flag up on the right mast",
I said.
WARMINGTON: Yeah, yeah.
McCORMICK: "Because you'll be associated by
association."
WARMINGTON: Yes.
McCORMICK: "You'll be incriminated by association."
WARMINGTON: Absolutely.
McCORMICK: I've got a copy of that email. They have
had to have access to it to supply it to Mark Davis.
WARMINGTON: Good. Mark Davis of the
lifestyle-changing IMPACT.
McCORMICK: He's an arsehole.
WARMINGTON: He's a complete tosser. I don't know
how they get these people. Actually, hang on, I do
know how they got Mark Davis. Mark Davis was an
assistant to Alice Perkins --
McCORMICK: Yes, that is right.
WARMINGTON: -- or to Jack Straw in bloody
Westminster. He's got no experience of corporate
activity. You know, they -- well, what I've said to
the Chairman -- sorry, to the baroness was that, you
know, this is -- Post Office Board and its senior
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management like Paula have made the fundamental, but
quite common these days, mistake of allowing their
public affairs department and, more seriously, their
in-house legal department to make all the decisions
for them.
McCORMICK: Yeah.
WARMINGTON: Instead of having legally supported
decisions made by the board, they've got legally
made decisions enacted by the board, and so --
anyway, well, let's hope he sees us. But the point
about the new revelation that you've come up with is
that it serves to illustrate several points. Ina
sense, the least important point that it serves to
demonstrate is that there are still bugs in the
system.
McCORMICK: Exactly --
WARMINGTON: You know, should anybody be surprised?
Of course there are bugs in the system. Now, we
were at pains, you probably are aware, in that, when
we released that interim report, we studiously
avoided using the term that there had been "systemic
errors", even though there had been some disclosed
to us. We steered away from that. We have now --
I've made it clear in emails to Cameron, Freeman,
the minister herself, that we are now of the view
that, not only did systemic bugs exist during the
time of these cases arising, but that systemic bugs
in all likelihood definitely still exist. Now, the
point here is that, not so much does your work
illustrate there are still bugs in the system --
McCORMICK: Go on about trying to --
WARMINGTON: Exactly. It's this pathetic and
incompetent response.
McCORMICK: It's worse than that. It's
incriminating.
WARMINGTON: I think it is. It's cover-up.
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McCORMICK: Paul -- yeah, it was cover-up. The
inference from the chaps' description that it could
be user interaction that has caused this is actually
downright lies.
WARMINGTON: It is a lie. It's back to this constant
attempt to blame the users of the system for
anything that goes wrong, and you covered the point
well in your report.
McCORMICK: Yeah.
WARMINGTON: Where you're saying that it wasn't
a false log-off by the user. The user didn't log
off until an hour later.
McCORMICK: The system did actually log her off, but
he referred to a forced log-off, which is when you
log on in -- there are two workstations in the
branch. You log in on one and then you go to the
other terminal and try to log in, and it
automatically logs you off the other, but it does
give you a warning. But in this case I don't think
I've been specific enough about the branch and the
actual transaction. It was a rem out. It was in an
Outreach. So this woman is sitting within with both
computers basically side-by-side, two benches
side-by-side each other in the same office. She's
then tried to (unclear) £8,000 out of one and she's
turning round to the other branch and then shoving
the rem in there, and the transaction that occurs,
it's unique. This one is particularly unique to
Outreach.
WARMINGTON: Ah. That's interesting. So -- what
I couldn't work out from your report was how we could
have a five figure, or four figure even, postage label
related issue and --
McCORMICK: It's not a postage.
RON WARMINGTON: No, I can see now; it's not that one.
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McCORMICK: It's not a postage label. No. Well, you
could have. Anyway this is --
WARMINGTON: Ah, now I understand. Okay, it's all
clear. Now I understand why your reference is it
should have been credited to another branch.
McCORMICK: This original transaction was £8,000. It
was replicated three times. It's in a suspense account
in Chesterfield.
WARMINGTON: Yeah, yeah.
McCORMICK: I rang the (unclear) because Chesterfield
didn't pick up on it. £24,000, and they didn't pick
up on it on the day it happened.
WARMINGTON: I know. You and I both worked for
Citibank. I mean, you know, I was chief investigator
globally for Citibank for many years. Things like the
hour account reconciliations, they had to be finished
by 7 am each day.
McCORMICK: Yeah.
WARMINGTON: You're not -- you know, you're not
talking two weeks. You know, obviously, the amounts
were much larger on foreign exchange settlements and
all the rest, but you didn't have amounts
outstanding for more than half a day.
McCORMICK: Yeah, and in the Crown branch it's
strictly not allowed to do it over -- the same
errors occurred there as they do outstanding, and
they're not allowed to have these errors
outstanding, because they are corrected by
transaction corrections within the day.
WARMINGTON: Yeah, yeah.
McCORMICK: So it's --
WARMINGTON: All I can say is that actually -- actual
evidenced programme bugs are like hen's teeth and --
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like bloody dinosaur teeth actually really -- and
they are -- you know, you don't need me to urge you
to make sure that Post Office doesn't get its hands
on the data.
McCORMICK: The great example is that we have the
great -- yes, not just this case. If we can link
the two, the postage label case which is for a much
smaller amounts, but could be --
WARMINGTON: In a sense --
McCORMICK: I've got that fully documented with
Angela van den Bogerd and Paula Vennells, who were
both told about it. Angela van den Bogerd came back
to me and said she'd investigated it thoroughly and
spoken to subpostmasters. I know exactly which
subpostmasters she spoke to. She spoke to them that
branches before the meeting. I've got friends in
that, and one of them -- out of the four that were
there, one of them turned round and said yes, they
had a similar problem.
WARMINGTON: Yeah.
McCORMICK: Unbelievable.
WARMINGTON: Of the cases that we looked at, you
know, there were just dozens and dozens and dozens
of postage label-related issues, and of course in
that instance what generally happens -- and, you
know, in the simplest form it's the postage label
that doesn't print out at all, but the system thinks
is has and, therefore, you haven't got any evidence
that it's failed to print out properly because it
didn't print out. It wasn't spoilt; it just didn't
exist in the first place.
McCORMICK: Exactly.
WARMINGTON: In that instance Royal Mail gets paid
twice or three times or five times.
McCORMICK: That was -- when you told me that, there
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was a light went off in my head, and it is actually
my next blog piece. I'm going to cover that, the
accounting of it, because that's just a great
example of where Paula Vennells didn't understand
what a loss actually amounts to.
WARMINGTON: Exactly. There was no -- you know,
there was no real transaction there, this is just
a second and third phantom despatch of, you know --
but Royal Mail gets credited with money that it
shouldn't have, paid for by the postmaster.
McCORMICK: Exactly.
WARMINGTON: You know, it is --
McCORMICK: It's death by filing, to be honest. I
didn't actually point out to Paula Vennells in the
email. Where we're at right now, Ron, is that we've
got this story, we've put it up together, we know
this is the week that we really ought to do it, but
the CWU channel -- the member of the CWU --
WARMINGTON: I have a good relationship with Mark and
Andy Fury. I'm pleased that they've been following
this.
McCORMICK: I'm not sure Andy's on the case yet -- we
haven't actually got round to him -- but he's about
to be.
WARMINGTON: No.
McCORMICK: So I think Mark's in a quandary now, how
to best use this and put it out, to get it out. We
want to tell everybody and all the rest of it, and
we're hoping to advise -- I think, you know, he
wanted to talk to Mark about it. He does want some
recognition for the branch, the CWU branch, and I'm
happy to stay in the background. I don't really
want anything --
WARMINGTON: I think in due course there will be film
rights to this. You will probably get Harrison Ford
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to play your part.
McCORMICK: If you speak to Nick Wallis, I tried my
hand at -- I must have been pissed at the time but
I actually wrote down -- what do you call it?
WARMINGTON: Screenplay?
McCORMICK: Kind of screenplay.
WARMINGTON: Or story board.
McCORMICK: Story book.
WARMINGTON: Story book.
McCORMICK: So that was --
WARMINGTON: I mean, this has got -- you know, it's a
bit like the Elaine (sic) Brockovich story in a way,
isn't it? Not many people have died. People have
died through this, killed themselves through this.
So this has got everything in it and, as a case of
corporate immorality -- it's almost amorality, where
they don't seem to have ever learnt the difference
between right and wrong.
McCORMICK: I pleaded to Paula. When this arrived on
my desk, I sent an email straight away to Paula.
I pleaded on her compassion.
WARMINGTON: I know, I've seen that. Yeah, I mean,
I'm an atheist, so I don't have a lot of faith in
lay preachers, but --
McCORMICK: You know.
WARMINGTON: But I know what good human behaviour is,
and she doesn't illustrate it.
McCORMICK: No.
WARMINGTON: You see what we said to the minister was
the following. We said -- we focused on Post
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Office's moral behaviour, its conduct throughout
which was appalling. The fact that we intended to
seek the truth, the Post Office agreed to that. It
was to achieve finality, and what they now have is a
far worse situation. There are now many more than
the original 150 people. It's probably too late to
avert further escalation. You know, I can't reveal
it to you but there's civil legal action. Aside
from the CCRC work, there's civil legal action that
will be absolutely cataclysmic for Post Office.
McCORMICK: Well, I'm now talking to Steve Darlington
(unclear) --
WARMINGTON: Good.
McCORMICK: He's in the --
WARMINGTON: And the JFSA hasn't exactly gone to
sleep. They've been working on some important
stuff.
McCORMICK: Yes.
WARMINGTON: I've put -- I said there's -- you know,
the fact that they were now denying from mediation
in a case where there'd been any follow(?) of
criminal conviction was completely -- a complete
about-face. They didn't say that originally. So
all these poor buggers that had had a prosecution
conviction for false accounting, they've gone
through all this trouble, had their cases put
together at Post Office's expense and sometimes
their own, and now it's all come to nothing. The
Post Office told them to bugger off. We warned her
about Post Office denials. I said these are
seemingly compelling but in complete denial, such as
on balance alterations suspense accounts and ATMs.
And the balance alteration one, I said to her -- our
first question, and repeated throughout, was, "Have
you ever, or any of your agents ever altered branch
balances without the knowledge or permission of the
subpostmasters", and I said -- the replies that came
back were along the lines of, "The Horizon System
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does not contain the functionality to allow us to
remotely access branch terminals."
McCORMICK: You've got your -- have you got the email
from Chesterfield?
WARMINGTON: Yes, of course I have, where Andy Wynn
said that they did it.
McCORMICK: No, no. The one I just got the one I got
about this case.
WARMINGTON: I don't know.
McCORMICK: They said -- I'll send it to you. It
says rem out -- "There's £24,000 in your Outreach
that's not there. So what you do is you rem it back
out as if it's going to your core branch, and it
won't get there because we'll fix it our end."
WARMINGTON: There you are. So that is an example of
them doing that. Now -- so I said to her, "Look, you
know, where in the question do we mention remote
access? Where do we mention Horizon functionality?"
You know, I don't care whether they're using Horizon,
Super Zap, Nimmo. I don't care what -- a piece of
software they wrote in the back room, I don't care what
software they're using to do the stuff. You know,
their denial, which to many MPs and others, even
journalists in some cases, appear to be compelling and
convincing, they're not. They're not denials of what's
been asked at all. So that's what we saw in the
rebuttal document, and of course Richard Roll from
Fujitsu then comes onto Panorama and says, "Well, yeah,
we were doing it all the time", and you know the reason
for that, don't you? It's because Fujitsu was going to
be fined 10 quid for every half transaction -- what we
call one-sided transaction -- that was outstanding for
more than 12 hours, and one night he said they passed
500,000 entries.
McCORMICK: Well, I know -- well, I couldn't even
tell you what the -- but that's probably the time
they sent it all to Highland counsel (?).
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WARMINGTON: Well, that was part of -- he said there
were 30 people full time working on this stuff in
Fujitsu.
McCORMICK: Oh God.
WARMINGTON: So they were routinely altering branch
balances. So when we reported that, you know,
branches had said, "We balance the branch up at
12.30 on Saturday when we closed up, and there was
no shortage, and on Monday morning there was a ruddy
great shortage."
McCORMICK: Yeah.
WARMINGTON: Hang on a minute, you know, what
happened over the weekend? Well, no, it can't have
done. So this determination to deny, deny, deny
must go right to the top. You're dead right.
McCORMICK: It has to culminate in -- I hope -- do you
think -- I mean, do you think this could be the final
nail?
WARMINGTON: Yes. I'm amazed that they don't roll
over two years ago. I've never encountered such
denial in the face of such overwhelming evidence,
even in Africa where, you know, I was quite used to
people denying that black was white -- you know,
they would say that black was white. So, you know,
I have never come across such an abhorrent corporate
behaviour before, and I've dealt with the Mafia,
I've dealt with all sorts of -- you know, I had 100
investigators working full time in Citibank. So
I've seen just about every case you can possibly
imagine, and this is -- this is absolutely appalling
behaviour.
McCORMICK: Let's -- if you'd like to speak to Mark
as well.
WARMINGTON: Yeah, I'll give him a buzz about it.
McCORMICK: Just to get some idea how to get this out
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and --
WARMINGTON: Yeah, I speak to him once are week or
so. So we haven't dropped the case. We were fired.
That doesn't mean we give it up. So we will stick
with this to the end and --
McCORMICK: I'd love to see just a blanket resolution
to the end of all the JFSA cases. I mean, just
don't go into detail in each and every one. Just
say, "Right, look" --
WARMINGTON: Well, we told them to put 300 million
quid into a pot and start paying it out.
McCORMICK: Yeah.
WARMINGTON: You know, just bite the bullet, because
it's all coming out of your pocket and mine as
taxpayers, you know. I'd rather do that than give
them another half billion to design yet another
system that they'll fuck up.
McCORMICK: I'd like to see you as the next manager
of Post Office Limited. That would be my -- no,
seriously.
WARMINGTON: I tell you what --
McCORMICK: You are the only person that could take
it on.
WARMINGTON: Heads would bloody roll, I could tell
you. I would -- first of all, I would probably
mutualise the whole thing. I'd chop it up into
10,000 shares, and I'd give a share to each serving
subpostmaster, and then we'd run it like John Lewis.
The postmasters would then have the power to elect
and fire the board.
McCORMICK: We'd need to talk about that one, Ron.
You met George Thompson surely.
WARMINGTON: No, I'd get rid of George. George is
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a joke.
McCORMICK: They elected him, the subpostmasters did.
WARMINGTON: Then -- all right, maybe that wouldn't
work so well. But you've got to get rid of
40 per cent or more of the entire management.
McCORMICK: That's tough but, again, absolutely
awful. I mean, just -- yes. How could we agree?
WARMINGTON: In GE we fired the bottom 10 per cent of
performers every year, and you just have to do that.
You know, these people -- I mean, the only good
thing we could find to say about Post Office was --
I said, "We were however happy with the team of case
handlers that Post Office assigned to carry out its
investigations. While none of them -- the 20 or so
were experienced investigators, they were
knowledgeable in counter operations, and the team
leader seemed to have a good and sympathetic
attitude. Their investigations were, however,
seriously limited because some key information such
as that includes in the legal files was declared to
be out of bounds to them." They weren't allowed to
even look at it.
McCORMICK: The only thing I can say about
Post Office Limited is, apart from one particular
person, there's a --every other person, they're
really nice. They're nice people.
WARMINGTON: Yeah.
McCORMICK: They are genuinely --
WARMINGTON: Yeah.
McCORMICK: They are a -- I mean, I would have
a drink with them but --
WARMINGTON: But I think --
McCORMICK: -- (unclear) totally incompetent.
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WARMINGTON: I picked this up by saying, "It seems to
us still to be a dearth of external DNA in Post
Office's middle and senior management and, in
consequence, there seems to be little or no
experience of normal corporate behaviour. This is
reflected in everything that our investigation has
revealed from the initial recruitment of SPMRs, the
contract, the transfer of risk from Post Office to
subpostmasters, the effect of the Horizon System and
its associated procedures in detecting and
correcting errors, the training provided, and the
rolling out of new products, and the lack of
investigative services."
I said to her that, you know, unlike the sealed
barrel that most companies comprise, in other words,
risk acceptance decisions that are made poorly will
cause losses to the company, will cause hurt to the
company, in Post Office it doesn't work that way.
At the centre they're making risk-acceptance
decisions including, you know, to take four months
to correct this programme bug, for example, and it's
not them that suffers the cost of it. The risk is
on the shoulders of others.
McCORMICK: Would Ian Henderson not like to sort of
get involved and rewrite the reports (unclear) or
just put it into some sort of professional format
(unclear) actually been --
WARMINGTON: I don't know.
McCORMICK: Just -- I don't know. It's --
WARMINGTON: We're somewhat precluded because the way
that the whole thing worked is, whereas originally
the MPs sort of dictated our being hired, BEIS, run
by Vince Cable, then frankly just abdicated
responsibility and said, "Well, Post Office couldn't
handle this and so we had to be hired by the Post
Office, who then tried to narrow down the scope of
what we were doing and impose on us confidentiality
restrictions, not only to my company, but to us
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individually personally." So when I let off to
Cameron and others, they were going to sue me
personally as well as the company for breach of
confidentiality.
McCORMICK: God. That's funny. Karl Flinders who
just mentioned to me this morning that -- well, no,
he mentioned it previously -- that they were going
to sue him as well.
WARMINGTON: Yeah. Oh, yes, and I said to the
minister, "They have fallen for this. They've got
bottomless pockets because they're using my money
and yours and all the other tax payers to pay their
legal bills, and their process is always the same.
They suspend the person first, then they remove all
the records as part of that, so that the person has
no way of proving their innocence or defending
themselves, and then they use their unlimited
financial resources to absolutely demolish them",
which is what they did to Castleton.
McCORMICK: They leave a good case because they went
after and they spent £350,000 of their own money
going after -- Lee offered to try and pay, and
they --
WARMINGTON: Make no mistake, I repeated that story
to her. I said, "Look, I used to be a corporate
asset recovery person. I used to recover for
Citibank £50 million a year on cases. Now, if one
of my investigators had come to me and said, 'I've
got this great idea, Ron. We've got a bloke that
owes us 25,000 quid.' 'How much money has he got
left', I'd say. 'None.' 'Oh, right, so you want to
get 25,000 quid off somebody who's got nothing.'
Okay. ‘I've got this idea', says the bloke. 'I'm
going to hire a firm of lawyers, and we're going to
take him to the High Court. We'll win because we'll
get costs against him.' 'I thought you said he's
got no money.' ‘Yeah that's right.' 'So, if he's
got no money, who's going to pay the legal fees?'
‘Well, we will.' "How much do you reckon to pay?'
‘Well, 350,000 quid.' ‘Hang on a minute. He owes
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25,000 quid. You want to spend 350,000 quid
recovering 25 ...'" And at the end of the day, do
you know how much they actually recovered?
McCORMICK: He told me the other day it was less than
25,000.
WARMINGTON: They didn't -- he didn't pay them
anything.
McCORMICK: I know. He paid £1,300, didn't he?
WARMINGTON: Yes, exactly. So it cost you and me the
taxpayer 350,000 quid for them to -- and, when I
said this to the Susan Crichton, the general counsel
at the time, she said, "I can't believe we did
that", and I said, "You're bloody right." What
moron would actually do that? I said, "There's only
one reason they did that. They wanted to rub his
nose in it and humiliate him and use him as an
example to the others."
McCORMICK: He got -- I'm going to go away and think
about it because -- I do enjoy writing. I mean,
I've got -- I'm thinking there's something --
there's a comedy programme in this. There is, you
know, with the -- you know the one I did for the
BBC?
WARMINGTON: Yeah, yeah.
McCORMICK: On the Olympics or what have you.
I could write one.
WARMINGTON: You could really, yeah. It would be --
you know, I thought of writing a spoof investigation
report on this that would sum up all the examples of
things. I mentioned to the minister, I said, "They
didn't even care whether the people they hired had
the slightest level of competence or ability to do
this work", which is more complicated than being
a bank manager. I said, "Frankly, as long as the
person had a pulse, they would be approved", and,
frankly, I think some people that didn't have
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a pulse probably got approved.
McCORMICK: Ron, when I go into the Post Office here,
I applied for a job at the local delivery office as
a Royal Mail delivery person --
WARMINGTON: Yeah.
McCORMICK: -- and my wife who was currently in the
shop about to buy something. But if you do that and
go online and apply, you have to pass an aptitude
test, which is seriously difficult and I failed.
WARMINGTON: There isn't such a test for the president
-- and why would that be? Because the risk is all on
the person -- so I said, "You have people that train
say, 'I've never used a computer before. Do you think
I'll be okay?' and Post Office said, 'Oh, you'll be
fine.'"
McCORMICK: We could go on and on.
WARMINGTON: Okay, you --
McCORMICK: But it's great talking to you.
WARMINGTON: All right, I'll call Mark, square that
away. Keep in touch.
McCORMICK: That was good.
WARMINGTON: Bye.
McCORMICK: Bye.
(Call ends)
(Recording ends)