Dave Putson (Unite Community – Lewisham, Greenwich, Bexley) – considers the recent scandal in the wider context of corporate greed.
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It is more than likely that the vast majority of UK residents have now heard of, if not watched, the Mr Bates v. The Post Office dramatic “faction”. Hundreds of sub-postmasters of the Post Office were the victims of Post Office practices which can only be described as scandalous.
It is now known that both Fujitsu and the Post Office were aware of the bugs, glitches and faults within their Horizon software that they had made their sub- postmasters use in their Post Office establishments. Unbeknown to the sub -postmasters the software, could be and was, available with remote access to Fujitsu operatives. The Post Office senior management and Fujitsu were more than aware of these access points.
And as we now know, lives have been destroyed as a consequence of what both the Post Office and Fujitsu knew, but deliberately failed to inform their sub-postmasters, some of whom almost inevitably assumed that it was their own mistakes and lack of IT skills that led to what turned out to be bogus deficits in their local accounts for each Post Office branch.
A few sub-postmasters understood that it was an error. Some were bankrupted for having the audacity to challenge this failing IT system in the courts, having a misguided belief in “British Justice”. Others simply refused to sign off a document whereby they accepted and acknowledge further liability. Many, in the mistaken belief of a personal error tried to pay back the Post Office from their own savings, and yet the debts continued to be identified.
national attention to the scandal
It has taken over 20 years of a determined fightback, after the realisation that they were not the only branch with such erroneous debts, despite Fujitsu operatives telling them this lie on a helpline, that was clearly no help whatsoever to the people seeking assistance.
Ruined and destroyed lives
Most, if not all, of these sub-postmasters are now seeking redress from the Post Office and latterly, Fujitsu, for ruined and destroyed lives. Some have committed suicide as a consequence while others have died even before their innocence was acknowledged.
There are now swathes of news reports on TV and in so called newspapers, recounting this massive swindle of ordinary UK citizens. Parliamentary committees have called in Post Office management and Fujitsu management to answer questions. There have also been questions raised about the responsibility of the Post Office Minister at the time of the beginning of this issue, Ed Davey MP, a Liberal Democrat in a coalition government with a majority of Conservative MPs.
Vince Cable MP, the Liberal Democrat Business Minister in this coalition government, was questioned on radio about this matter recently. Mr Cable was the minister who pushed through legislation for the privatisation of the Royal Mail, and was Ed Davey MP’s boss as Post Office minister. Post Office Counters Ltd was created in 1987 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Post Office. After the Post Office statutory corporation was changed to a public company, Royal Mail Group, in 2001, Post Office Counters Limited became Post Office Limited.
When this scandal was first brewing in local Post Offices around the country, and on many of our own doorsteps, the Post Office was still trying to modernise with new IT systems, such as Horizon, the failed and failing sub-postmasters IT system.
The Post Office pursued these supposed debts, for which the sub-postmasters were contractually liable, despite the Post Office and Fujitsu knowing of the bugs, errors and remote access to the accounts of each sub-Post Office, and yet they lied about these circumstances.
The debts assigned erroneously to the sub-postmasters were recovered by the Post Office and eventually added to the Post Office accounts as part of its profits. Fujitsu, it appears, were never asked to update, amend or correct their failing software. And they continued to receive substantial payments from the Post Office in respect of the failed and failing IT system.
Outcry
There is a much needed, and welcome, outcry, about the treatment of these people at the hands of the Post Office and Fujitsu. There is also a clamour for compensation and restitution given that the responsible parties knew full well that what they were doing, and continued to do, was to the detriment of hundreds of sub-postmasters. Sadly, that is as far as the thinking goes for most people.
Yet this issue needs to be conceived as being part of a culture of corporate greed at any price! These supposed debts that were recovered, erroneously, from sub-postmasters, were added to profit margins and lies and cover-ups went on for decades to protect a private company, with a 400-year-old legacy of perceived good practice, as well as a highly regarded international Fujitsu company. But it is possible to imagine a scenario when this matter would not, or could not, have occurred.
Had the element of a private company protecting its name and “profits” been removed from the equation, is there less of a chance of these victims of fraud, having been subjected to more than two decades of stress, worry and loss of reputation? At least the main requisitioner of the IT contract, had it been a public utility, would not have sought to erroneously pursue a false debt as a consequence of IT failures and bugs. It could have sent the software package and company away to fix the issues, with the Post Office seeking some form of retribution for these failures rather than, as a corporate entity, hiding the issue in cahoots with the IT company, and making others carry the financial burden.
The thinking that became the enduring narrative over the past 40 years – that business will solve all of the issues without recourse to state control – is well and truly shown to be a neo-liberal myth designed to boost their profits. They advocated for their business “Big Bang” in the early 1990’s as the answer to all societal ills, even re-writing legislation to their own advantage. As a consequence we have seen not just the sub-postmasters being victims of fraud and corporate greed. If you look to other public institutions, there are clearly-evidenced actions where business is not concerned with society or individuals, but simply with acquiring funds and increasing their profits.
NHS privatisation
The NHS has two differing and even larger examples of this type of behaviour. The Private Finance Initiative (PFI), still being supposedly being repaid, or more accurately, vastly overpaid, for the building of new hospitals and hospital buildings. And further, we have seen the privatisation of once public services where by the UK taxpayer is conned into the belief that increases of taxpayer funds into the NHS goes towards an improvement of NHS provision.
In actual fact, the increased private contractors in the NHS take payments for the services they supposedly provide, but also take part of the payments to show their company profit accounts, as well as making dividend payments to their company shareholders. So while it was believed that the NHS was receiving increased funding, what was actually happening was the creation of a financial “money sausage”, a processing of taxpayers’ money into and through the NHS and into the bank accounts of private companies accounts and their shareholders, with only the remainder providing what, in effect, has become a much-reduced service.
In an attempt to try and maintain a semblance of an NHS service, staff remuneration is squeezed downward. New, worse, contracts are given to staff. New job titles are created for the same roles, the same level of qualification requirement, but with lower wages and worse terms and conditions (such as pension entitlements etc). Each and every one of these actions is to enable the drive to increase profit margins for the privatised companies.
To see other examples of this attack on the public wealth and purse, you simply have to look back to the world financial crash that happened in 2008 but began its journey from the “Big Bang” for business of the 1990’s. Not one UK banker was held responsible (i.e. with a prison term) for their contribution to this global disaster. However, working people the world over have, as a consequence, been subjected to so-called economic “austerity” measures. In reality these were manipulated to ensure that working people paid for the ineptitude, incompetence and sometimes even downright criminality of some in the global business community.
Corporate profit margins
So, sadly, the sub-postmasters are victims of one small piece of a worldwide epidemic of financial malpractice and cover up to protect hugely inflated corporate profit margins. Occasionally, some have been exposed and taken through the legal system. The energy giant, Enron, in the USA, had board members held accountable and imprisoned. However, the usual refrain is seen with the likes of the Baring Bank crash. It was portrayed as one “rogue trader”, who did indeed go to prison. But other banks have also had similar experiences and once again used the terminology rogue trader to effectively get the banking system and financial order/ controllers off a particularly difficult hook.
As long as our response to these outrages is limited to becoming aggrieved and calling for financial retribution and compensation, without fully analysing what exactly caused them, then these matters will continue to occur in many different organisations. It will undoubtedly be the supposed “little people”, as they are sometimes patronisingly termed, i.e. working -class people, that will suffer the full consequences of the cost to both their financial and emotional wellbeing. Meanwhile, the perpetrators will continue to wander around offering their own views to all and sundry without being properly held to account for their actions.
We will never know how many people are detrimentally affected by this conduct as many more companies will be involved in cover ups to protect their erroneously inflated profits.
One of the more recent such events could easily be within the energy sector. Obscene energy price increases are being attributed to the Ukraine /Russia conflict, whilst the UK only ever used 4% of its energy needs from supplies from Russia. Many arguments and justifications can be made regarding this, but could this be where the next financial corporate scandal comes from, or will it be from an as yet unsuspected sector?
One thing is certain, such scandals will continue to surface so long as the working class, usually the target of these behaviours, fail to properly and fully educate themselves as to the nature of these companies and public organisations that dominate their lives, either by choice or otherwise.
