The Post Office Scandal: A story of Epic Government Mismanagement
You’ve no doubt seen in the news about the huge miscarriage of justice relating to the many postmasters who have been treated horrifically in this decades long scandal. At the centre of it all, there is a story to be told about the inability of government, as an institution, to properly handle this scandal. Let us go through why it’s the case that government helped cause this scandal by, first, going through the timeline.
In 1999, Fujitsu was asked to roll out a new computer accounting system for the government owned Post Office. The idea being, that it would bring the Post Office into the 21st Century instead of using tired, outdated systems that are no longer fit for purpose. So, the Blair government handed out lengthy government contracts worth millions to the company to rollout the new system, Horizon. Within literal weeks of it being rolled out, some sub-postmasters reported problems with Horizons system but the Post Office denies widespread issues and demands sub-postmasters make up the shortfalls caused by Horizon. Over the next decade, hundreds of prosecutions take place of sub-postmasters for alleged fraud causing huge amounts of grief and in some very unfortunate situations, suicides. It is then in 2012 that, after enough pressure, the Post Office is forced to appoint an independent investigative firm, Second Sight, to investigate what happened. This is where it starts to become very clear that the Post Office bosses knew more than they were letting on. A day before the report from Second Sight was meant to be published, the Post Office (the appointer of Second Sight) ordered it to cease the investigation and destroy all paperwork not handed over whilst still claiming there are no widespread problems with their computer system. If they genuinely thought that there were no errors with the Horizon system then they should have no issue whatsoever with the report being published. A month later in April 2015, a confidential report from Second Sight confirms all the issues that the sub-postmasters had reported with the Horizon system.
I want to point out here that the Post Office refused to let the police investigate and instead conducted its own investigations leading to the prosecutions I have just mentioned. Hopefully, readers see this for what it is. If not, then I’ll use an analogy, suppose the police fired hundreds of their officers for what they claimed was malicious activity. However, every single one of those officers claimed the opposite and said the actual problem was technology brought in at significant expense by the bosses and that simple investigations would exonerate them. Would we take it seriously if those same bosses did their own investigation into what happened? Of course we wouldn’t, because the conflict of interest there is massive. The point I’m making is that if the government apparatus wasn’t involved then none of this would have happened. The primary objective of these Post Office bosses is to save face, that’s what has caused all of this because, whilst it is not solid fact right now, it is obvious that the Post Office bosses possibly knew more than they were letting on i.e., they possibly knew that the Horizon system was at fault and wanted to coverup their errors in letting Horizon into the infrastructure of the Post Office otherwise why not investigate the system itself and why try to prevent the report, from an independent investigator, being published? Just asking the important questions.
I am a Libertarian so, naturally, I’m for Free Market operations in all services provided by the government owned Post Offices. With a free market in operation, we would witness all non-value creating services abolished because a private company has the accurate profit and loss signals to see what services consumers are willing to pay for and provide them hence allowing value creation, cutting all wasteful services. How would my system actually prevent this particular scandal from happening though? First of all, the absence of government involvement means that the whole scandal wouldn’t have even got started in the first place since there is no government contract involved. But, let’s be charitable to those who would still oppose my system. Let us assume that the Post offices services have been handed over to the free market and private companies have got involved instead. They also want to update their systems and want to bring in a separate company to provide said update to the system. We can approach the reason why Horizon would not be used in this private company from two pathways. The first being that it is highly likely that the faults in Horizon would be fixed before it is rolled out in a more free market oriented society since the financial impact on Fujitsu of a very public exposure of failures of their system would cause them to lose untold amounts of money. Plus, they would hold primary responsibility for the failure and in a society centred around libertarian contract law, could be sued up to their eyeballs and very easily go out of business for providing a service that was faulty. Second, let’s now assume the fault is there anyway, the (now private) Post Office company have massive financial incentives to make sure the system they are rolling out is sound. If it isn’t, it carries the risk of looking incompetent and losing business as well. Notice how none of this has happened in the current system we have, in fact Fujitsu has continued to get government contracts despite the incredible failures it has been responsible for.
I think it’s time people realise that scandals like this are going to continue to keep happening unless we recognise that the framework government operates within is the issue and it is not a case of appointing the right person.