Post Office Inquiry: former union boss branded 'aggressive and belligerent' during tense exchange

You are

aggressive

, you are

belligerent

, and your work on behalf of the

post

office

seems to ignore the same sub

post

masters you represented through the

union

you were a member of. Do you accept that I discuss it and you know that you are? C

belligerent

with himself, it's a little strange if I learn anything about the world in this investigation it's that occasionally there are technical glitches Mr. Ste, maybe that's a surprise to Mr. Thompson Mr. Thompson um many of our customers have been watching your evidence today and there are opinions that you got into bed at the post

office

with Paula Venel and did what she wanted you to do, that's a fair description of what was going on, no it's nonsense, you've given evidence and you have spoken about the fact. which I quote, this is about 1238 uh, today we had problems with the old manual system and you also said that people were suspended under the old manual system, people lost their homes under the old manual system, nothing really changed I see, so That's something you were aware of. from when he took a position in the National Federation of Teachers from secondary positions, of course, was what he did to try to change that position under the old system so that people did not lose their homes, did not lose their livelihoods, Mr.

Thompson, no. you always want someone to be in that position, however cash is a business tool of the postal industry and we used to do billions of pounds worth of transactions a month for the DWP alone, so the difference between our owners and, say, a A merchant or a news agent there were always large sums of cash and the vast majority of the postmasters, the vast majority of the postmasters, um, were sincere as a given, they could be make mistakes, of course, I said before people added things up, but you were, you were responsible. That's why I could give you so many cases, um, for example, the Federation would send some, let's say, on a Thursday morning, on a Friday morning.

Gods, pH, we would go, we would try to get a resolution, but depending on the amount of money. was missing, that's when it could have life-changing implications under both the old system and the new system. Well, could you try to answer my question? I was answering your question just now. What I asked was this: Under the old system, were you aware that people lost. your homes under the old manual system and your evidence is that it continued Under the Horizon system, that is what you are saying absolutely yes, what did you do when you were in the National Federation of Postmasters subp about that Mr Thompson?

Well, when we change, for example. when we were switching to Horizon online I, I sent an email to our members reminding them that the auditors were coming and that when they switched from the first horizon stage to the second horizon stage, there would be a full statement of cash and shares that I would tell them. I warned them to make sure it was correct and it goes back to when it was manual. We always told members that they need to make sure that the cash and shares that they have there are correct because their contract is responsible for that and to be honest with you, given the volumes of business that we were doing, particularly for the government, the government knew it was a The auditors were a deterrent, it was a deterrent to the Post Masters from borrowing or taking their money and every year there were two or three. just a fact of life I know you're shaking your head two or 300 people under the old manual system were suspended not prosecuted some were prosecuted two or 300 were suspended it was ongoing and it's the same with Postman now we try to keep that in house as much as we could because it's not just about protecting the brand, it's about protecting the position of the postmasters in their community, but it's always understood that postmasters are decent people, but if your circumstances change and let's say someone lost their job or you you were going to lose your house um, there was a case in Old, an old postmes in Scotland under the manual system, they did an audit and she was short 6,000 and she admitted to them that the salary position had become so low and unaffordable that she had been paying for her arc electric and gas for the last five years she and she I always intended to put it back she was never precut I mean I always meant to put it back but I never could afford to do it so that this is part of what there is no balance in what is almost as if the post office problems and the balance problems only started with Horizon, that is absolute nonsense, now Mr.

Thompson we have to finish a three and I will return if necessary. the position in relation to the sub postmasters, um, are you trying to say that they are the ones who failed in the system under the old manual system and the Horizon system? Are you trying to say they are collateral losses like a World War? I, the general, order the troops exaggeratedly in the song, no, it is a fact what you are trying to say, no, it is a fact in life if you use money from the post office and the government, whether it is for you or for staff.

Now you're responsible for it, if you didn't have it, if you didn't have the government used to pre-fund the Chuny profits, hundreds of millions of pounds a month, if you didn't have that kind of deterrent, then you couldn't. I have not run your company for obvious reasons, but that money is a tool of trade and money is still a two of trade and that is what worries me in the future because right now the post office basically has a company that yes out Not owned by the government would be bankrupt as we speak and that would be collateral damage.

Your view and your evidence is that the contract and the post office's interpretation of the contract, which is that the sub post Masters must pay regardless of your fault. see I never said regardless of fault, well I never saw yours, don't put words in my mouth please, uh, well I was going to put the words in your mouth again repeating what you said, which is that it was an element deterrent, the system was a deterrent that put the owners seemed to be what you are talking about regarding the audits in the sub postm was that your opinion H having an audit having auditors was a deterrent yes, it was well known and was that I joined post 18 and I knew from the age of 19 that the post has done private processing.

Royal m still does some private prosecutions as we speak but that is mainly against dog owners who have been warned and warned about their dogs biting postmen so I knew from the age of 19 18 19 that we did private prosecutions because we had hundreds of millions of pounds of government money hanging around in the postal service's savings, that's a fact now in an ideal world in an ideal world you don't want anyone to take it, but when you get to the cases where you turn up and they gather postmasters must have £60,000 in cash why did you get 30,000 this was this is before Horizon well so wait a minute let me finish so I took took we need to progress we need progress Mr Thompson I think that even you recognize that, can we go to a document?

Please, p o l0 89165 and page three of that document, please, now if we go to page three and scroll down, please, thank you, that's ideal. Okay, now this relates to um, a secondary lover named Jennifer Odell and we can see the dates we're concerned about in 2009. I'm just going to point out a couple of examples, but all the examples are essentially very similar, so this is Mrs. .Odal talking to post office helpline and these are notes made by a post office investigator okay, so, um, let's look at the entries from November 5 as examples. November 5, 2009 I spoke to Ms.

Otel today, now this is talking about the post helpline. office help line, do you understand that Mr. Thompson? Yeah, okay, I talked to Mrs. Odell today. The office has a loss of £7,000. She has been carrying the loss since May. She explained to the postmaster that this loss should have been compensated when she was shooting her TP, but she refuses. to make up for it, as she said, um, the loss, the loss is not hers and then the second November 5th, um, then Post Master reports having had a loss of 1,000 a month since May, for a total of £7,000.

Also, she refuses to compensate because she blames the system for the losses. They are fine, so we can see what is happening here. Mrs. Odell is calling the post office and says, look over there, the system, I don't know what's wrong, there's something wrong with the system, it's building up and it keeps building up to substantial levels. Losses of thousands of pounds, as you can see, do you understand that's what she's saying? Do you understand that Mr. Thompson? Yes, I'm fine and he's telling her, as we can see, on the helpline. Look, you need to make up for these losses.

I knew it? That was what was happening with the post office helpline, the postmasters were responsible. Did you know what was happening with the secondary helpline organized by the post office? I'm not sure, it's a bit of a black and white answer: didn't he or didn't he? Mr Thomson, did you know that the post office helpline discouraged people by saying that you pay for the shortfalls? It's up to you to pay. Did you know that probably me? Yes, but can I go back to that point? It was in the contract. People make mistakes. The attitude you have, the questions they give you is that every mistake and every shortage was made. that you had a mailer and you started manually and now moved to Horizon must have been due to hor.

The Horizon system is fundamentally wrong, what you're saying there, well, I don't think that's what Mr. Steen is saying, but the question is simply this: If you were aware, Mr. Thompson, that, in Generally speaking, if a postmaster called the helpline and said I had this problem and the result was that I was £6,000 short, would the helpline's stock response be any good? your responsibility is to make that good for me or someone, the team would be aware of that, without a doubt, yes ok thanks, so the situation you accept was that sub postm was told to pay despite that, while Mrs.

Odell was doing it, she was saying look. I don't know what's going on, it's not my fault, it's the system you knew did, that's right, anyone could blame Horizon for a mistake they made that other staff members could make and in fact I think there was more than 200 subpostmasters. In reality, they were prosecuted, not the post Masters, nor the CW members, but their staff, so the staff can receive money too, of course they can, but what you see is that each of the errors that were made made or each claim error fell on Horizon and again. that is wrong, do you now accept Mr Thompson that there were a number of errors and defects in the Horizon system which had the potential to and did affect the integrity of the Post Office branch accounts?

Do you now accept that I now accept that all the prosecutions at two points were unsafe because the post was aware of the things you were saying. Yes, do you now accept his question? Mr. Thompson, if I tell you that in this investigation both the post office and Fujitsu have formally admitted. I added that there were errors and defects that had the capacity to cause loss of balance. Don't you dispute what they admit? No, I'm not arguing, that's not right, thank you because I was actually reading a quote from Fujitsu, the people who run the system.

They own the system, they accept that those kinds of bugs and defects existed within the system, but the point you make is that any build, regardless of what you said, any mistake that was made, even if it wasn't Horizon, as long as when it was attributed to a potential error or a potential failure in the system it was due to the fault of the system, which means that the company would not be able to function even now if every single error was attributed to a failure in Horizon and everyone blamed that. so frankly why wouldn't you be Ed and the post office and the nfsp were united?

I already agree with that, no, I already said it because we lost so many members, we did the right thing for the network, we got about 8,000 members with large amounts of compensation to protect their investment, right? Some people who We also had problems with Horizon, we have a bad temper, or we solved them so that we could get out, get out with money, so yeah, after the three closure programs or the three restructuring programs, whatever you want to call them, yeah, our organization, basically. You had to make a deal with the post office or merge with CW or negotiate with Mr.

Thompson. That agreement included contractually agreeing that the nfsp should not do anything to criticize or undermine the post office. You basically betrayed your own membership, didn't you accept that? For a minute, my position on Horizon didn't change one bit within the work we did on an agreement with thepost office, but as I said before, I realized that it was forcing us to strive in other directions, in paying for things and really, for me I didn't want to do it anymore. Did you tell the nfsp members that a deal had been struck for the post office shilling and that they would stop you from criticizing and undermining the post office if they told you the details of the transaction? that agreement was not gagged and it was approved tell them the details they were not gagged and it was approved in a special conference by the members that is the reality it was not GE Thompson Approving it was not executive The Council was a member who approved it in a special conference.

Now you have shown, um, Mr Thompson, in your evidence, that you are

aggressive

, that you are belligerent and that your work on behalf of the post office seems to ignore the same sub. postmasters that you represented through the

union

that you were a member of, you accept that I discuss it and you know that being called belligerent with yourself is a little strange, okay, one last question sir, right, yes, do you think that if you had activated your aggressiveness and belligerence? at the post office, actually, you may have done something good for the subpost Masters. I don't accept your question, it's nonsense.