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  • 2 years ago
George Thomson, former general secretary of the National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP), gave evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Mr Thomson, who served as general secretary between 2007 and 2018, appeared at the inquiry on Friday.

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00:00It looks from this email as though where he says we will forward report shortly
00:06that by this stage you hadn't yet received the second site report. Do you
00:11recall that? I can't recall, no, but as I said earlier on we represented agents
00:19who had contracts for services, a franchise if you like, and we work
00:24closely with the Post Service to make that franchise as beneficial as we could
00:30for everyone concerned. But what it looks like is that you have drafted an
00:36announcement in respect of the second site report without in fact having
00:41received the report itself prior to receiving the report. I couldn't give you
00:47a definite, as I said it's a long time ago. You're reassured the system has been
00:56found to be robust in an independent survey, is it likely that you hadn't
01:00actually read the report by the time that that announcement was being
01:04drafted? I probably have read it, but I couldn't say, it's 12, 13 years ago, I mean I've
01:14read it a good few times. Mark Davis is here forwarding the report, did you
01:18ultimately read the second site report? Of course I did, yeah. We used them on a
01:25semi-regular basis and one particular case was some postmasters were being
01:31held liable for fraudulent green gyros, welfare benefit checks, and we were used
01:38and the social service, and we got a good result and the Post Service had to reimburse
01:43many of the postmasters the money. So we were aware of them and we used them for a few
01:50things, yes. So he's getting in touch with you and he says I've seen, heard, read the
01:54detail of the computer system fallout, do you need any advice on the legals here? I
01:59would be pleased to assist slash advise as appropriate. And you then forward that
02:05email to Paula Venels and others, if we scroll up, and you say hi folks, this is the type
02:10of mess we've created with the Horizon debacle, our tactics were totally misguided. This type
02:17of mess, the mess we've created, what is that, the mess you've created? Well I believe that
02:21I believe that the company we use, Anderson Southern, who are very good, that obviously
02:26the Federation tactics were wrong if they actually thought that we were wanting them
02:31to take the Post Service to court. Was the mess you created, or that we created, the
02:38instruction of Second Sight? No, not them. And their report? Because this comes just
02:43after the publication of their report. The mess we created was basically giving our lawyers
02:50the actual thoughts in their head that they thought we would engage them to take some
02:53kind of action against the Post Service. What's the Horizon debacle though? This is shortly
02:58after publication of the Second Sight report. The whole situation. Are you there referring
03:03to the fact that the Horizon, the Second Sight report, has identified issues with the Horizon
03:09system? No, the Federation tactics are the, in my opinion, the Horizon debacle for us.
03:14That our lawyers would be using for other things actually would think that we were coming
03:19from another direction from where we were, which was systemic, that the Horizon system
03:25was systemic and robust.
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