Garry’s thoughts – Mr Bates vs The Post Office

I seldom watch TV. However, I had been following the Mr Bates v The Post Office saga on various media outlets in the UK. The issue seemed to me to be a window on what neo-liberal economics has served up across the world. So, I sat down and watched the TV drama and the documentary which followed. The TV presentation presented a riveting story which could have been repeated about all sort of public “businesses” which had been corporatised, or privatised, including here in New Zealand.

The Mr Bates v The Post Office is a modern-day parable. If you haven’t watched the series – it is on TV on Demand

The British Government split the Post Office into two sections. One side was corporatised and the other privatised…

In this article Royal Mail set for stock market flotation | Royal Mail | The Guardian, it was reported in September 2013 that:

The government will formally begin the sale of Royal Mail on Thursday by announcing its intention to float the 497-year-old postal service on the London Stock Exchange.

It is the most ambitious privatisation since the sale of the railways in the 1990s 

This was after the corporatisation of the Post Office which already was having problems with its computer system and was in full cover-up mode. Sub-postmaster after sub-postmaster were individually being told that they were the only ones who were having problems with the centralised system. Hundreds were being laid off, being required to pay back their supposed “unders,” and being incorrectly charged with theft. Some received jail sentences. Many people lost their life savings, their homes, their relationships. Some committed suicide.

However, I want to focus on why I think this is a modern-day parable.  In NZ we were told when Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, and their ilk, were Ministers of Finance that by applying “business discipline” to apparently slack existing Government Departments that the economy would flourish. That all taxpayers would be better off, and we would not have to pay as many taxes. Sound familiar? The same was happening across the world. It’s happening again in this country.

So, shiny arsed corporate types were attracted to run these new corporations. The leaders of these organisations suddenly received huge pay increases awarded by the business boards which were almost always peopled by businesspeople. The public service ethical element slowly ebbed into the token gesture department.

Here’s an editorial from the Guardian after the scandal was first highlighted at the High Court in the UK when the sub-postmasters first won in Court:

A moral failure so monumental has both institutional and individual origins. There are systems that need examination to understand how so many could be complicit in pursuing unsafe and unjust prosecutions for so long, to the point of vindictive extortion from people with no means to pay. Some of that will be a function of rigid hierarchies and fear of passing bad news up a chain of command. Some is mindless deference to the myth of digital infallibility.

But injustice on such a scale also involves abuse of power; people withholding evidence or acting negligently to the point of criminal malfeasance. Exonerating and compensating the victims is one side of justice being seen to be done. The other comes when their tormentors are held to account.

So, after considerable publicity a Commission was established by the Government. It has commenced its deliberations in public.

Now the behind-the-scenes machinations are being laid in front of a retired High Court judge for him and all the world to see. We should not sit across the world feeling complacent. The same behaviour will have occurred in NZ.

Over the years, before the system was demonstrated to be faulty in the above-mentioned Court case, Ministers avoided answering questions from affected parties time and again. However, in the Hearing this week it was reported that:

Sir Ed Davey, who was Post Office minister between 2010 and 2012, initially refused to meet Bates. When Davey responded to a second letter on the advice of civil servants, he was told to avoid making any “substantive comments”.

“Demonstrate you’re prepared to hear their side of the story,” a civil servant wrote. “But make it clear you’re not in a position to offer substantive comment and avoid committing to setting up an independent or external review of Horizon.”

At the Commission Alan Bates was asked what he recalled of this discussion: Bates said nothing positive came from the discussion.

At the Commission hearing this week Alan Bates told the inquiry that he took offence about a letter from former postal affairs minister Sir Ed Davey after he claimed the Government adopted an ‘arm’s length’ relationship with the Post Office despite being its sole shareholder.

Questioned by Mr Beer ( Counsel appointed to the Commission) on why he took offence to Sir Ed’s letter in 2010, which declined an invitation to meet with Mr Bates, the former sub-postmaster, said: 

‘It was because of the structure, wasn’t it. ‘The government was the sole shareholder, they were the owners, as such, of all of this.

‘How can you run or… take responsibility for an organisation without having some interest in… or trying to be in control?’

In his letter dated July 8, 2010, Mr Bates told Sir Ed:

‘It’s not that you can’t get involved or cannot investigate the matter, after all you do own 100 per cent of the shares and normally shareholders are concerned about the morality of the business they own.

‘It is because you have adopted an arm’s length relationship that you have allowed a once great institution to be asset stripped by little more than thugs in suits, and you have enabled them to carry on with impunity regardless of the human misery and suffering they inflict.’

Alan Bates told the inquiry this week that Government ministers need to be responsible and accountable because:

‘Government were pumping huge amounts of money into Post Office year after year so they need to be held responsible.

‘They need to be addressed really about the way that they had been going on.

‘It was very hard to engage them in it – not nowadays, they’re a bit more interested these days – but at that time, trying to get government to try and take it on board seriously, it was very hard.’

The evidence that public servants were complicit in defending the corporation rather than paying attention to growing evidence of systemic failure has also been highlighted to the Commission. In the Law Society Gazette last Wednesday in London this complicity was reported https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/solicitor-advising-post-office-warned-about-leaving-paper-trail/5119330.article

Thousands of sheets of evidence will be considered over the next few months. The Commission will interview hundreds of people, including the former CE who in her spare time is an Anglican priest. I read somewhere that she was on a short list to be considered to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. I hope that was not correct.

It has become clear that Ms Vennell, the CE, appears to have lied to parliament about her knowledge about the faults in the business software. If that is the case, she should be sent to jail to reflect on her having lived out neo-liberal business ethos, whilst getting down on her knees on Sunday. Who was it who said first, “a good hanging clears the mind”.

Don’t think this could not happen here. Remember how neo-liberal politics was imposed in NZ under both Labour and National governments. Since 1984 there has been little, if any, changes to the original policies by both governments. They corporatised Railways, Post Office, Health, and many other former departments. They privatised the BNZ (may they rot in hell forever when we consider how many billions have been dredged out of our economy by the purchasers to Australia by this single action) Air New Zealand (and later bought it back in a stripped-out state), energy companies and many others.

Just think about how we were promised that our power bills would go down….