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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Labour is flooding Britain's streets with a tidal wave of dangerous criminals: PHILIP FLOWER
As a young sergeant in the Met 30 years ago, I chased and tackled an armed robber who had stabbed a sub-postmistress during a raid. I had a truncheon. He had a whacking great knife, and he tried to wield it against me and another copper as a crowd of schoolchildren in the street watched in mute horror. We disarmed the man and arrested him. The sub-postmistress was badly shaken but recovered from her injuries. And the robber got four years. At the time, I was disappointed with the sentence, but today it's likely he would serve less than half that. Under Labour's shambolic scheme to reduce overcrowding in prisons he might well be deemed a 'low risk' and released after serving just 40 per cent of his time. In other words, if he'd already done a year on remand waiting for trial, he could be sentenced this week – and out by Christmas. Such a travesty of justice is not a rare event. It's happening 100 times a day: According to the Ministry of Justice, criminals are being given early release at the rate of 3,000 a month. Latest figures show over 26,400 prisoners have been let out early in the first seven months of the scheme – with a significant number of them, around 3 per cent, sentenced to ten years or more. To describe such people as 'low risk', as the Government does, is farcical. Judges do not sentence criminals to ten years unless they are a real danger to society. As well as violent offenders, these could be serious drug traffickers, or people who supply guns to gangs, or fraudsters who prey on the elderly. Not only will they have committed a serious offence, but it's very likely their record will also show a long list of previous crimes. Sentencing Council guidelines are stringent. Many judges admit privately that they would like to impose tougher penalties, but their rulings are tightly constrained by directives that must be followed. If a defendant gets ten years, it's because anything less is not safe. Surveys show that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the public believe sentences are already too lenient. Few officers disagree with that. It is demoralising for police to put their safety on the line every day to protect society, only for the thugs and the lawbreakers to smirk as they are once again let off lightly. And if they do get sent to jail, they have the reassurance of knowing they will probably serve less than half their sentence. That undermines the deterrent effect of prison and allows criminals to feel they've beaten the system. It's no wonder that, when the first wave of prisoners won early release in September last year, they were blowing kisses and flicking V-signs at the cameras. There's no way, of course, that the parole boards operating under Labour's hastily devised scheme can begin to assess each case thoroughly. With an average of 100 releases a day, seven days a week, the authorities can barely have time to shout 'Next, please!' – let alone discuss the potential risk each felon presents. Serious issues such as mental health and past history of violence are all too likely to be overlooked. Despite this mass release, Britain's prisons are still gravely overcrowded. Last year, the former chief inspector of prisons, Dame Anne Owers, warned the system could be only days from breakdown. Her successor, Charlie Taylor, says: 'The Government dealt with the problem not by turning off the taps but by letting out the bathwater.' That's an understatement. To flood the streets of Britain's towns and cities with 3,000 criminals a month isn't overflow. It's a tidal wave.
The Independent
12-07-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Why is Fujitsu still winning government contracts in the wake of the Post Office scandal?
June 24 2025 was a red letter day for Fujitsu, the Japanese tech company. Winning two government contracts worth nearly £300m would be a cause for celebration for just about any company. The trouble is, just two weeks later, Fujitsu's name was being (justifiably) dragged through the mud for its role in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, which led to some truly terrible human suffering and one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history. Some victims of the Fujitsu system's bugs, which led to false shortfalls in accounts (among other things), were financially ruined. Some were wrongly convicted of fraud and imprisoned. The first part of Sir Wyn Williams' report into the affair also revealed that there was a 'real possibility' the pain inflicted by the affair was linked to 13 suicides. One former subpostmistress told this newspaper that she would have been the 14th, if she hadn't been pregnant while in prison for crimes she simply did not commit. There should doubtless be consequences for those found to be at fault. Yet the company that created the system – and which employed people who knew it had issues as far back as 1999 – was still awarded two lots of government-paid work just a couple of weeks before the first volume of the report into the affair emerged. It beggars belief. But, wait, I hear you say, didn't Fujitsu promise not to bid for new government contracts until after the report back in January 2024? Well yes, it did. But here's the thing. There were carve outs. The pledge did not apply to existing contracts, extensions of existing contracts or to new work where its involvement was specifically requested. Those carve outs explain the results I got when I turned to a rather useful website called BidStats, a search engine for government contracts and tenders designed for those interested in bidding. When I looked for Fujitsu contracts over the last year, I found 27 entries. A few of those are double counts: there was sometimes an entry for both tender and contract. But even if you omit those, there were still more than 20 entries, involving a dizzying array of government departments, devolved administrations, quangos and other public bodies. They include the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Health & Social Care, Social Security Scotland, the Northern Ireland Department of Finance, the Foreign Office and the British Council. Some of the contracts I looked at extend for the next three years. You and I are going to be contributing to Fujitsu's profits for quite some time. The really staggering revelation is that the Post Office is shelling out up to £72m to extend the Horizon Services agreement from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. This is, we are told, for 'IT services: consulting, software development, internet and support' needed 'in order to prepare the Horizon Agreement for expiry and in order to receive transitional support'. The Post Office told me that 'it's simply not possible to turn off Horizon overnight and get a new system up and running the following day'. 'We have been trying to come off Horizon/Fujitsu for a number of years,' I was told. But another pertinent question is this: why is Fujitsu still making money off Horizon? The company says it is in discussions about contributing to the huge compensation bill that the taxpayer – not anyone connected with the scandal – is having to shoulder. Let me be very clear, I am not arguing against the payments. Far from it. The people who have suffered so horribly deserve every last penny. The government should pull its finger out to ensure they are paid. But while the discussions proceed, shouldn't the company be covering the work needed to disentangle the Post Office from its system pro bono until a suitable replacement can be found and installed at the Post Office's 11,000+ branches? I believe it should. I received a similar response to that of the Post Office from HM Revenue & Customs, concerning the £300m worth I referred to at the outset. Here it is: 'This extension will be for a limited time on strict terms to protect essential HMRC services.' But then the plot thickens. There was also a £125m contract 'to deliver a modern digitally enabled ICT solution that will support the transformation of Land Registration Services' awarded by Northern Ireland Department of Finance. That is new work, not an extension. Fujitsu says it is because it was named as the 'preferred bidder' before its promise (a promise that looks to me like it has more holes in it than Swiss cheese). The Cabinet Office, which is front and centre on this, said: 'We have been clear that those responsible for the Horizon scandal must be held to account. Fujitsu has committed to withdraw from bidding for contracts with new government customers until the Post Office Inquiry concludes. We will not hesitate to take action, where appropriate, based on the final findings of the inquiry.' That's rather better than the trite message paymaster general Nick Thomas-Symonds delivered when he was questioned on the subject of Fujitsu contracts by LBC, earlier this week: 'With regard to Fujitsu, that's a matter for procurement,' he said. 'Those matters are looked at extremely carefully. We have to – procurement has a particular legal framework around it.' Here's the problem: Migrating from one IT platform to another is complex and expensive, and also risky. We all know what happened when TSB tried to switch from an IT platform provided by its previous owner, Lloyds Banking Group, to one operated by Sabadell after the Spanish bank took over the UK bank. Chaos ensued, with queues of angry customers lining up at branches after they were locked out of their accounts. However, given the flaws with Horizon – and especially the way this affair was handled by all concerned, not to mention the damage done – it is simply unconscionable that Fujitsu continues to pick up multi-million-pound awards of work. It doesn't matter that these are (mostly) extensions designed to ensure 'continuity of service'. The government needs to try harder. It should also reflect on whether it is a good idea to become so deeply reliant on a company that a divorce appears to be horribly difficult – if not impossible.
The Independent
11-07-2025
- The Independent
I'm a Post Office scandal victim – the only reason I didn't kill myself in prison was my unborn child
There was no way out. I had been locked up in a prison with blood on the walls and people self-harming all around me. I had been parted from my husband and my 10-year-old son – as well as the rest of my family – because the Post Office had successfully prosecuted me for stealing just under £75,000 in my role as a Surrey subpostmistress. My sentence, at Bronzefield Prison in Surrey, was for 15 months. The accusations from the Post Office – and my conviction, in 2010 – had brought shame on my family and led to my husband being subjected to racially aggravated physical attacks several times. I thought to myself, 'What do I have to live for?' But there was one reason in particular – the eight-week-old child growing inside me. When I was sentenced, I was two months pregnant. That child was my reason to live. While I was incarcerated, I did everything I could to protect my growing baby – constantly worried that some harm would come to it from the unpredictable behaviour of my fellow inmates and the makeshift weapons they would carry. Fortunately, my imprisonment would last just four-and-a-half months in total, which, nevertheless, still felt a huge length of time. For the rest of my sentence I had to wear an electronic tag. And that is how I gave birth to the child I had been carrying – in a hospital wearing an electronic tag. It is maybe not surprising that, because of the ordeal I had been through, my labour took three days. My son is now 14 years old. My husband Davinder got me through my imprisonment while, on the outside, our eldest son, now 24, was there for him in turn. So, I completely understand why some people may have taken their own lives after being accused by the Post Office of stealing money. Throughout the process, the Post Office would not listen to any of us when we said that there was something wrong with their Horizon accounting software. They pursued their prosecutions so vigorously; so definite were they that there was nothing wrong with their systems – that even my legal team advised me to plead guilty to everything. But I refused, as I knew I had done nothing wrong. Of course, we now know that the Horizon software was hopelessly flawed, which has led to more than 900 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses being convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting. But the toll of those convictions affected not just those individuals, but their families, too. After I was released, for a long time I would not go to the school gates with the other parents, or to cricket matches my eldest son was playing in. The actions of the Post Office denied my sons from having a normal childhood. For many years, Davinder and I didn't tell our youngest child what had happened to me before he was born. But he still came home from school one day saying that another pupil had asked him, 'Why did your mum take all that money?' Before that, when the Post Office was demanding money back that I hadn't taken, I was desperately borrowing money from family members and selling my possessions. And then, after my time in prison, the lasting effects of the tag meant that I was always afraid to go out. The Post Office prosecutions have had incalculable repercussions on so many lives, leading to much widespread trauma. This week's report on the scandal said that the Horizon inquiry had heard evidence from 59 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses who had contemplated suicide because of the pressures they were put under. After my time in prison we moved away from West Byfleet, in Surrey, where we had the shop and post office. After having had my conviction overturned, I – now 50 – have been campaigning for the Horizon victims to be given proper settlements, but also for there to be some accountability. No one from the Post Office has been held accountable for the devastation that has been wreaked on so many lives. The law is meant to protect the good from wrongdoing, while punishing the bad. But in this case, bad people have been protected, while the good have been punished. This needs to change. There will only be justice for those who took their own lives – and for those who, like me, contemplated it – when there are prosecutions. Like me, they can go to prison. But for a long time.
BBC News
23-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Shetland woman celebrates 40 years as sub postmistress
When Kathleen Anderson was a young mum in the 1980s she converted her front porch into a post office. It meant she could earn a little extra money as a sub-postmistress while juggling caring for her four young daughters. Her role was a vital one in the remote Reawick area of Shetland, where local people depended on her for paying their pensions or their family allowance. Now a grandmother of 10 and "the wrong side of 70", Kathleen is celebrating 40 years as Reawick's sub-postmistress. She first opened her post office in June 1985 after former postmaster Peter Fraser died suddenly. She told BBC Scotland News: "I thought it would be a little extra money, because I was home here looking after children at the time."In those days most of the women around here weren't going out to work, because you couldn't, you had to drive too far and there were no childminders."Today, Kathleen continues to serve her remote community through the same hatch her brother-in-law built 40 years get her attention, customers walk through her front door and ring a bell next to her serving window. In this remote part of the Westside of Shetland, there are no pubs or shops and the nearest post office to Kathleen's is about 10 miles said: "It's very handy for folk in the community, sometimes I might get a customer that would pop in for a cup of tea".Her duties have changed significantly since she first opened four decades said: "It's not as busy now - at one time all the local pensioners came here for their pensions and anyone with a family came here for their family allowance."But that's no longer the case as everybody gets their money put into the bank." Kathleen has had to adapt to the introduction of the controversial Horizon IT system and the change in consumer said: "I suppose now there's more returns, folk ordering online and returning parcels, there's more of that now, that never was the case before."Over the years, the post office allowed Kathleen to maintain a career while "most of the young mothers in the area would have been doing knitting of some sort for a bit of extra income".Family has always been at the heart of Reawick post office. Kathleen brought up her children and later cared for her grandchildren part time while running the business. She said: "They used to love it. My youngest grandson would love sitting up here [by the hatch].""When the customers came in he would try to put their cards in the machine for them."Despite her many years of service, Kathleen has no intention of slowing down: "Well I'm over 70 and no I haven't had any thoughts of retiring yet."I thought when I was 70 it might be a good time to retire, but that didn't happen, then I thought 40 years of the post office – that would be a good time to retire, but, here I am and it's not happened yet.
