#PostOfficeScandal #NetworkTransformation #NFSP
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER INQUIRY
Post Office Limited: The Gift That Keeps on Investigating
So here we are again.
The Department for Business and Trade has today published the terms of reference for yet another independent investigation into Post Office Limited.
This time: the Network Transformation Programme.
The one that ran from 2010 to 2019. The one that ended seven years ago. The one involving allegations of coercion, bullying, misrepresentation, and the provision of unregulated financial advice to postmasters being press-ganged onto new contracts.
Coercion. Bullying. Unregulated financial advice. Misrepresentation.
Not the words of a campaigner. Not the words of a Barrister in an adversarial hearing. The words of a Government department. In a formal terms of reference. Published today. On
GOV.UK. Under the crest.
The investigation will be led by Adam Tolley KC and will proceed in three elegant phases: gather evidence, analyse it, then produce an assessment that DBT can use "to decide whether further action may be needed." Whether. Further action. May be needed.
Ponder, if you will, the category known in this document as "hard-to-place" SubPostmasters. People who wanted to leave the Post Office Network but were trapped: unable to receive their leaver's payment until a suitable replacement could be found. SubPostmasters, in other words, who were stuck. And who, while stuck, were apparently subject to the full range of NTP implementation practices now under examination.
The document also notes — with admirable precision — that the investigation will examine scripts used by "field change advisors." Specialists, we are told, responsible for converting Branches to new operating models. One imagines those scripts were not light reading.
Correspondence between the NFSP, Government Ministers, and Senior Officials is also in scope. Students of the Grant Funding Agreement between the National Federation of Subpostmasters and Post Office Limited — the arrangement by which the supposed representative body of SubPostmasters was funded by the organisation it was meant to hold to account — may find that particular thread worth watching.
The scope excludes Horizon IT matters. Those, we are reminded, are covered elsewhere. The Scandal is now so large it requires formal partitioning.
Postmasters affected by the NTP can submit evidence to NTPInvestigation@businessandtrade.gov.uk.
They can also write to an address in Admiralty Place, London SW1A 2DY — should they prefer to do it the old-fashioned way, as perhaps befits an institution that has been doing things the old-fashioned way for rather longer than is comfortable.
The final report will be published. Eventually. In the fullness of time.
In the meantime: another investigation. Another KC. Another phase of evidence-gathering. Another assessment. Another decision about whether further action may be needed.
The Network Transformation Programme ended in 2019. The Statutory Inquiry has not yet concluded. Fujitsu has not paid a penny.
But we are, at least, still gathering evidence.
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