Post Office Losses due to Out of Date Lottery Cards

Dear Post Office Limited,

At the end of a six month investigation in October 2013 Detica Limited, part of BAE Systems, produced a 51 page report entitled 'Fraud and Non-conformance in the Post Office; Challenges and Recommendations - G-119 Fraud Analysis' which was referred to during a High Court litigation action last year.

Point 5.1.1.4 of that report deals with 'Overstocking', and one of the findings in that section states:-

'Scratch cards have a sell by date imposed by the lottery operator; any scratch card
entered by the branch into Horizon is effectively owned by the Post Office and
cannot be returned to the operator. Once the sell by date has been exceeded the
lottery cards cannot be sold with the Post Office effectively sitting on a loss.'

Would you please answer the following questions in relation to that finding;

Has Post Office ever actually suffered a loss from lottery cards exceeding their sell by dates?
If such losses were incurred, were they itemised and recorded?
Please provide the recorded loss figures to Post Office for lottery cards due to an exceeded sell by date for each of the years from 2006 to 2014.
Has a Subpostmaster ever been held financially liable for a loss from lottery cards exceeding their sell by dates (whether or not those had been activated on the branch’s Horizon system prior to that sell by date)?

Yours faithfully,

Alan Bates (JFSA)