An accounting system used by Post Office sub-postmasters before the controversial Horizon software was introduced is likely to have also been faulty, an investigation has found.

A report said “there was a reasonable likelihood” that the IT system, called Capture, could have created cash shortfalls in accounts.

Capture was used in branches from 1992 to 1999, prior to the Horizon software, which has been at the centre of the Post Office scandal.

Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said he was “horrified to learn” about the issues with the Capture system.

The Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) have appointed Elizabeth Passey as chair of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme’s (FSCS) board.

She succeeds Marshall Bailey, who is stepping down after two terms as FSCS chair, and will take up the role tomorrow (1 October).

Over a 30-year career, Passey has held senior positions with J Stern & Company, Investec Asset Management and Morgan Stanley.

She recently completed two terms as chair of the Rural Payments Agency and as convener of the University of Glasgow.

The appointment was made by the FCA board and the Prudential Regulation Committee (PRC) with the approval of HM Treasury.

The FCA’s senior independent director Richard Lloyd, who was on the selection panel said: “Elizabeth will bring a wealth of experience of financial services, public service and governance to the role and we look forward to working with her.

“I want to thank Marshall for his impressive leadership over the last six years, a period of significant change for the FSCS.”

FSCS embarks on operating model overhaul

Passey added: “I am delighted to be joining the FSCS as its new Chair. The FSCS provides trust in financial services, and this is arguably more important than ever.

“It is vital the organisation continues to provide a high-quality service that gives consumers the confidence to save and invest.

“Marshall and the FSCS’ board have directed the organisation through a significant change to its work, with a steep rise in complex claims over the last six years.

“I’m looking forward to working with the other directors and the executive team to help the FSCS continue its evolution as a compensation scheme, so that it can best protect consumers in the years ahead.”

Bailey said: “I have been proud to serve as chair of the FSCS over the last six and a half years, during which time we have significantly transformed the organisation.

“The levels of consumer protection have been more clearly defined, with the FSCS continuing to play an important role in UK society by providing robust protection for consumers of regulated financial services.

“The incoming chair will bring excellent experience to a group of dedicated executive leaders and board members, and I wish her every success.”

Donald Trump tried to blame Joe Biden for the small crowd size at one of his rallies this weekend.

A Trump rally in Wisconsin on Saturday was moved to an indoor location at the last minute, after the Secret Service said it could not properly staff an outdoor event, given that many of its agents were in New York providing security to dignitaries at the U.N. General Assembly.

Trump provided his own spin on the proceedings during a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. The Republican nominee claimed that plans for a large rally the day before had been scrapped because the Biden administration “would not let us have the people” necessary to guard the event.

The former president claimed he’d been prevented from holding an outdoor rally in front of the 50,000 people who allegedly showed up, and instead had to settle for a smaller 1,000-person rally inside. So, 49,000 people had just gone home, then? (The average size of a Trump rally is 5,600 people.)

“But we had 50,000 people that showed up, but they didn’t want me to be outside. They said they couldn’t get us enough people because they were guarding the United Nations, and Iran, the president of Iran is here,” Trump said, as the crowd booed.

During the presidential debate earlier this month, Kamala Harris urged viewers to attend a Trump rally and see for themselves that Trump’s crowds were smaller and attendees often left early due to “exhaustion and boredom.”

This line of attack seemed to get under Trump’s skin, to the point that he’s now trying to explain away the phenomena. Trump claimed that people don’t “ever leave” his events, and that when they do, he finishes his speeches quickly. Many of Trump’s speeches, regardless of how late they start, can stretch on for upwards of an hour.

Even in Erie, however, rally-goers standing behind Trump could be seen leaving the event early.

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Conservative leadership frontrunner Robert Jenrick has declared the UK must “get migration done”, warning the country cannot move on to discuss other pressing issues such as the economy, health or education until this “running sore” is tackled.

The issue of migration has dominated the Tory leadership contest so far, in which Jenrick is competing against Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat to replace Rishi Sunak and help rebuild the party after its historic defeat in the election in July.

The party’s annual conference in Birmingham has become a beauty parade for the four candidates, who will be grilled by members on the main stage over the coming two days, starting with Badenoch and Tugendhat on Monday. It will finish on Wednesday with back-to-back keynote speeches by the contenders.

Jenrick told a campaign breakfast rally on the fringes of the event that the European Convention on Human Rights was a “leave or die” issue for the party.

He claimed the convention was making it “impossible” to deport terrorists or remove “dangerous foreign criminals like rapists and murderers and paedophiles” from British streets.

“This is more than just ‘leave or amend’: frankly, our party doesn’t have a future unless we take a stand and fix this problem,” he said.

Having positioned himself on the right of the party, he is the only candidate in the race who is pledging outright to quit the ECHR, while both he and Tugendhat are vowing to introduce a cap on inward net legal migration.

Hardline stances on migration are likely to play well with the Tory members who will select the overall winner. On Monday, one Tory delegate on the floor of the main conference urged the party to “apologise and un-smear” Enoch Powell, who was ousted from the Conservative front bench over his notorious “rivers of blood” speech against inward migration to the UK in 1968.

The delegate, asking a question to the main stage, claimed that Powell’s speech had in hindsight been “quite a fair and accurate prediction” about migrants to Britain committing “heinous crimes” — and received a smattering of applause.

Earlier in the day, Jenrick said that migration was “taking up the oxygen in our political life today”.

Surrounded by supporters wearing “We want Bobby J” baseball caps, Jenrick said: “I want to settle this running sore . . . so that all of us in this party in our country can get on to talk about all the other things that drove me into politics, and drive all of us in public life, the environment, education, the health service, the economy.”

The contest for Tory leader will see MPs eliminate two more candidates, before the final pair are put to members in an online ballot, with a result announced on November 2.

Tory chair Richard Fuller said there would be “no change” to the timing, even though it means the new leader will not be in place to respond to the Budget delivered by chancellor Rachel Reeves on October 30.

Later in the day former security minister Tugendhat, regarded as the outsider in the Tory leadership contest, gave a spirited conference presentation that repeatedly referred to his combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tugendhat acknowledged his limited ministerial experience, but joked that he would not dwell on the lack of combat experience of his rivals: “They served in other ways,” he said. He said his rivals would have to “own their record” in office.

A centrist former Remainer, Tugendhat deployed messages to woo the Tory base including a promised legal annual migration cap of 100,000, lower taxes, and a lifting of the ban on new grammar schools.

The former intelligence officer, however, refused to accept that the party had to pursue the policies of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage: “My job is to reform the Conservative party, not to become Reform.”

Meanwhile, speaking at a fringe event, former prime minister Liz Truss described allegations that she had contributed to the decimation of the Conservative vote as “pathetic”.

Truss — who lasted 49 days as prime minister — suggested that the party would have done a lot better in the general election if she had still been at the helm, saying “when I was in Number 10, Reform was polling at 3 per cent, by the time we got to the election it was 18 per cent”.