Day 203 - 12 Jan 96 - Page 35
1 that the storage of that information was, whilst under 18s
2 was probably there and some of the other stuff was there, a
3 lot of audit adjustments were missing, and going back for
4 quite a while.
5
6 I mean, that would have occurred to me at the time, to be
7 honest, sir, and I think I would have looked at it
8 thoroughly. I considered that I was very thorough in the
9 way that I looked into things.
10
11 Again, you know, I actually do remember asking the crew
12 about this; and, again, it is so vague, to be honest with
13 you, I think that people mentioned to me about previous
14 incidents and I looked a little further into it and it all
15 boiled back to hearsay and the incident relating to --
16 I believe it was Tracey Milleine. So some crew did say --
17 I did ask that question, in fact: "How long has this
18 practice been going on", and people said, "Oh, it has
19 happened before, you know"; one crew member, I think, you
20 know, said this stuff to me, and I looked back into it,
21 tried to pin down what people were saying, and it really
22 came back to that incident, I think, with Tracey Milleine.
23
24 MR. MORRIS: How many years is the clock card information
25 legally required to be retained on computer?
26 A. To be honest with you, I am not sure. I think it is
27 something like six years.
28
29 Q. Right.
30 A. I think so. I am not totally certain about that.
31
32 Q. So, although the actual paper documents may not have been
33 available, it would have been possible at that time to get
34 a printout of the previous -- well, ever since the Husky
35 came in?
36 A. You know something, I looked into, I investigated an
37 incident in Clacton on another occasion with regard to a
38 crew member claiming that they had not been paid, and the
39 records were not available in the restaurant; and I did on
40 that occasion consult with the Central Office, and it was
41 extremely difficult for me to get any data from the Central
42 Office at that time. I managed to get one sheet of
43 information which cleared up the situation, but it was
44 extremely difficult to get that data. I just do not think
45 that the storage at Central -- to be honest with you, I do
46 not know where the responsibility is -- is it with
47 restaurant managers or is it with Central Filing -- you
48 know, at this time. I mean, I am sure we could check.
49
50 Q. Did you contact the Central Office and ask for that
51 information?
52 A. On this occasion, no.
53
54 Q. Even though there was, in your belief, some kind of
55 systematic, fraudulent under-payment, illegal -----
56 A. No, I have not said that at all. I have never
57 said -----
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: "Systematic" was your word, I think. That is
60 what led to the whole of my intervention.
