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Ministers, civil servants, Post Office executives, Fujitsu bosses and lawyers were among the big names to be shamed in the latest epic phase of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.
Some two years in, the statutory public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal has so far heard oral evidence from 267 individuals, received written evidence from another 229, and covered a period of over 20 years. Only one phase remains and is due to start in late September.
The latest phase, which finished last week, was always going to be a big one. It had all the makings of an epic – two phases condensed into one 16-week chunk, oral evidence from 66 people including former ministers, the current leader of the Liberal Democrats and a disgraced former Post Office CEO, for starters. For spice, add to that the appearance of usually stealth-like civil servants and two million pages of evidence, and the fact that this was the first phase of the public inquiry to be widely covered by the media, having come after the broadcasting of ITV’s dramatisation of the scandal.
The latest phase, a combination of the previously planned phases five and six, had the monumental task of examining a huge range of complex issues. For example, it was tasked with understanding the forensic investigation of the Horizon system carried out by forensic accounting experts Second Sight, the mediation scheme that followed (and its collapse), the Post Office’s conduct during a High Court group litigation, as well as how the organisation responded to the scandal and more.
Proceedings began on Tuesday 9 April with a household name – who had been no such thing weeks earlier. When he opened the inquiry with his evidence, Alan Bates was Alan Bates, but midway through the phase he acquired a well-deserved knighthood for his relentless campaigning over more than two decades.
Sir Alan Bates, as he is now known, had turned down an OBE in January 2023, as revealed by Computer Weekly. He felt, at the time, that it would be inappropriate to accept any award while so many of the victims continued to suffer so badly and former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells retained a CBE and remained a “role model to the Honours Committee”. Vennells was stripped of her CBE in February 2024.
It was ironic that Bates received the offer of a knighthood during Vennells’ first day at the public inquiry.
Arise Sir Alan
Bates had originally refused to take part in the inquiry, which was initially established as a non-statutory review lacking the powers of a statutory inquiry. He believed it would have allowed the government to “brush it under the carpet”. In a February 2021 letter to then prime minister Boris Johnson, Bates asked for the non-statutory Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry to be paused, be re-established as a statutory inquiry, and a public consultation be held on the terms of reference.
Bates’ refusal to take part was a significant message. It played an important part in the review being converted to a full judge-led statutory public inquiry.
In his evidence to the inquiry, Bates pointed the finger at civil servants, who he said were more to blame than politicians for the length of time the Post Office scandal had been allowed to run.
He said he was certain that the civil service and the Post Office were “briefing ministers in the direction they wanted”. Later evidence from ministers and civil servants didn’t contradict this assertion.
Read more about Sir Alan Bates’ oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Civil servants more to blame for Post Office cover-up than ministers, says Alan Bates
Negligence at the top
Campaigners, like Bates, were hitting brick walls as the Post Office covered up problems with the Horizon system. Following a Computer Weekly investigation into problems being experienced by subpostmasters in 2009, MPs began to ask questions about their constituents being blamed and punished for unexplained accounting shortfalls in their Post Office branches.
David Smith, Post Office managing director from April to December 2010, was forced to commission a report to reassure MPs that Horizon was “robust”. It ended up a whitewash and just spoke of the positives that Horizon brought.
Smith told the inquiry he commissioned the report to establish what the Post Office’s position was regarding the Horizon system’s reliability. He said he would have asked investigators to look across the whole organisation, consider the types of questions that might be asked about the system, and give “an honest view, not a view that is one-sided”. But during an evidence hearing in phase three of the public inquiry, in May 2023, the report author Rod Ismay, head of product and branch accounting, said he was given the impression that he was “asked to present one side of the coin”.
In the recent hearing, Smith admitted he had failed to include written terms of reference. He also apologised for sending a celebratory email to his legal team after the conviction of West Byfleet subpostmistress Seema Misra in 2010. In the email, he congratulated his team for their work, which led to Misra’s imprisonment while pregnant, stating it was “brilliant news”. Misra had her wrongful conviction overturned in 2021. Smith apologised and blamed the large number of emails he received and his haste for the “poorly thought through” email.
Read more about David Smith’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Former Post Office executive’s neglect prolonged Horizon reliability myth
During questioning at the inquiry, former Post Office chief operating officer David Miller admitted to signing off a payment of £180,000 to keep problems with Horizon, at a branch in Lancashire, out of the public eye.
The hush money was paid to a subpostmaster after an IT expert had found problems with the Horizon system, which the Post Office didn’t want subpostmasters and campaigners to know about.
Miller agreed that had the Post Office investigated claims rather than using taxpayers’ money to cover them up, the suffering of subpostmasters in the Horizon scandal could have been avoided.
Read more about David Miller’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office boss signed off hush money to cover up smoking gun
During the latest phase of the inquiry, Alan Cook, who was managing director of the Post Office when Computer Weekly exposed the scandal in 2009, was shown an email that revealed his derogatory attitude towards subpostmasters. In response to the Computer Weekly article about Horizon problems, he told the head of public relations at then parent company Royal Mail: “My instincts tell that, during a recession, subbies with their hands in the till choose to blame technology when they are found to be short of cash.”
Edward Henry, KC, representing former subpostmasters, asked Cook if he was responsible for the wrongful convictions of subpostmasters. Cook acknowledged he had accountability and that it had happened on his watch.
Read more about Alan Cook’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office boss said subpostmasters had hands in till and blamed technology
An illogical crime
Cook’s assertions that subpostmasters “had their hands in the till” defied logic, according to evidence from Anthony Hooper, a former Lord Justice of Appeal.
Hooper, who was tasked with settling disputes between the Post Office and subpostmasters in 2013, said it was clear from the start that criminal prosecutions against subpostmasters were “fundamentally implausible”. He said he told the then Post Office CEO Vennells and chair Alice Perkins this during one-on-one discussions in 2014.
Questioned about his experiences of dealing with the Post Office, he said: “I was trying to make it clear to Post Office that [its] case didn’t make sense. It did not make sense that reputable subpostmasters, appointed by the Post Office after examination of their character, would be stealing these sums of money. It didn’t make sense particularly because within a matter of days of any alleged theft, they had to balance the books. It just never made sense.”
Read more about Anthony Hooper’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Subpostmasters stealing from branches ‘didn’t make sense,’ former judge tells inquiry
Lawyers behind illogical prosecutions
Sitting behind every prosecution was a team of lawyers. The public inquiry heard from them during the latest phase.
During questioning, it became clear that Post Office internal lawyer Rodric Williams turned his attention to all manner of Post Office challenges, while failing to meet the code of conduct of his chosen profession.
During the inquiry hearings, a barrister representing subpostmaster victims said Williams was at the centre of the “web” and “part of” attempts to hush up the Horizon scandal at the Post Office.
Through internal documents, it could be seen he was involved throughout the Post Office’s attempts to prevent knowledge of problems with the Horizon software becoming known outside the organisation.
Read more about Rodric Williams’ oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office lawyer was a jack of all trades, but failed his own
The withholding of information was widespread. For example, in a 2014 response to a request from the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) for an update on a Post Office review of its own prosecution strategy and processes, the Post Office’s then interim general counsel, Chris Aujard, failed to give the statutory body evidence that would have identified the biggest miscarriage of justice years earlier.
In May that year, the CCRC was chasing the Post Office legal team for information about the review of its prosecution strategy and processes. The following month, Aujard signed and approved a letter providing an update to the CCRC, but failed to include findings of serious flaws in the Post Office’s prosecutions. These included the fact that the expert witness used in trials had been found by lawyers contracted by the Post Office to have given misleading evidence.
Read more about Chris Aujard’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office legal boss withheld details from statutory body reviewing miscarriages of justice
An external lawyer who worked with the Post Office internal team told the inquiry that when a Fujitsu executive admitted in 2013 that the Horizon system contained bugs, it was a “bombshell moment”. Simon Clarke, a barrister contracted by the Post Office, said there was “an almost religious panic that Horizon must not be seen to have been impugned”.
He told the inquiry that he believed he was misled by the Post Office’s lawyers during his work with the organisation.
Discussing the case of Seema Misra, Clarke said at no stage in his appraisal of the case did he see the Post Office’s relevant prosecution file, which he believes was “deliberately withheld” from him.
“I asked for it on a number of occasions and I learned from this [public inquiry] process that somewhere there is a digital file,” Clarke told the inquiry. “I came to the conclusion that this was deliberately withheld from me,” he said. “I cannot understand why.”
Read more about Simon Clarke’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Barrister says Post Office lawyers misled him over Horizon cases
One notable legal absentee from the inquiry was former Post Office general counsel Jane Macleod. She was the most senior lawyer at the organisation from 2015 until 2019. This period covers some of the most egregious attempts to cover up the scandal, including sinking millions upon millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into a court battle against subpostmasters. Although Macleod, an Australian citizen, has her fingerprints across the scandal, she refused to take part in the public inquiry.
Independent forensic accountancy firm Second Sight was contracted to investigate the Horizon system in 2012 after MPs forced the Post Office to get an external expert view.
Second Sight’s directors, Ian Henderson and Ron Warmington, are two of the heroes in the fight for justice. Their diligence, expertise and professionalism played a major role in lifting the lid on the Post Office’s behaviour.
The pair have been unable to speak about their experience in unearthing details of Horizon problems and prosecution malpractice for years, due to non-disclosure agreements. Their appearance in the latest phase was the first time they had spoken publicly.
During the session, they described Post Office cover-ups, threats, obstruction and the “worst corporate behaviour” seen in their long careers.
Henderson told the inquiry that when Second Sight’s investigation began, it quickly became apparent that subpostmasters had been wrongly prosecuted based on evidence from the Horizon system, with resulting miscarriages of justice.
Warmington described the investigators’ struggles in getting to the truth: “It was awful, just dealing with people who were not just seemingly failing to understand just about everything we said, but were, we now know – we suspected at the time – were in a sort of cabal that was colluding to or conspiring to thwart every move that we made.”
Read more about Second Sight’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office Horizon investigators were blocked and threatened as they witnessed cover-up
The unholy CEO
The long-awaited appearance at the inquiry of Paula Vennells, , Post Office CEO from 2012 to 2019, included the revelation that former Royal Mail CEO Moya Greene recently accused Vennells of knowing what was going on at the Post Office while its practices were destroying the lives of hundreds of subpostmasters.
Text exchanges between Vennells, a former priest, and Greene were revealed. Following the broadcast in January of the ITV Post Office scandal drama, Greene, who was Royal Mail CEO from 2010 to 2018, messaged Vennells questioning what she knew about the Horizon problems.
In the iMessage exchange, Greene wrote: “Paula, just back in the UK. What I have learned from the [public] inquiry/parliamentary committee is very damaging.
“When it was clear the system was at fault, the Post Office should have raised a red flag, stopped all proceedings, given people back their money and then try to compensate them for the ruin this caused in their lives.”
Greene was not alone in criticising Vennells’ deafness and blindness to what was going on around her. Alisdair Cameron, currently Post Office chief financial officer (CFO), who was interim CEO for a short period when Vennells left the organisation in 2019, was critical too.
In the inquiry, he was asked about a document he wrote in 2020 regarding what went wrong at the Post Office. In that he wrote: “Paula did not believe there had been a miscarriage and could not have got there emotionally.”
Asked by inquiry barrister Jason Beer KC what he based this view on, Cameron said: “Everything she sort of said at the time. She had been clear in her conviction from when I joined that nothing had gone wrong. This was stated in my very first board meeting and she never, in my observations, deviated from that.”
He agreed that she “had been unwavering in her conviction that there were no miscarriages of justice”.
Read more about Alistair Cameron’s oral evidence about Vennells:
• Post Office CEO Paula Vennells ‘didn’t believe there were miscarriages of justice’
During her questioning, Vennells was also asked about her role in removing a reference to the Post Office Horizon system in the IT risk section of a Royal Mail prospectus, as it was being floated on the stock market, and how she later bragged about doing so.
During the flotation of the Royal Mail in 2013, a prospectus was drawn up for potential investors. There was a reference in the risk section of the prospectus to the Post Office Horizon system, which at the time was being blamed for errors causing accounting shortfalls which subpostmasters were prosecuted for. Public knowledge of this could have been highly damaging to the flotation, with the prospect of wrongful convictions of subpostmasters and potential future challenges.
During the hearing, Vennells said she was not involved in the privatisation, but despite this, acknowledged that she took out the reference to Horizon. Documents showed she got in touch with the company secretary and said she didn’t understand why the reference was there and asked to have it removed, which it was. Vennells later boasted about it in an email to Post Office chair Alice Perkins. “I have earned my keep on this one,” she wrote.
Read more about Vennells’ evidence to the inquiry:
• “You knew” – former ally accused Paula Vennells of knowing about Horizon problems
• Paula Vennells boasted about removing Horizon risk reference in Royal Mail flotation prospectus
Vennells’ lack of serious attention to the Horizon problems being experienced also emerged during a hearing at the inquiry featuring former general counsel Susan Crichton.
It emerged during her questioning that Vennells asked her husband for advice on how to refer to Horizon bugs in an attempt to downplay the anticipated findings of an independent review of the software.
Vennells emailed colleagues suggesting, on the advice of her husband, that the word “bugs” be changed to “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system.
At the time, the Post Office was denying the existence of software bugs that could cause unexplained accounting discrepancies, for which subpostmasters were blamed.
Read more about Susan Crichton’s oral evidence on Vennells:
• Post Office boss used husband’s descriptions in ‘Orwellian’ ploy to downplay Horizon problems
The finance guy and the clique
During his questioning, current Post Office CFO Cameron also shed light on a Post Office inner circle that combined the business, legal and communications leadership. This group wanted to prematurely end Second Sight’s investigation of the Horizon system when it was getting close to the truth..
Cameron, who has also had spells as chief operating officer and interim CEO in his years at the Post Office, said when he joined in 2015, there was a view among directors that Second Sight was the wrong choice for the investigation. He said directors were saying: “We should have got a proper accounting or law firm to do a professional piece of work and move on.” Asked which executives were pushing the narrative at the time, Cameron said: “I think probably sort of [general counsel] Chris Aujard, [communications head] Mark Davies and Paula [Vennells] were agreeing with it.”
Cameron also revealed that IBM came within a whisker of taking over from Fujitsu as the Post Office’s core system provider in 2015, until complexity forced an “anxious” Post Office into a U-turn.
Read more about Alisdair Cameron’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office clique deepened Horizon scandal
• Post Office directors went crawling back to Fujitsu when IBM project got complex, inquiry told
The misleader in chief
Not many names irk scandal victims more than Paula Vennells, but one that does is Angela van den Bogerd.
The Post Office executive was part of the subterfuge adopted by the company to hide problems with its IT system, which included misleading the courts.
In his judgment in 2019 at the High Court GLO, judge Peter Fraser said evidence given to him by the former Post Office senior executive was misleading. “There were two specific matters where [Van den Bogerd] did not give me frank evidence, and sought to obfuscate matters and mislead me,” he said.
During the High Court trial’s focus on the ability to access Horizon remotely, Van den Bogerd told the court she first knew about remote Horizon access in 2018, about a year before giving her evidence. But evidence during the latest inquiry revealed she had been informed of the remote access capability on previous occasions – as early as 2010, as well as in 2011 and 2014. Van den Bogerd said she couldn’t remember receiving an email about Fujitsu’s ability to remotely access subpostmasters accounts in 2010 but her “conscious knowledge of it” was through an email sent to her in January 2011.
Read more about Angela van den Bogerd’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• More evidence emerges that Post Office executive misled High Court judge
• Post Office ‘lied’ to subpostmasters when forced to meet them, says former federation representative
The comms guy
A communications director central to the Post Office’s strategy to keep bad news out of the public eye said that he and others believed they were doing the right thing.
Mark Davies, former group communications and corporate affairs director at the Post Office, and the public relations team he ran played a role in obstructing journalists investigating allegations made by subpostmasters against the Post Office’s Horizon accounting system used in branches.
During his questioning in the public inquiry, the former communications director was asked by inquiry barrister Julian Blake whether he and others in his team had ever asked themselves, “Might we be the baddies?” Davies said many times: “We really believed we were doing the right things.”
But evidence shown in the inquiry revealed that in 2013, following news that former subpostmaster Martin Griffith was critically ill in hospital after attempting to take his own life, one of the first things Davies did was to tell the Post Office’s general counsel they needed to find a specialist media lawyer. At the time, Griffiths was being forced to repay unexplained account shortfalls on the Horizon system and was losing his Post Office branch. Griffiths died in hospital weeks later.
Read more about Mark Davies’ oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Comms director at centre of cover-up never thought Post Office were the ‘baddies’
Moving chairs
Former Post Office chair Alice Perkins learned of concerns about Horizon almost immediately after joining in 2011, yet failed to challenge the organisation’s line that the system was robust.
She chaired the Post Office for about four years from July 2011 – a period when it was defending the Horizon system’s reliability amid challenges from former subpostmasters, MPs and journalists.
Board meeting minutes shown to the public inquiry revealed that Perkins hoped to convince campaigning MPs that the system was reliable. She missed opportunities to share what she knew about concerns over Horizon, which could have potentially averted some of the devastating effects of the scandal.
During her questioning, a document from July 2013 also revealed the Post Office has long hoped to replace Fujitsu and its controversial Horizon system. Perkins was copied in on an email from the Post Office’s non-executive director, Tim Franklin, to company secretary Alwen Lyons regarding the organisation’s difficulty transitioning to a new supplier and a proposed extension to Fujitsu’s contract.
She told the inquiry that the Post Office had to extend the relationship with Fujitsu to provide “a bridge to the new arrangements”. In the email, Franklin wrote that he was in agreement with the proposals to extend a contract with Fujitsu because he didn’t think the Post Office had any choice. “Horizon is a complex Fujitsu proprietary system and any move, other than renewal, would present unacceptable risk,” he wrote.
Read more about Alice Perkins’ oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office chair was aware of Horizon concerns from day one but failed to act
• Fujitsu had Post Office ‘over a barrel’, inquiry told
Tim Parker followed Perkins as chair. He told the public inquiry that he “regrets” taking advice from the organisation’s legal chief, Jane Macleod, to keep secret a critical report that could have supported the claims of subpostmasters wrongly accused of theft and false accounting.
He was appointed as part-time chairman of the Post Office board in 2015 as accusations were accelerating that flaws in its Horizon IT system had caused accounting errors for which subpostmasters had been blamed. Parker commissioned a barrister, Jonathan Swift, to review Horizon and the convictions that relied on evidence from the system.
Swift’s review made a series of recommendations to further investigate Horizon, but Parker was advised by MacLeod that he must not share the review with the board of which he was chair, because the document was legally privileged.
Read more about Tim Parker’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Former Post Office chair ‘regrets’ keeping critical Horizon report secret
The CIO who towed the conflicting line
Former Post Office IT boss Lesley Sewell had the opportunity to stop the organisation misleading the public over software errors, but went along with false public statements that were in conflict with her professional opinion.
During her public inquiry appearance Sewell, who joined the Post Office in 2010 and was CIO from 2012 to 2015, agreed with inquiry barrister Emma Price that people within the organisation knew about software bugs as early as 2006, and that she knew of a bug as early as 2011. She was asked by Price: “How can it be, therefore, that the public position of the Post Office up until May 2013 was that there are no bugs in Horizon?”
Sewell answered: “I don’t know the answer to that because from my perspective as an IT professional, I would never say there are no bugs in any system, because you do have faults in computer systems and it’s important how you deal with them.”
Read more about Lesley Sewell’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office IT boss failed to raise concern over false Horizon statements
The IT expert turning his hand to the unknown
Former Fujitsu tech boss Gareth Jenkins was questioned for four days at the inquiry, such is the importance of what he knows.
He began acting as an expert IT witness to courts for the Post Office in the early 2000s, when the organisation was using computer evidence to prosecute subpostmasters who had unexplained shortfalls. But during his questioning, Jenkins revealed he did not actually understand the responsibilities attached to the role until 2020, years after he ceased to be an expert witness.
Jenkins, a mathematics graduate from Cambridge University and former senior engineer at Fujitsu, was a senior IT expert working on the Horizon system. He gave evidence in 15 prosecutions of subpostmasters up to 2013, when the Post Office was advised by a barrister to no longer use him as he had given misleading evidence in the past.
During his four-day inquiry appearance, Jenkins said he never received advice about his responsibilities as an expert witness. “The first time I became aware of my duties as an expert witness was when I was first put in touch with solicitors in 2020/21 as part of the police investigation into my conduct,” he said.
In 2013, Simon Clarke, a barrister at Cartwright King, told the Post Office that Jenkins had misled courts when giving evidence against subpostmasters accused of theft and false accounting by failing to mention software errors he was aware of. In what is known as The Clarke Advice, he wrote that Jenkins should not be used as an expert witness again.
Jenkins told the inquiry that his role was to tell the truth.” Asked if he tailored his evidence accordingly, he disagreed and said: “I attempted to answer the questions I was asked.”
Jenkins said he was sorry for what happened, but added that he felt that was down to the way the Post Office behaved. “I clearly got trapped into doing things I should not have done,” Jenkins told the inquiry.
Read more about Gareth Jenkins’ oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Ignorance of ‘legal niceties’ from Post Office expert IT witness saw innocent people jailed
• Former Fujitsu engineer says Post Office ‘trapped’ him into giving incomplete evidence
The go-to man for evidence others refused to provide
Former Fujitsu IT security analyst Andy Dunks provided and signed witness statements about the Horizon IT system to courts using information provided to him by more qualified colleagues in IT support who had refused to provide it directly, the inquiry was told.
Despite his lack of understanding of the IT evidence, Dunks put what he was told by others into his witness statements, which were used in the prosecution of subpostmasters and led to wrongful convictions.
He said he would get the knowledge by speaking to people in the Fujitsu Service Support Centre (SSC), which provided IT support to subpostmasters. Jason Beer, KC to the inquiry, put to Dunks: “These are the experts that didn’t want to give evidence?” Dunks agreed.
Read more about Andy Dunks’ oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Fujitsu analyst gave witness statements when more qualified colleagues refused
Push me pull you
The Post Office’s relationship with IT supplier Fujitsu was “tense” in 2010 amid major problems rolling out the online version of the controversial Horizon computer system used in branches, the public inquiry heard.
During the latest hearing, former Fujitsu UK boss Duncan Tait was asked about the period in 2010 when Horizon Online was being rolled out in a pilot as part of a plan to cut Post Office operating costs. At the time, subpostmasters using it were experiencing serious problems, and “major incidents” had occurred, including transactions being duplicated and outages.
Tait was asked by inquiry barrister Julia Blake whether relationships with the Post Office leadership were tense. He said: “I think that is about right. We were in the middle of a major roll-out, and that roll-out was already significantly delayed, and then we have all these technical issues.
Read more about Duncan Tait’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office and Fujitsu had tense relationship, but were joined at hip when protecting their brands
The unrepresentative
During his appearance at the Post Office scandal public inquiry, George Thomson, former National Federation of SubPostmasters (NFSP) general secretary from 2007 to 2018, was in denial over the Post Office Horizon scandal, which unfolded during his watch.
The man who headed up the federation, tasked with protecting the interests of subpostmasters, still believes prosecutions and suspensions after Horizon’s introduction were no different to those that occurred before. “I’ve been around a long time: suspensions have always taken place, prosecutions have always taken place, under the manual system as well, hundreds of subpostmasters suspended,” he told the inquiry. But the figures tell another story.
Read more about George Thomson’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Numbers prove former subpostmaster federati on boss’s ignorance over Post Office scandal
Civil servants left it to luck
The government left it to “luck” to monitor the Post Office management, which meant it missed opportunities to prevent the Horizon scandal and the suffering it caused, the public inquiry was told.
As an arms-length body, 100% owned by the government, the Post Office was free to run its business as it chose, with little government involvement.
According to evidence from Mark Russell, former CEO of UK Government Investments, the body that oversees the government shareholding in the Post Office, the board of directors was the only check on the organisation, with the government shareholder relying on “luck” should the Post Office board miss things.
During the latest hearing, barrister Christopher Jacobs, representing former subpostmasters, asked what mechanisms were in place for “detecting and dealing with situations such as in this case where senior executives acted in bad faith in covering up matters”.
Russell said: “The principle answer to that has to be the Post Office board because they are our oversight. They have the time, they have the capacity, they have the knowledge, and their function is to hold the executive to account. If they miss it, then we might just catch it, but I would have to say it is sort of luck. That said, we have missed things here, and it was a catastrophe.”
Read more about Mark Russell‘s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Government left monitoring of Post Office to ‘luck’
Another senior civil servant, this time on the Post Office board, said subpostmasters were “sabre-rattling” when, in 2015, they announced they were preparing to sue the Post Office for the losses they were blamed for in their branches.
When the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), led by Bates, announced it was preparing litigation against the Post Office, Richard Callard, the government’s representative on the Post Office board of directors, had formed the view that evidence about computer errors causing the shortfall in branches would not be found. He did not believe subpostmasters had a case and that legal firms would not support their claims once they got into the detail.
During the Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry hearing, it emerged that, in response to the JFSA announcement, Callard wrote an email to the Post Office that said: “Seriously though, do you know how many legal firms they’ve had. It would be good to take the line with ministers that this is yet another sabre-rattle and once legal firms get into the evidence they pull away.”
Read more about Richard Callard’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Civil servant said subpostmasters’ threat of legal action was ‘sabre-rattling’
“No minister”
Sam Stein KC, representing victims of the scandal, summed it up when he said new ministers “took on the job of ignoring the Post Office”.
During an inquiry hearing, Stein put to Pat McFadden, who was a minister responsible for the Post Office between 2007 and 2010, that the government was receiving “unusual” and “particularly strong” allegations against the Post Office. “Subpostmasters being made to pay back money, prosecuted or turning to criminal acts [false accounting] is wholly unusual.”
McFadden agreed. Stein continued: “What happened next is your organisation went back to the Post Office, who the subpostmasters regarded as ‘the abuser’, asking, ‘What’s going on?’” Stein referred to the Post Office’s reply, which came from former CEO Alan Cook to Binley, which said there were no problems.
Read more about Pat McFadden’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Government trusted ‘abuser’ over the abused on Post Office scandal
Conservative peer Lucy Neville-Rolfe was questioned about her time as a minister when she oversaw the Post Office in 2015/16. Like ministers appearing in the latest phase of the inquiry, she reeled off examples of her questions about the Horizon scandal not being answered by the civil servants who were supposed to be supporting her.
The department formerly known as Shareholder Executive (ShEx), now UK Government Investments (UKGI), which looked after government-owned assets such as the Post Office, “lost its objectivity” in regard to the unfolding Post Office Horizon scandal, she told the inquiry.
She described an environment where the Post Office and ShEx civil servants were talking behind her back, and one where the department had “a foot in the Post Office camp”. She said that when she asked questions, rather than civil servants investigate claims, they would receive information directly from the Post Office.
Read more about Lucy Neville-Rolfe’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Former minister felt she was fighting department over Post Office controversy
Former government minister Margot James told the inquiry that getting to the truth was hampered because civil servants had “gone rogue” in their handling of the Post Office.
James, who was appointed minister in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in July 2016, said: “There was an assumption on the part of the Post Office board members that the subpostmasters were in the wrong [over Horizon],” she told the Post Office scandal inquiry. “I think that the Post Office board did regard them as incompetent at best and criminal at worst.”
She added that the Post Office was “extraordinarily good at seeing itself as the victim” by suggesting there was an “orchestrated campaign” from subpostmasters that had “no legitimacy”.
James said evidence showed that officials did not adhere to the civil service values of integrity, honesty, impartiality and objectivity. “It was an example of a team of people that should be following those principles that have gone rogue and abandoned them,” said James.
Read more about Margot James’ oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Post Office ‘acted the victim’ and civil servants ‘abandoned their principles’, says former minister
Current Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey and former leader Jo Swinson were questioned by inquiry barristers about their time as ministers in the coalition government as the scandal was unfolding.
Davey was the minister in the business department in charge of the Post Office from 2010 to 2012, while Swinson took the helm after him until the coalition government ended in 2015. This was a period when MPs were raising questions on behalf of subpostmasters in their constituencies and there was increasing media coverage of the controversial issue.
Davey and Swinson detailed occasions when the actions of officials at ShEx prevented them from getting to the root of the Post Office scandal and acting on it.
Swinson and Davey were new to government, having joined the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition government following the inconclusive 2010 general election. Swinson was minister in charge of the Post Office in 2012/13 and 2014/15. She told the latest public inquiry hearing that civil servants were “Orwellian” and “duplicitous” in how they withheld information from her regarding the Post Office.
Bates said: “From the testimony of those [from ShEx] in the inquiry last week, it is obvious that it is the civil servants who have to carry the bulk of the burden of blame.”
Read more about Ed Davey and Jo Swinson’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Ed Davey and Jo Swinson ‘handled’ by civil servants in Post Office cover-up, says Sir Alan Bates
Former Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable told the inquiry that the Post Office was “authoritarian” in its dealings with subpostmasters, while fellow former Conservative minister Greg Clark was equally scathing of Post Office culture.
In his witness statement to the inquiry, Cable, who was secretary of state in the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) department from 2010 to 2015, also accused the Post Office of lying to civil servants in ShEx.
Meanwhile, Greg Clark, who was secretary of state for Businesses, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) from 2016 to 2019, was asked about the Post Office culture. He said: “Drawing on my experience with my constituent, I am inclined to think the management of the Post Office was insensitive to the point of abject rudeness towards subpostmasters,” he told the inquiry.
Read more about Vince Cable and Greg Clark’s oral evidence to the inquiry:
• Vince Cable says the Post Office ‘lied’ to the government over Horizon issues
The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters, including Alan Bates, and the problems they suffered due to accounting software. It’s one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal, since 2009).
• Also read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal •
• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story •
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