Post Office bosses questioned over Horizon IT scandal — as it happened

The inquiry, chaired by the judge Sir Wyn Williams, is holding the hearing after the lawyer criticised the Post Office’s process for disclosing important evidence.

The scandal saw 700 subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted over stealing thousands of pounds from branches. It led to some serving jail time and at least four people committing suicide. It is thought to be Britain’s most widespread miscarriage of justice.

Paula Vennells led the Post Office between 2010 and 2019,

SIMON DAWSON/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Post Office executives including the agency’s former boss Paula Vennells have not shared their WhatsApp messages with the inquiry examining the Horizon IT scandal, it has emerged.

Jason Beer KC, the inquiry lead counsel, asked whether Post Office executives had been asked by lawyers to provide their WhatsApp messages and if lawyers had looked at their phones. Giving evidence to the inquiry, Chris Jackson, the lawyer representing the Post Office, said data had not been collected from the phones of Post Office executives.

He said executives used WhatsApp for “administrative” purposes rather than for “substantive” discussions. In questioning Jackson, the lead counsel asked if there could have been a scenario where someone like Paula Vennells, the former chief executive, used WhatsApp to seek advice from colleagues about what to say or not to say in meetings.

“No, she wouldn’t”, Jackson said, adding that WhatsApp would be used for purposes such as arranging the time of a meeting.

Beer, however, suggested it would come as a surprise to members of the public that “nobody in the Post Office used WhatsApp to discuss issues of substance related to Horizon”.

Sir Ed Davey has repeatedly refused to apologise to the postmasters who were wrongly accused of offences including theft while he was in charge of the Post Office (Kieran Gair writes).

Davey, who is now the Liberal Democrat leader, was the Post Office minister between 2010 and 2012 when doubts about the Horizon IT system were first raised.

In his first television interview since the ITV drama thrust the scandal back into the spotlight, Sir Ed said he had been lied to by the Post Office on an “industrial scale”.

Asked more than ten times why he would not apologise, the Liberal Democrat leader told ITV: “I’ve said time and time again that I deeply regret that I was lied to. I was lied to on an industrial scale and of course I’m sure every other post office minister who was lied to regrets that they were part of this huge conspiracy that the Post Office perpetrated.”

He added: “I deeply regret that we didn’t get to the bottom of the lies that were told and I deeply regret that it took until 2019 and the High Court case until people got the truth. “What we absolutely need to focus on now is getting that compensation quickly.”

Davey has been accused of having “fobbed off” sub-postmasters affected by the Horizon scandal.

The disclosure of Post Office documents to the inquiry has been “sub-optimal”, a Post Office lawyer has conceded (Kieran Gair writes).

The inquiry was told on December 19 that the Post Office’s disclosure of documents in relation to investigator Stephen Bradshaw’s evidence was complete.

However, the inquiry was then told last Friday that 924 further documents would be disclosed. Jason Beer KC, the lead counsel, said it “doesn’t make for happy reading” that hundreds of new documents were released at the last minute.

It was later found that at least 420 of them were duplicates that had previously been provided. Beer asked Chris Jackson, the lawyer representing the Post Office, if he agreed that the chain of correspondence had been “rather chaotic”.

Jackson replied: “You used the phrase before the lunch break sub-optimal, it is clearly that. It must be frustrating, particularly for the inquiry, and for witnesses and I suspect for those at the other end trying to get it right.”

A lawyer representing the Post Office has apologised to the inquiry following a litany of disclosure failings (Kieran Gair writes).

Chris Jackson, a partner at the law firm Burges Salmon, said he understands the “profound mistrust in many quarters”. A further disclosure setback in November, in which around 363,000 emails were found on a “legacy” mailing system, resulted in witnesses being delayed.

Failings have also included a failure to consider “families” of documents, not disclosing the names of those blind copied into emails, and the failure to disclose documents held on back-up tapes.

Addressing the disclosure issues in his statement, Jackson said: “[The] Post Office has asked me to convey its apologies for the current situation and to assure the inquiry and other core participants that it is a Post Office priority to get to a position where hearings (and planning and preparation for hearings) can take place from a stable basis with the risks of further emerging data source issues is minimised and managed so far as is practicable.”

He continued: “I am conscious that emerging problems with, and frank updates to the inquiry on, Post Office’s disclosure have been deeply and understandably frustrating to the inquiry, to postmasters and their families … and to those witnesses who have been affected.

Horizon victims were more at risk from PTSD than soldiers, a study has said

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE

Victims of the Horizon Post Office scandal suffer from PTSD at a rate greater than those experienced by military personnel and frontline healthcare workers, a study has found (Kieran Gair writes).

The study, published in The British Psychological Society’s journal, Legal and Criminological Psychology, is the first to measure the mental health of individuals who were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting.

The researchers found that 67 per cent of respondents reported “clinically significant post-traumatic stress”, irrespective of whether they were found guilty, not guilty or had a wrongful conviction overturned or not. About 60 per cent of respondents reported depressive symptoms, the study found.

The rates of PTSD and depressive symptoms were higher than those seen in other vulnerable populations such as military personnel and frontline health workers during the pandemic.

There were no differences found in the severity of mental health symptoms between participants who had received financial compensation and those who had not.

The Post Office threatened and lied to the BBC in 2015 before a Panorama programme with a Horizon whistleblower, according to the broadcaster (Kieran Gair writes).

The BBC said experts who were interviewed for the programme were sent intimidating letters by Post Office lawyers, who also sent letters to the broadcaster, threatening to sue Panorama.

According to the BBC, senior Post Office managers also told the broadcaster at the time that no staff or the company who developed Horizon, Fujitsu, could access sub-postmasters’ accounts, despite being warned four years earlier this was possible.

The BBC said the claims did not stop the programme, titled Trouble At The Post Office, but it did delay the broadcast of the show.

The Post Office has been contacted for comment. It told the BBC it will not comment while the public inquiry continues.

Only a “handful” of cases linked to the Horizon IT scandal were handled by the Crown Prosecution Service when Sir Keir Starmer was in charge of the organisation.

The Labour leader, who led the CPS between 2008 and 2013, has said that he was not aware of Horizon cases brought against sub-postmasters by the agency.

Keir Starmer in 2013, when he was the DPP

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL

The overwhelming majority of cases against victims of the scandal were brought by the Post Office using its own private prosecutions powers (Kieran Gair writes).

Sir Keir said: “I think it’s very important to be clear that these were, or the vast majority of these were, Post Office prosecutions brought by the Post Office in relation to their cases.

“A small number, at the moment it looks like there may have been three or so, a handful of cases, in the five years that I was director of public prosecutions that were handled by the Crown Prosecution Service.”

He said it was “not even known what the detail of those cases are and it needs to be put in its context. In the five years I was director of public prosecutions I had 7,000 staff and we handled four million cases. So this was a handful, within that”.

He added: “More details will emerge no doubt … it’s not clear whether they’re in the cohort of cases of concern or not.”

Covert recordings reveal that senior Post Office staff knew there were problems with the Horizon software two years before Paula Vennells, the chief executive, denied it (Tom Witherow and Emma Yeomans write).

The public inquiry into the scandal used its legal powers to uncover the potentially “damning” tapes, the ­contents of which have been disclosed to The Times.

They show that the Post Office’s company secretary was preparing to brief Vennells in 2013 that remote access to Horizon accounts was possible without sub-postmasters’ knowledge.

Lawyers working for the Post Office should not have been expected to “leave [no] stone unturned” in their review of documents related to the Horizon IT scandal, according to a letter sent from Chris Jackson’s legal firm (Kieran Gair writes).

Jason Beer KC, the lead counsel to the inquiry, said that out of 402,000 documents that were collected in a remediation exercise, just 2.8 per cent or 11,537 were considered relevant to the inquiry.

Referring to the dated October 16, Beer asked: “Looking at this now, does it appear to be a flawed approach?” In reply, Jackson said: “No.”

The letter read: “The principle of reasonableness in relation to disclosure to the inquiry — even if operating at the more stringent end of the spectrum — does not, and cannot, require POL [the Post Office] to leave [no] stone unturned. Such a standard is impossible for POL to realistically comply with.

“There POL does not intend to adopt a similar approach to future requests having regards to the low rates of relevance.”

Parliament must tighten safeguards around private prosecutions to prevent similar scandals to the miscarriage of justice suffered by hundreds of postmasters, the country’s top barrister has said (Jonathan Ames, Legal Editor, writes).

Sam Townend KC said on Friday that concerns around private prosecution must be dealt with urgently.

Sam Townend said there were concerns over private prosecutions

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE

The KC — who chairs the Bar Council, the body that represents barristers in England and Wales — said that “at the very least, parliament should give careful consideration to introducing enhanced oversight, and possibly formal regulation, to ensure the power to prosecute is not abused”.

Currently in England and Wales, private prosecutions can be brought by any individual, company or organisation. They must alert the Crown Prosecution Service before proceeding, and the director of public prosecutions has the right to intervene in cases if deemed necessary.

Townend said that “those bringing private prosecutions almost inevitably have a vested interest. It is important to recall that the CPS itself was created in the 1980s to remove the decision on whether to prosecute for more serious crimes from the police in order to separate the decision to prosecute from those invested in the investigation”.

Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry, has said the disclosure of documents is the “lifeblood” of the inquiry (Kieran Gair writes).

He said it was necessary for documents to be received in a “fulsome and timely” manner. A failure to properly disclose documents could affect further phases of the inquiry.

Sir Wyn Williams: “There is a need for close monitoring of the disclosure process”

PA

Sir Wyn Williams, chairman of the inquiry, announced his intention to hold the hearing after evidence from representatives of the Post Office, Herbert Smith Freehills and KPMG revealed process failings and potentially “deeper rooted problems” relating to disclosure.

The chairman said: “There is a need for close monitoring of the disclosure process during the remainder of the inquiry especially as it relates to disclosure by the Post Office.”

Concerns about disclosure led to the inquiry calling Jackson to give evidence.

Burges Salmon replaced Herbert Smith Freehills as the Post Office’s recognised legal representative in September. The inquiry is currently in phase four with seven phases in total.

Since the rollout of the faulty Horizon system, thousands of Post Office branch managers have been wrongly accused of offences including theft and fraud.

Many of those affected have spent the past 15 years pursuing justice, having been left in financial and emotional ruin as they were forced to close the businesses they loved and were dragged through the courts.

During their quest to expose the truth, campaigners repeatedly raised concerns with Post Office managers and executives, as well as government ministers. Their concerns were largely ignored.

The broadcast of ITV’s drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office led to renewed scrutiny of those at the heart of the scandal, and Rishi Sunak has now announced legislation allowing convictions to be overturned. As the inquiry continues, we look at some of those with questions to answer.

Chris Jackson arrives to give evidence on Friday

LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES

Chris Jackson, a partner at legal firm Burges Salmon, has been sworn into the inquiry and is giving evidence as a legal representative of the Post Office (Kieran Gair writes).

He is being questioned by Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry.

In questioning Jackson, Beer has suggested that the post office “failed” to disclose key documents in criminal proceedings and civil actions against subpostmasters.

The start of the inquiry was delayed this morning because of technical issues.

Investigators who helped to falsely convict some of those caught up in the Horizon IT scandal often behaved as if they were in the “mafia”, the former MP James Arbuthnot has said, (Kieran Gair writes).

In highlighting the case of Michael Rudkin, a sub-postmaster who were wrongly pursued through the courts by the Post Office, Arbuthnot told Times Radio: “The day after he [Michael Rudkin] goes to Fujitsu and discovers all of these shocking things, he is then raided and removed from his post as sub-postmaster.

“If that was an act of revenge or silencing, it’s very difficult to see that this was not a mafia hit.”

• Post Office scandal: hundreds could claim compensation after convictions quashed

The Post Office started prosecuting postmasters based on data from the faulty Horizon computer system a quarter of a century ago.

Now detectives at Scotland Yard have opened criminal investigations into possible fraud and perjury, and the prime minister has said he will consider steps automatically to clear the names of hundreds of wrongly convicted victims.

Vital to the police’s work will be finding out who knew what, and when, about bugs in the computer system — and how prosecutions, which were only halted in 2015, were allowed to go on for so long. Here is what is known so far, and the evidence that backs it up.

Between 1999 and 2015 an estimated 4,000 branch owner-managers at the Post Office — known as sub-postmasters or sub-postmistresses — were accused of wrongdoing after faulty IT software showed errors in their accounts.

Many were sacked, chased for money, or accused of crimes such as false accounting, fraud or theft. As many as 900 were prosecuted and 236 sent to prison. Others were ordered to pay back substantial sums, leaving them financially ruined.

Some of the accused have died without clearing their names, at least four are known to have committed suicide and others have been shunned after being convicted.

Chris Jackson, a partner at legal firm Burges Salmon, the representative of the company since September, is due to answer questions from 10am.

They will be intended to throw light upon whether disclosure failures had been deliberate. This has so far been denied by witnesses.

Williams has previously stated the evidence so far suggests that the process failures were primarily those of KPMG and Herbert Smith Freehills, the Post Office’s previous lawyers, although it was acknowledged the Post Office takes ultimate responsibility.

These included a failure to set appropriate search terms for electronic searches of documents, a failure to deal appropriately with the “de-duplication” of documents, a failure to properly consider and assess the relevance of “families” of documents.