plus: A certain amount of Ismay

Simon Clarke’s candour and clarity of thought made for a refreshing evidence session yesterday. Unfortunately I hit a sort of wall by mid-afternoon and found myself unable to pull together a blog post which I felt would do his evidence justice. Thankfully plenty of other crack journalists were on hand to write-up his testimony, and I offer a selection of them below.

Post Office deceived barrister reviewing Horizon conviction, inquiry hears – Guardian

Barrister who advised Post Office says it defended Horizon IT with ‘religious panic’ – Telegraph

Senior Post Office staff defended faulty Horizon system ‘out of an almost religious panic’, inquiry hears – Daily Mail

Post Office ‘misled and deceived me’ says key lawyer – BBC

Simon Clarke did a lot of things right in this scandal, effectively calling time on the Post Office’s out-of-control prosecution function, which he revealed operated without:

a) an ability to instruct an expert witness, b) a prosecution policy, c) clearly-defined decision-makers (and therefore) d) a functioning chain of command. Throw in reputational paranoia and a Head of Security issuing orders to shred documents and you are left with a distinct impression that everything any decent person has been saying about the Post Office during that period is true. It was an organisation prepared to abuse its power, pervert the course of justice, lie to MPs, bully journalists and keep its foot on the neck of Subpostmasters in order to avoid proper scrutiny or any kind of reckoning.

The Pandering Prosecutor

That’s not to say Clarke got everything right, and many off-the-record conversations I had with lawyers outside the hearing room yesterday focused on Clarke’s (in their view, outrageous) decision to seek a Public Interest Immunity certificate during the prosecution of a Subpostmaster in order to stop them seeing the Second Sight Interim Report.

Overall, I think history (or rather, Sir Wyn Williams) will judge Clarke kindly. He had some very obvious blind spots (treatment of Seema Misra, attitude to adverse publicity for his client – something he admitted was “pandering”), but he clearly tried to do the right thing in telling the Post Office it had a Big Problem. Unfortunately, he was dealing with/working for an organisation which had no intention of doing the right thing.

I am not going to promise to write up my own version of Clarke’s evidence for the blog, but I do have a very long car and train journey tomorrow, and by then, the transcript will be available, so I’ll see what I can do.

If you want to read my live-tweets from yesterday’s evidence session (which stop at the end of counsel to the Inquiry Julian Blake’s questioning), click here.

Send (back) in the Clown

The hapless Rod Ismay (former Post Office Head of Product and Branch Accounting and author of the Ismay report) returns for his second evidence session today, and I am going to keep the rest of this newsletter brief so I can get up to London to watch it.

You can read more about Ismay here.

Eye is having fun

Have a read of the right hand column above, if you can. It’s from the latest issue of Private Eye magazine (cover right). I’ve deliberately not reproduced the whole column in the hope you’ll go and buy it. The reason I’m drawing attention to it is because the anonymous letter-writer referred to in the column had a style I recognised.

I made enquiries and am delighted to reveal, with his express permission, that the author of the 2018 letter to, and containing some highly prescient criticism of Paula Vennells is former Subpostmaster, blogger and secret emailer Tim McCormack.

Yesterday Tim pointed twitter followers to a blog post he published around the same time he wrote to Vennells, which you can read here. Tim is a sharp cookie and has been of great help to me over the years. Hope you’re having a good day, friend.

Tour to Torrington

The final leg of Post Office Scandal – the Inside Story tour begins tomorrow. It means I will not be attending, nor writing dispatches from the public inquiry next week, but I will be watching and listening in the car as we drive from venue to venue, much to the delight of the production’s tour manager and sound tech.

There are still a small amount of tickets available for the Great Torrington, Burnham-on-Sea, Wimbourne and Guildford dates, and masses for Swindon, so do come along if you can. More info here.

Even if I don’t get a report about Ismay up today, I’ll write another newsletter tomorrow, hopefully bringing you a flavour of another Friday in the hearing room.

Yours

Nick

Post Office Scandal – The Inside Story

In April and May 2024, I’ll be visiting various theatres in towns around England.

At each venue I’ll be joined by a former Subpostmaster. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and learn more about the scandal.

All the dates and box office links are here. Please do have a look, see if there’s a venue near you, and if you fancy it, book a couple of tickets. Please also feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends who may live near a venue!

I’ll be around after each show in the foyer or bar and look forward to saying hello if you can make it.