Who made the decision?

So many answers, so many more questions.

Yesterday’s evidence began with Harry Bowyer’s second stint in the chair. Bowyer was an in-house barrister at Cartwright King charged with providing advice when it came to helping the Post Office prosecute Subpostmasters.

He was bright, bluff, confident and unconvincing, constantly repeating the mantra that the only proof the Post Office’s Horizon IT system was unreliable came in 2019, with Mr Justice Fraser’s Horizon Issues judgment.

Execute the impossible

He seemed to have subconsciously internalised the Post Office’s thinking that Subpostmasters were guilty unless they could prove otherwise, ie execute the almost impossible task of demonstrating, with evidence, that the Horizon system was on the blink in their branch at the time their discrepancies arose.

This was something Bowyer felt no one had done to the satisfaction of his firm’s client, the Post Office, who “instructed” him that Horizon was robust. That was good enough for him.

Even when Second Sight’s Interim Report came knocking with its two bugs, he relied heavily on the fact Second Sight had found no systemic issues with the Horizon tech, and ignored their warnings about investigator competence and possibilities of remote access.

As for the Post Office’s decision to let Cartwright King review their own prosecutions in the light of the Interim Report, Bowyer fell back on Brian Altman’s review of their review, which assured him they were doing a good job. To be fair, if a senior editor reviewed one of my investigations, patted me on the back and told me I’d nailed it, I would sleep easier, and perhaps forget any nagging doubts.

When taken, step by step, through his decisions, Bowyer admitted some failings, but not many. The fact he was involved in a review which advised against disclosure of materially important evidence to so many Subpostmasters (thus helping the Post Office contain their problem AND delay the opportunity of appeal to innocent people) didn’t seem to weigh that heavily on him.

In fact, he seemed a model of power without responsibility. Bowyer (now) knows he and his colleagues condemned innocent people to a long fight for justice, and it will not affect his career or lifestyle one jot. All’s fair in love and war, old chap. Don’t beat yourself up about it.

If you want to read the live tweets from yesterday, don’t forget you can do so here.

Stop the car!

Martin Smith was a duty defence solicitor who somehow ended up an untrained (and incurious) prosecutor of Subpostmasters for Cartwright King. He appeared to the Inquiry (deliberately or not) as some kind of hapless bag carrier to Simon Clarke, Cartwright King’s other in-house barrister working on Post Office cases.

Smith’s lack of interest in important documents (he relied on being verbally reassured) and candid admission he knew nothing of a prosecutor’s post-conviction duties of disclosure were shown in a harsh light by the Inquiry.

Aside from their own lack of professional care, it seemed to me that both Bowyer and Smith were decent enough men working in a parallel reality created by the mendacity of the Post Office, its importance as a client and the arbitrary vagaries of the criminal justice system.

Towards the end of Smith’s evidence we were taken through his involvement one of the most intriguing elements of this whole scandal – the instruction from someone at the Post Office to shred documents pertaining to problems with Horizon.

Smith remembered being in a car on 31 July 2013 and getting a call from Jarnail Singh, the Post Office’s Head of Criminal Law which was so alarming that he pulled over to record it.

I’ve written it up here.

Heading back in

I’ve got about 20 minutes before the inquiry restarts and I want to rest my wrist before I begin live-tweeting again.

There is just time to tell you that:

a) Richard Moorhead has had some more thoughts on former Post Office General Counsel Susan Crichton’s evidence,

b) I won’t be in the Inquiry room tomorrow for Jarnail Singh. In fact I’m going to miss a chunk of his evidence as I’ll be on stage with Second Sight investigator Ian Henderson, who’ll be sharing his thoughts on the scandal (and giving us the insight and detail on how he helped blow it open) in Walton on Thames.

We’ve got good numbers for most of the remaining dates on the tour, but Swindon and Hayes are doing really badly.

Please, if you can, do make the trip to Hayes on Sunday. Parmod Kalia is a wonderful talker and a lovely man who has kindly agreed to share his story with us at the Beck Theatre. If you live in London, Hayes is the closest event to London I’ve got, so it might be worth the train out of town. Tickets on sale here.

Have a good day

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 (apart from Walton when Second Sight’s Ian Henderson will be in the chair). There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and learn even 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.