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Vennells Day 1: the Five Things we learned
Read More…: Vennells Day 1: the Five Things we learnedRight then. Not volunteering more than she had to The fact that despite protesting several times she approached the inquiry with “integrity” in a spirit of wanting to tell the “complete truth” Paula Vennells appeared to be attempting a sleight of hand from the off. Jason Beer KC (who asked questions on behalf of the Inquiry) reminded Vennells that in August 2023 the Inquiry wrote to her telling her that in her witness statement they would like her to: “reflect on your time at the Post Office and set out whether there was anything you would have handled differently”. Beer…
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The Post Office’s “caring” side
Read More…: The Post Office’s “caring” sideThe other story to come out of today’s evidence (21 May 2024) took us away from inability of Alwen Lyons to see herself as anything other than a helpful facilitator of Post Office business and Second Sight’s investigation into the Post Office business. It concerns a couple of emails sent by Post Office Head of Legal Hugh Flemington. The first, in 2012, he sent to Paula Vennells. “We have a civil (not criminal) case in court tomorrow”, writes Flemington “where we have already had an admission from the Subpostmaster that she owed us [£10,4000].” The Subpostmaster was a Mrs Etheridge…
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Feeding them to the Lyons
Read More…: Feeding them to the LyonsThe mystifying thing about a lot of witnesses we’ve been hearing from recently is that Second Sight, the independent investigators tasked in 2012 to really dig into what was going on at the Post Office, were somehow not good enough at their jobs. The Post Office’s definition of not being very good at a job appears to be not telling the Post Office what it wants to hear. Despite being presented with evidence from their own people (Subpostmasters) and Second Sight that their computer system didn’t work properly, their training was dreadful and their prosecutions and investigation work was not…
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All-knowing Alwen has her chance to come clean
Read More…: All-knowing Alwen has her chance to come cleanIt’s all too easy to get the measure of Alwen Lyons OBE. She sees herself as a Good Person who spent a lifetime serving and defending a Good Company. Unfortunately that company was the Post Office. Lyons was there during the prosecution spree, she was there at the height of the cover-up, and seems to either have been in denial, grievously mistaken or simply lying about what she knew. In 2013, Ian Henderson from Second Sight was engaged in an independent investigation of the Post Office Horizon IT system and the Post Office’s associated business functions. Forgive me for quoting…
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Former Post Office General Counsel Refuses to Cooperate with Inquiry
Read More…: Former Post Office General Counsel Refuses to Cooperate with InquiryOn Wed 8 May, I mentioned (in parentheses) during my live-tweets of Brian Altman KC’s evidence: “This provokes a conference in BA’s chambers and a letter from the new GC Jane McLoed (who I understand might be resisting the request she give evidence to the inquiry and given she lives abroad, cannot be compelled to do so) telling the CCRC essentially to do one.” I had heard the rumour that day, and hoped that by mentioning it on twitter en passant, it might get some pick up. It didn’t, so I mentioned it again in a stand-alone tweet more than…
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Ismay: the Idiot Returns
Read More…: Ismay: the Idiot ReturnsRod Ismay’s role in the Post Office was senior – he finished as Head of Product and Branch Accounting reporting directly to the Chief Finance Officer. He appears to have taken a leading, or as Jason Beer KC would have it “co-ordinating” role in responding to Horizon challenges throughout his career at the Post Office. This went well beyond his authorship of the disastrous Ismay report, which the Post Office relied on to keep prosecuting Subpostmasters for at least two years. I’ve written here about Ismay’s first stint at giving evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Today, almost…
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The One Thing Brian Altman Did Wrong
Read More…: The One Thing Brian Altman Did WrongBrian Altman’s role in perpetuating the Post Office scandal is self-evident. He gave advice which helped a bent client keep a lid on a gargantuan miscarriage of justice. Whether that was down to any professional failings was in issue today. Altman had sight of clear evidence of criminal activity (orders to shred documents, misleading a court), massive failures of disclosure (the Misra case), prosecutor misconduct (the Hamilton case), yet he somehow managed to give advices (and, later, set court strategies) which were neatly in line with his client’s wishes. “Do you think that you might have been set up?” asked…
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Belinda Cortes-Martin (Crowe): Sir Humphrey would be proud
Read More…: Belinda Cortes-Martin (Crowe): Sir Humphrey would be proudBelinda Cortes-Martin had a dual role. Whilst she was supposedly heading up the Post Office’s Complaint and Mediation Scheme’s Working Group secretariat, supporting and answering to the Working Group’s independent Chair, Sir Anthony Hooper (a retired Court of Appeal judge), Cortes-Martin was also Programme Director for Project Sparrow, the top secret Post Office body set up to control the Complaint and Mediation Scheme (CMS), run by the Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells. If you think I’m over-egging how secret Project Sparrow was, during the High Court litigation in 2018, the Post Office tried to claim the very word Sparrow was…
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Keeping their knees on Seema’s neck
Read More…: Keeping their knees on Seema’s neckToday we got some insight into the catastrophic and frankly sinister failings of a group of lawyers at the heart of the Post Office scandal. The lengths Brian Altman (then) QC et al went to to avoid their post-conviction disclosure duties to former Subpostmaster Seema Misra (who was sent to prison whilst eight weeks pregnant) are mind-boggling. Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins had given expert evidence at Seema Misra’s 2010 trial without disclosing his knowledge of bugs, errors and defects within the Post Office’s Horizon system. In June 2013, Simon Clarke, an in-house barrister at Cartwright King (who prosecuted Subpostmasters on…
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Martin Smith and the Instruction to Shred
Read More…: Martin Smith and the Instruction to ShredThe mystery of who at the Post Office (or Bond Dickinson) decided to shred minutes relating to an important meeting at the Post Office to discuss problems with the Horizon IT system got a little more dramatic today as Martin Smith, a solicitor working for Cartwright King, gave evidence. Smith was a prosecuting solicitor who took on Post Office cases under instruction from the Post Office. He had no training in the role having been a duty defence solicitor who then joined Cartwright King and moved to Post Office prosecutions after Cartwright King won the Post Office contract. Smith was…
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