Goodbye, lockdown January

Hello, lockdown February

Apologies for the relative radio silence throughout January. I started doing some work on a side-project which was far harder than I thought it was going to be.

I am parking that for a while as the latest chapters in the Post Office Horizon scandal begin to open up before us.

Evidence has begun to trickle in to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. The CCRC has parked its bus in there, explaining to Sir Wyn why it has referred so many cases to the Court of Appeal.

Martin Griffiths

The most affecting contribution, however, is made by the brother of the late Martin Griffiths. Martin was Subpostmaster at Hope Farm Road in Great Sutton. He killed himself in 2013 and the Post Office gave his branch to Pete Murray without telling him that his predecessor had experienced serious problems with Horizon in the branch or that he had taken his own life. I wrote about Pete, and with the permission of his family, I wrote a short piece about Martin in last year’s Private Eye Special Report.

Now Martin’s brother has sent a submission to the inquiry, explaining how he and his family have been “totally devastated” by the Post Office’s actions. Mr Griffiths ends his submission by asking:

“Why did the Post Office halt the ‘Second Sight’ forensic investigation when difficult questions were asked?

“Ex-CEO Paula Vennells insisted that only a tiny proportion of branches were experiencing computer problems – how wrong was she and her team to cover up this scandal for so many years?”

It is this question – of just how wrong Paula Vennells and her team were – which has been exercising me for a while now.

Secrets and lies

The Clarke Advice, written in 2013, and the CK Sift Review (which the Post Office told the Court of Appeal in December had uncovered potential wrongful convictions back in 2014) was kept hidden from MPs, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance and the Second Sight investigations team.

In 2015 Paula Vennells told MPs there had been no miscarriages of justice uncovered in the course of Post Office’s investigations. Yet she sat on the Post Office’s ad-hoc board sub-committee (alongside a government civil servant) which appears to have been the decision-making body when it comes to keeping the Clarke Advice etc from MPs and investigators.

The Post Office subsequently threw tens of millions of pounds of public money fighting a civil case at the High Court, which it lost.

The CCRC makes it explicit in its Statement of Reasons to the Court of Appeal (and now the Williams inquiry) it was ONLY because of the High Court case that enough information came to light for it to make its first referrals to the Court of Appeal.

As a result of the information that comes to light over the course of the Williams inquiry and the Court of Appeal hearing next month, it may be possible to make a case that certain individuals at the Post Office and possibly Fujitsu were instrumental in obstructing the course of justice. It may not.

“Unrestricted access”

Speaking of Fujitsu, another piece of evidence to the Williams inquiry has been submitted by a former technical support employee. It reads:

“Financially, Fujitsu needed the Horizon system to be a success. In my department we were under pressure to supply answers within the agreed timescales; if I could not ascertain the cause of a reported problem (ie an accounting discrepancy), then that is what I would report, but it seems that this could then be misinterpreted/misreported leading to POL, and possibly senior Fujitsu managers, blaming the Postmaster rather than the system.

“I remember that at that time we had unrestricted access to nearly all areas of the system, something that only we were aware of – management did not know/did not want to know how we fixed things, just that they were fixed.”

I do wonder if we will ever see anyone from the Post Office or Fujitsu in the dock. Every day it seems to get more likely.

Ombudsman update

I had a quick chat with Alan Bates from the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance this week to see what was happening with the Parliamentary Ombudsman investigation. He hasn’t heard from them since the JFSA submitted its complaint in early December.

I called up the Ombudsman’s Press Office and the person there didn’t even know the JFSA’s application existed, but we had a nice chat.

I was told the Ombudsman conducts its investigations in private. The press officer wasn’t sure whether it had statutory powers to demand documents (such as the minutes of Post Office board ad-hoc sub-committee meetings, or documents flowing between the Post Office and government), but assured me that when they ask for them, they get them.

Given the Post Office’s history in this area, I wouldn’t be too sure that’s going to happen in this case, but we’ll see.

I hope Mr Bates has backed the right horse in his latest attempt to get justice for Subpostmasters.

Another day, another judgment

As has been reported previously – on 17 December 2020 the Court of Appeal convened to consider the question of whether or not Tracy Felstead, Janet Skinner and Seema Misra could argue the second limb of the CCRC’s referral, which stated that their prosecution (and that of every other Postmaster conviction they have referred so far) amounted to an Affront to the Public conscience. You already know that the Court decided they (and any other appellant who wanted to) can do so, but on 15 Jan 2021 the full ruling was handed down. I’ve posted it up alongside some comment on the Post Office Trial website.

A journalist moans

The 17 December hearing was memorable to me for the Court deciding to roll up my request to see the parties’ skeleton arguments for that day’s hearing into an application by the Daily Mail to see the Clarke Advice.

Although I had made no formal application to receive the skeleton arguments, the Court decided I had, then refused to grant my non-application. This meant the parties (by which I mean the Post Office and the legal teams representing the various Postmaster appellants) refused to give their skeleton arguments to me despite:

a) this being perfectly normal practice in every other court hearing I’ve ever been to.

b) the court’s order, which did not cover what the parties choose to do with their skeleton arguments – it just declined to order that I be given them.

When I wrote and asked the Court, after the event, to make clear it had no objection to me receiving the skeletons direct from the parties, it declined, and when I wrote to the parties making clear the court had only declined to order that they be handed over and that they were perfectly clear to give them to me of their own free will… not a sausage.

It’s hard enough trying to report this story at the best of times without the courts and legal system deciding open justice is something it only wants to pay lip service to. That said, given the way the court rounded on the barrister Flora Page back in November last year, I can understand an over-abundance of caution on all sides, but I’m not sure it helps anyone to be operating in fear of the justice system.

Happy things

Followers of my twitter feed will see that I tend to intersperse Post Office-related tweets with memes and other silly things I have seen whilst trawling the internet. In lockdown, there isn’t much else to do for entertainment. In the spirit of sharing some joy, if you have a spare five minutes, try spending it with Lubalin, a 30 year old musician who has set amusing facebook conversations to music and then made some very funny accompanying videos. The execution is world-class.

If that’s all a bit meta, here is a video of a panda repeatedly falling off a snowman. Pandas are idiots.

Back soon

Nick