I’m coming to see you
Hi everyone
I mentioned in my last newsletter that I was going to be doing some Post Office talks next year. I am delighted to tell you that nineteen dates have been confirmed (England only, I’m afraid) and tickets are on sale now. You can peruse your options here.
As you will see some dates already have confirmed guest speakers. I am hoping to ensure every date has a guest speaker with direct personal experience of the Post Office Horizon scandal. Last year I was delighted by the number of Subpostmasters who spoke at the various events we put on, and the number of Subpostmasters who came along to watch.
If you are a former Subpostmaster/manager/assistant/Crown Office worker who was directly affected by the Horizon Scandal and you would like to come along to any of the talks for free, please let me know by replying to this email.
Next year’s events will take audiences through a full history of the scandal, but I’ll also be augmenting it with what we are starting to see come out of the inquiry. Every night is different, and made all the more lively by the Q&A sessions at the end. I do hope you can come along to one of the dates, and bring several dozen friends, colleagues or students! More info here.
The Great Post Office Trial rolls on
I have been delighted by the response to the new series of The Great Post Office Trial on BBC Radio 4. Thank you if you have taken the time to listen.
I am writing this newsletter now, because I want to draw attention to today’s episode, which is my favourite of the run. We finally nail the Ismay report and the damage it did, by following the email chains and witness evidence to the public inquiry. Please do have a listen at 1.45pm today on BBC Radio 4, or here, immediately afterwards on BBC Sounds.
The Inquiry
I’ve only had half an eye on the Inquiry this week, but a few things have struck me as interesting and I’ll be wading through the recent footage and transcripts for most of the rest of today.
We heard last week from Natasha Bernard, the Post Office investigator described at the Court of Appeal in 2021 as “not knowing what she was doing” by the Post Office’s own barrister.
This was because Ms Bernard had tried to put a magazine article on a schedule of sensitive material during in the prosecution of Teju Adedayo. The reason for doing so was that Ms Adedayo might use it in mitigation.
In 2021 Bernard’s actions were described by Lord Justice Holroyde as “very unsettling”. At the inquiry last week Ms Bernard was not able to defend her actions, and accepted it shouldn’t have happened, but was unable to explain her motivation or understanding as to why she did it.
Thanks to an eagle-eyed tweeter, I was alerted to a small snippet of evidence from Debbie Stapel, a former Post Office lawyer, who was shown notes from a meeting in 2010 between the Post Office and Fujitsu, in which the Receipts and Payments Mismatch Bug was discussed.
Ms Stapel said of the note: “this document is just extraordinary. I mean, the only correct thing to do would have been to inform all the branches involved about the bug and deal with it that way. So it’s another sad example of how things were concealed.”
Her word concealed is interesting to me. It suggests she accepts that there was a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice at the Post Office, which I think is significant. Thanks to twitter’s “Monsieur Cholet” for posting the clip.
I only just got started on Warwick Tatford’s evidence before having to do something else, but it was interesting. Firstly he began to well up in his apology to Seema Misra. Seema was present yesterday at the Inquiry, almost exactly 13 years to the day since she was sent to prison thanks to Mr Tatford’s work.
Secondly, he took responsibility for refusing to plea bargain on the charges against Seema. In almost every other case if a Subpostmaster accepted a false accounting charge, the Post Office would drop the (usually unevidenced and possibly malicious) theft charge and the case would not go to trial. Yesterday Tatford said: “I think I was the one who put my foot down initially and suggested that we should proceed on the theft trial.”
This is interesting because emails I obtained from 2009 between Post Office investigators and Post Office internal lawyers on the Misra case read as follows:
PO Investigation team: “We are some 70 odd thousand pounds light at the moment as I understand it and if we just accept the false accountings it is very difficult for us later to obtain a Confiscation Order and subsequently compensation out of the Confiscation.”
PO Lawyers: “We should not accept the pleas. Confiscation would… be a non-starter if we did.”
Quite why Tatford was getting involved in this rather grubby side of the business isn’t clear. I’ll watch the rest of his evidence with interest.
Thanks
Welcome to the new secret emailers and thanks for all the correspondence. Due to the Radio 4 series I’ve been getting quite a few emails and sadly have not had the chance to respond to many messages recently. Rest assured I do read everything I get sent and I am grateful to everyone who has got in touch.
Come and see me next year! I look forward to meeting you.
Best
Nick