The first meeting between Alan Bates from the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) and a government minister took place on 5 October 2010. Ed Davey was, at the time, the Liberal Democrat minister responsible for the Post Office within the coalition government. The date was crucial: the trial of Seema Misra was less than a week away, and Channel 4 News were thinking of running something about the JFSA’s claims.

Today the briefing note sent to Ed Davey by Mike Whitehead (a civil servant from the Shareholder Executive which monitored the Post Office Inquiry on behalf of the Business Department) was discussed at length during the (otherwise rather tedious) evidence of former ShEx CEO Sir Stephen Lovegrove.

The briefing note was first mentioned in April this year when Alan Bates gave evidence to the Inquiry (it is the source of his “thugs in suits” quote), but has never been published in full. On my request the Inquiry have kindly put it on their website.

Davey had already refused to meet Bates in May 2010 on the high-handed grounds that the JFSA’s concerns about the Horizon IT system and miscarriages of justice had nothing do with government but were “operational and contractual matters” for the Post Office. The Post Office, was (and still is) wholly owned by the government. Angered by the response, Bates wrote back to Davey in July 2010, telling the minister:

“normally shareholders are concerned about the morality of the business they own… the letter you sent is little different to the one I received seven years ago from the minister responsible for post offices at that time, and so many more lives have been ruined in the interim because of that same attitude.”

Bates continued:

“You can listen to your civil servants telling you these issues are really an operational matter for POL [Post Office Ltd] to deal with. You can even listen to POL telling you Horizon is wonderful, that there has never been a problem, it is inherently robust and these are just a few malcontents trying to cause trouble. Or you can meet with us and hear the real truth behind Horizon and what the Post Office is actually up to.”

Mike Whitehead found Bates’ second letter “more confrontational” than the first, but advised that a meeting with Bates should take place. Not because anyone in government particularly cared for the JFSA’s concerns, but “for presentational reasons”. Explicitly Whitehead did not want to see any “potential publicity” generated by a Channel 4 News item:

“playing heavily on Government Minister ‘refusing to meet victims of Govt owned Post Office Horizon IT system which has systemic faults resulting in wrongful accusations of theft/false accounting’.”

Before the meeting happened, Whitehead set out the Business Department’s objectives – to find out whether or not the JFSA was going to sue the Post Office. Not only would this be useful information, it would also allow Davey to tell Bates he couldn’t comment on matters as “the issues are effectively sub judice.”

Whitehead advised Davey tell Bates that the “issues raised by the JFSA are operational and contractual matters for POL” and to “make clear that, as the shareholder, Government has an arm’s length relationship with the company and does not have any role in its day to day operations” – precisely the nonsense Bates was railing against in his second letter.

Whitehead told Davey to “avoid any commitment to adopting any of the JFSA’s objectives in the terms these are set” and to refuse any investigation of the Horizon system because it would be “expensive (and time consuming).“

To encourage a dismissal of the JFSA’s concerns, Whitehead said the Post Office had told government that they “continue to express full confidence in the integrity and robustness of the Horizon system which has been operating for 10 years and typically processes 230 million transactions a month from over 30,000 counter positions in nearly 12,000 post office branches” – precisely the nonsense etc etc

Whitehead also wrote that the Postmasters’ union, the National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP) are:

“dismissive of the JFSA’s claims. They have suggested that if there were systemic faults with Horizon as claimed, there would be incidents of ‘overages’ as well as ‘shortages’. NFSP are also of the view that in some of these types of cases the subpostmaster genuinely is not to blame but that a member of his/her family or other employee is. Contractually however the subpostmaster is personally liable.”

There were incidences of “overages”, as the NFSP well knew, and that final sentence should have set alarm bells ringing throughout government – had some Subpostmasters been prosecuted for crimes perpetrated by other people? Did that sound right to the minister? Whitehead’s nothing-to-see-here tone continues to the end of the briefing. Davey is told:

“around 15% of POL’s transactions have been conducted over Crown Office terminals which run exactly the same system yet no issues have been identified.“

This is because none had been looked for. Staff in crown offices were being dismissed and prosecuted alongside Subpostmasters. Whitehead continued:

“If there were any systematic integrity issues within the system they would have been evident over the past 10 years. NFSP and CWU [Communications Workers Union] have expressed confidence in the system.”

I am pretty sure it wasn’t until 2020 we found out the number of Post Office prosecutions of Subpostmasters had reached triple figures. In what would have been exceptionally useful information for journalists, lawyers and the JFSA had it been made public at the time, Whitehead wrote:

“Since 2005 there have been 230 criminal cases that have proceeded to Court. Of these 169 have been found guilty and 18 defendants cautioned. Of the remaining 43, 1 was found not guilty but this was nothing to do with any Horizon challenge. 42 cases were not carried forward for a variety of reasons (but there is no suggestion that any of these reasons were related to concerns about Horizon).”

He concluded, disingenuously: “No court has ever ruled that there have been problems with the Horizon system.”

Read the full briefing note and both Alan Bates’ letters to Ed Davey below.

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