This post has been submitted by Eleanor Shaikh, a much-loved campaigner and activist, creator of the famous “SOS – Support our Subpostmasters” red banner, and author of the epic Origins of a Disaster, published on the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance website by Sir Alan Bates himself.

Eleanor has chosen to address the evidence of The Right Honourable Greg Clark, who appeared before the Inquiry on Thu 25 July this year. I wrote this on the day Clark gave evidence. Eleanor has written the piece below. The opinions expressed therein are therefore hers. Take it away, Eleanor:

“The evidence of former Secretary of State, Greg Clark, received surprisingly little attention after his appearance at the Post Office Inquiry in July. He escaped cross-examination by lawyers representing core participants and the media reported only a handful of his most notable comments before focusing on his more high-profile predecessor who appeared on the same day, Sir Vince Cable.

“And yet speaking as a former Cabinet member and head of BEIS from 2016 to 2019, Clark’s account took us a step deeper into the decision-making rationale of a Government desperate to distance itself from the Post Office scandal. Clark’s evidence established that, even though the Government knew by early 2019 that widespread injustice had been perpetrated by the Post Office and that the safety of multiple criminal convictions were in doubt, the Government persisted in deferring to the decisions of its fiercely dictatorial Board. BEIS’s reluctance to police the Post Office’s behaviour thereafter has prolonged the victims’ exposure to a regime of unprecedented hostility.

“Prior to becoming BEIS Secretary of State, Clark had already crossed paths with the company’s ‘predatory’ practices in 2013 (Oral Evidence (transcript) p135) following its treatment of a constituent Subpostmistress, Mrs Pauline Thomson. A letter to Clark from Angela van den Bogerd regarding the case typified the Post Office’s ‘abject rudeness’ (OE p142) and forewarned of the conflict to come:

‘…I didn’t trust the management of the Post Office, to be frank.’ (OE p133)

“On the day he assumed office as Secretary of State an Introductory Brief alerted Clark to the civil group litigation and to the CCRC‘s involvement in reviewing a number of Post Office convictions. It was the Common Issues judgment of March 2019, however, which delivered his eureka moment, establishing beyond doubt that ‘…the Subpostmasters and mistresses were right…’(OE p150) and that ‘…Subpostmasters had been unjustly treated by POL, and that significant harm had been done to them.’ (Witness Statement para 57).

“Clark recognised that these findings were so significant (‘…close to the worst-case scenario…’ (OE p152)) that major intervention from his department was called for. The day after the ruling was handed down he convened a conference call with his Postal Minister, Kelly Tolhurst, BEIS Director General, Gavin Lambert, and senior UKGI official, Tom Cooper.  Clark was adamant in his steer that the Post Office Board needed to respect the judgment, to begin the process of restitution and to recalibrate its entire legal approach.

“It was obvious to Clark in 2019 that Subpostmasters had already ‘…waited long enough…’ (OE p157) but any hope of the Post Office’s voluntary compliance with his direction was dashed in the days that followed as it sought to challenge the judgement and to oust Judge Fraser.

“Clark was angered by the ‘cynical undertone’ of the Post Office’s tactical intentions (WS para 59) and was quick to recognise what the Claimants already knew; that the Post Office’s legal game-playing was intended to outspend the Subpostmasters, effectively using the public purse to sabotage due process to its own advantage.

‘I presumed that this was to cause [the Subpostmasters] to incur more costs, that they may not be able to withstand.’ (WS para 60).

“So by June 2019, Clark had become the first Secretary of State to apprehend the scale and gravity of the Post Office’s failings; he was the first to grasp the impact of its misconduct on innocent victims and the first to witness first hand the full force of the Board’s serial defiance. He was now confronting the very behaviours which Judge Fraser was criticising.

“Seeing the Board ignore his direction, Clark admitted he ‘…had essentially given up on them and concluded that they needed to be forced to do it.’ (OE p177).

“So on 4 June he instructed his officials to devise ways of achieving this objective including advising on:

• how the Government might take over the litigation and bring it to a swift conclusion;
• how a compensation scheme might established; and
• how the Post Office Board might be removed.

“As holder of the Post Office’s Special Share, Clark’s armoury included the ‘nuclear option’ of replacing the entire Board and now it appeared to be the Shareholder’s last hope of asserting control. The Common Issues Judgement gave the Secretary of State the perfect grounds for doing so:

’My view was that that was entirely dependent on the judgment of the court and, were the court to find, as it did, that the Post Office had behaved as disreputably as it had, then that marked it very firmly as strategic…In my own mind, I was very clear that the – this judgment was going to determine whether this was operational or strategic.’ (OE p144).

“By Clark’s own reckoning, Fraser’s ruling confirmed that ‘operational’ Horizon issues had escalated to the level of ‘strategic’ risk, meaning they had passed the tipping point which determined whether or not Ministers were empowered to intervene in postal affairs.

“As far as we know, no other Minister has come so close to rescuing the Post Office from itself as it stumbled towards certain ruin. What differentiates Clark from his forbears is that, despite being in possession the Common Issues ruling, despite seriously contemplating sacking the Board, still the sole Shareholder recoiled from intervention.

“Clark argued that ‘To have the Post Office leaderless was a major risk’ due to its essential role in the nation’s infrastructure – many core public services, including the payment of benefits, depend upon its operation. By the same token, the Post Office was a state enterprise too critical to be hijacked by a desperately inept – and potentially corrupt – leadership.

“Clark’s failure to replace the Board in mid- 2019 lost him the opportunity of driving change before being ousted as Secretary of State in the leadership handover from Theresa May to Boris Johnson in July 2019. He was forced to hand his baton of defeat to a string of less-engaged successors: Leadsom, Sharma, Kwarteng, Rees-Mogg, Shapps and then Badenoch. Each followed the line of least resistance, deferring to the Post Office’s dysfunctional regime and respecting the civil-servant-speak of Alex Chisholm which advised the Department should ‘…stay above the fray…’ (OE p147). As BEIS Permanent Secretary, Chisholm, we now know, had been ‘infuriated’ by the GLO and had made clear to UKGI that any fallout should not be allowed to damage his career prospects (OE p191-192).

“Not once, thereafter, did Clark lend his voice in support of Subpostmasters during parliamentary debates. Nor did he add his name to the Early Day Motion of June 2020 which called for a Public Inquiry into the scandal.

“The failure of the Government to intervene after the Common Issues judgement aligned the Shareholder with behaviours which it knew were intended to impede the course of justice. Passive acceptance rendered Ministers covertly complicit in Post Office’s actions and prolonged the cycle of abuse by which trauma was inflicted deeper into the hearts and minds of already scarred survivors.

“Shareholder inaction in 2019 was all that was needed for the Post Office to advance mindlessly along its flat-earth trajectory and it paved the way for the final, inglorious stage of the Post Office scandal, the Compensation Fiasco.

“BEIS’s endorsement gave the Post Office the freedom to devise its profoundly unethical Horizon Shortfall Scheme; it gave the Post Office the confidence to argue ‘public interest’ in cases involving its most wronged and abandoned victims. It emboldened the Board, opening the door to Taxgate and Bonusgate, to Disclosuregate and Capturegate.

“For all of the Inquiry’s rightful focus on the actions of investigators, Fujitsu employees,
lawyers and civil servants, if its findings allow politicians to ignore the hopelessly broken structural relationship between the Post Office and it’s Government Shareholder, then there remains nothing which stands between the Sub-Postmasters and any future dictatorial leadership. Clark’s evidence shows that only a root and branch structural reform can offer protection from a repeat scenario.

‘…this approach of using a standard Companies Act vehicle is not best suited to the Government’s 100 per cent ownership of a body such as the Post Office whose public purpose may mean that its operations and strategy are both matters of public interest.’ (WS para 49).

“At the very end of his witness statement, Clark makes observations on the issue of structural reform and suggests the incorporation of a ‘Public Interest Company’ (WS paras 128-133). He remarks that new legislation might embody different rights of government involvement, allowing for decisions to be co-determined by a Board and Ministers alike.  

“Intrinsic to any such re-appraisal of the duties and rights of the Government as the Post Office’s sole Shareholder, must be the recognition that UKGI has operated as an impediment to, rather than facilitator of, meaningful oversight:

‘…there is no doubt that arrangement was designed to put UKGI at one remove from supervision by BEIS officials and ministers.’ (WS para 123).

“Unless and until such legislation is passed to implement fundamental change in the ways in which the Government and Post Office interact, no line can be drawn under this colossal miscarriage of justice nor the untold wreckage it leaves in its wake.”

ENDS.

My thanks to Eleanor for this and her tireless work.

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