Simon Recaldin is both in charge of the Post Office’s remediation approach and wholly at the whim of it. He claims he is trying his damnedest to get compensation to Subpostmasters post-haste whilst also agreeing the whole process takes too long.

“Could it be quicker? Could it be more efficient?” he asked the Inquiry at one point, answering: “Yes, and that’s what we try to do continuously and we will continue to do that.“

It seems the Post Office has been an unwitting victim of its own malfeasance. In perpetrating what Mr Recaldin thrice called “the biggest miscarriage of justice ever” and being forced by the government to sort it out, the Post Office has found itself “trying to squeeze a non-Business As Usual process into a Business As Usual process. And this breaks the mould.”

Well, yeah, we know that. But how about doing it competently? Over the course of Recaldin’s evidence, Inquiry barrister Julian Blake tried to work out why the government and the Post Office’s attempts to deliver redress to Subpostmasters had been so inept, and who might be responsible.

Are the compensation delays deliberate?

One big issue was whether there was a mismatch between the publicly stated intent to give Subpostmasters “full, fair and final” compensation and an internal desire to make them scrap for every single penny. This was something first raised by the sacked Post Office Chairman Henry Staunton, who said he had detected a clear governmental agenda to delay or contest Subpostmasters compensation claims.

Blake asked: “Is it your view that when it comes to compensation itself there is or is not consideration of managing public money, value for money, value for the taxpayer?“

Recaldin repled: “It is my strong view that there is not a value for money debate [around] the amount of redress that is paid out.“

Blake pushed again: “In respect of the test that is applied when calculating an amount to be given to an individual, is there any consideration of that [getting value for the taxpayer]?“

Recaldin answered a slightly different question: “In terms of the independent panels there is no reference to that for a consideration at all in their determination.“

So Blake tried another time. He asked Recaldin if the Department for Business and Trade (which “owns” the Post Office), was responsible for doing anything which “slowed down or impacted negatively on compensation”. With some imprecision, Recaldin replied:

“I don’t know whether I can put a value on that. The government have a process to follow in order to release funds to make processes available and the process is the process. But the DBT, the Department of Business and Trade, do not have oodles of cash, and nor should they, waiting for Post Office to apply to fund redress schemes. They have a process they need to go through. They need to see a business case to justify that spend they then they need to analyse that, they need to understand that, and then they need to go to Treasury. They have their own process, it’s absolutely tried and tested.”

That sounds like an implicit yes. During the course of Recaldin’s evidence we were told that the average wait between non-complex claims being accepted onto the Horizon Shortfall Scheme and being given an offer was 470 days. Blake asked if that was “working days, or all days?” It was working days. So – not far off two years for non-complex “standard” cases. To get an offer.

For complex cases, that rose to an average of 514 working days. More than two years. In 2024, the speed at which complex cases are getting to an offer has come down to 306 days “because” as Recaldin told Blake “the other normal cases, the non-disputed cases, are less and we’ve got a more efficient process around those.”

The £600,000 question

The government can, of course, move quickly when it wants to. On 17 September 2023, DBT sprung their £600,000 overturned convictions scheme take-it-or-leave-it compensation idea on the Post Office. Today at the Inquiry, we were treated to sight of correspondence in which civil servant Emily Snow, from the DBT’s Subpostmaster Compensation team, gave Recaldin 24 hours warning that the government was about to announce the £600,000 offer. Snow told Recaldin a response was “not urgent for today” but given tomorrow would be “quite to the wire” [sic], she wanted to discuss some of the wording in a proposed public statement, to make it look like the Post Office had been involved in the plan. After all, wrote Snow, “We do not want to create a perception that Govt is ‘stepping in’ because it has lost faith in the POL [Post Office Ltd] process“.

Recaldin wrote back: “Of course this will create a perception that Govt is ‘stepping in’ because it has lost faith in the POL process as this is precisely what it is!“

He took particular issue with a proposed paragraph within the statement which read:

“Government, having consulted with the Post Office, has decided that postmasters who have their convictions on the basis of Horizon evidence overturned should have the opportunity upfront to accept an offer of £600,000 in full and final settlement of their claim. This will be delivered by the Post Office with funding from the Government.”

Recalding called this “false” and instructed Snow to “delete” the reference to consultation, explaining the government had “told us the bare essentials and then to a highly restricted audience – this is not consultation.“

He also thought the statement “implies this is extra funding and again is disingenuous… this is not extra funding as you know – the funding is already in place. It’s just a different (hopefully more efficient) way of paying it out.“

Blake asked if there were echoes of this in Rachel Reeves’ recent budgetary announcement of £1.8bn compensation for Subpostmasters (most of which was revealed in Jan 2022). Recaldin said:

“My preference is massively not to get involved in politics with a small p and a large P… there are elements in this and there are obviously elements in the Chancellor’s [budget statement] that are political and I find myself in a really really difficult position around that because the politicians with a capital P are taking the opportunity and that’s their right. They’re politicians, that’s what they do, to take advantage of that to, I don’t know what, to give themselves publicity, to give themselves credit for whatever.”

As part of Recaldin’s 2023 email chain concerning the £600,000 deal, he raised an example of Hudgell’s solicitors agreeing to settle a Subpostmaster claim for £213,000. He wrote to DBT:

“Under this proposal, this individual will enjoy £600,000. I’m not saying this is wrong, and you know I want to pay out these sorts of sums, but to date have been prevented by value for money restrictions, evidence, governance etc.”

Blake noted that Recaldin had already said during his oral evidence that he “didn’t think that value for money restrictions were being imposed in respect of the settlement of compensation claims.” Looking at the email, Blake said: “This reads somewhat like it did have a role.”

Recaldin chose to disavow his email, telling the Inquiry: “It’s not meant that way. It’s a list of processes, restrictions that I had to go through… I do understand your point… but no, please, value for money is not applicable in this.”

Even though he had specifically written that it was.

Recaldin continues his evidence on Tue 5 November, when he will be followed by Sarah Munby, the senior civil servant who denies telling Henry Staunton to “go slow” on Subpostmaster compensation.

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