Please forgive this short commercial interlude. Christmas is approaching, which I am told is a good time to try to sell books. I have two which came out in the last twelve months and I was wondering if you – or someone else in your life – might be interested in them. Think of them as excellent stocking fillers.
The Great Post Office Scandal paperback retails at £13.99 and Depp v Heard: the unreal story will set you back £12.99
If you buy both at the same time direct from Bath Publishing, they will take 20% off the total (which neatly covers the P&P).
Amazon will put the books in your hands tomorrow and not charge you P&P if you are a Prime member. You may also want to support your local chain or independent bookshop by ordering it through them over the counter or via their website.
I would be enormously grateful if you would consider buying one or multiple copies of either of these publications. Projects of this nature take a lot of time and money. Sadly, Bath Publishing are a tiny independent publisher and do not have the sort of mega-marketing budget you need to sell books in huge volumes.
I promise you, though, both titles are rigourously-researched, hopefully well-written and very much worth your time.
Paul Whitaker, as it says in the screengrab above, used to be a Post Office Investigator (and, almost inevitably, before that, a postman). In his evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry on Thursday, Mr Whitaker was taken to a 2011 email chain regarding his investigation into a Post Office branch in St John Green in Rotherham.
The branch had been “audited” by the Post Office, and there was an £11,000 discrepancy. A counter clerk was under suspicion. Unusually, possibly because the branch was run by a charity, the police were involved. In his email to a colleague, Jane Owen, Whitaker states: “The case has been reviewed and the police officer has asked me to get a statement demonstrating the robustness of the Horizon system at the branch.”
Whitaker tells Owen that a charity is running the branch and notes: “we were asked to get involved at the outset in order to possibly mitigate the adverse publicity of us demanding our money back from them.”
As ever, business priorities and PR appear to be part of the equation, even when it comes to criminal investigations and justice.
The requested “statement demonstrating the robustness of the Horizon system” would have to come from Fujitsu. Before the request goes to Fujitsu, Owen passes Whitaker’s request up the chain to another colleague, Penny Thomas. Owen writes: “Just wanted to run this by you before I make any kind of formal request. I assume that we will just request a statement as normal but would need to put it around some dates?”
Thomas replies that getting some dates might be a good idea, and this message is passed back down to Whitaker. Whitaker seems to think this is unnecessary, replying: “At present, the police haven’t asked for Horizon records although I am sure that if they know we can provide them they will ask for them (and then not use them). All the officer asked was if we could provide a statement saying that the Horizon system was operating correctly in the run up to the shortage being identified.”
Getting Dunked
The Thomas, Owen and Whitaker brains trust eventually agree to ask Fujitsu for a statement of Horizon’s reliability within a six month window. The message reaches Fujitsu’s Andy Dunks, a man who, in 2019, came in for serious criticism from a High Court judge.
But even Andy Dunks has standards. Replying to Whitaker’s request, Dunks replies:
“I am unable to say for definite that the Horizon system was working okay. What I can do is look at all calls logged by this PO during the date range and state that there were no faults reported by the PO to suggest any faults. If you want me to get the calls extracted to examine the calls we will need ARQ numbers to cover this request. Please let me know what you would like us to do.”
The prospect of anyone at the Post Office or Fujitsu doing even the most cursory investigative work seems too much for Whitaker, who decides that Dunks’ response is enough for him. He replies:
“No need for anything beyond this, Andy. I have explained to the police that all you can say is that no faults were logged and they are happy with that.”
To his credit, Dunks puts Whitaker straight. “I think you may have misinterpreted my email”, he replies, “I have not said that no faults were logged. What I am saying is that if you want me to extract the calls logged so that I can examine them to see if there are any fault calls during these dates.”
The rest of the email chain appears to be lost to history.
Yesterday, the barrister questioning Whitaker suggested that the limit of his investigative ambition was “seeking a catch-all statement from Andy Dunks in relation to a case where the police had asked for assurances about the Horizon system.”
Whitaker was not asked to comment on this. Instead, the barrister wondered if Dunks’ refusal to sign off on a blithe assurance about Horizon raised any alarm bells.
“It’s difficult to say…” replied Whitaker, “my background was that it had always been sort of infallible and, certainly, I don’t think it had been tested in court yet and I think the sort of underlying message would be… until we get something coming back certain to say definitely, you know, Horizon’s at fault, to sort of carry on in the belief that it’s not.”
Belief. They investigated and prosecuted, fuelled by belief. No wonder so many innocent people were given criminal convictions.
My thanks to Nigel Derby who alerted me to this passage of evidence at the Inquiry.
Elaine Cottam, taking a break from giving evidence
It’s hard to know where to start with yesterday’s Inquiry hearing. Karl Flinders from Computer Weekly decided to cover yet another Post Office disclosure disaster. I am going to attempt to analyse the evidence which came courtesy of Elaine Cottam.
Ms Cottam was a former Post Office Retail Line Manager. She was called to give evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry to help try to work out what had happened in the Cleveleys case. Cleveleys Post Office was run in 2000 by a woman called Julie Wolstenholme who suffered problems with the Post Office Horizon system from the moment it was installed.
Instead of receiving help, she was sacked. By Elaine Cottam. Mrs Wolstenholme fought back. She kept possession of her Horizon terminal and suggested a proper examination of the hardware might reveal the source(s) of her problems. The Post Office had no interest in all that – but they did want their kit back, so in 2003 they took Mrs Wolstenholme to Blackpool County Court.
The case was resolved when a court-appointed technical expert – Jason Coyne – took a look at the available evidence and decided there were red flags all over the Horizon system. Desperate to keep this information out of the public domain, the Post Office settled the case with Mrs Wolstenholme. The Inquiry spent some time looking into the Cleveleys case earlier this year. For more detail, you can read and watch the evidence from Jason Coyne, Fujitsu and a Post Office lawyer on the Inquiry website by looking for the transcripts on 26 – 28 July 2023. But let’s, for now, focus on…
Elaine Cottam
In 2000, as a Post Office Retail Line Manager, Elaine Cottam had a role of some significance. The power to suspend someone – ie remove their livelihood – without warning, or having to give a reason, carries responsibility. It’s the sort of power which should only be exercised with a great degree of caution, by someone who has been properly trained with the capacity to understand the repercussions of their decisions.
Before a witness gives evidence to a public inquiry they are usually sent a bundle of relevant documents and asked a series of questions. The written answers to those questions form the basis of their witness statement, submitted to the inquiry before any oral evidence hearing.
It is a reasonable expectation that anyone asked to give a witness statement to a public inquiry would take it seriously. If called to give oral evidence, they might ask questions of the secretariat about what to expect, perhaps do some research and turn up as prepared as possible. After all, giving evidence under oath is not something to be taken lightly. Given there were three days of hearings directly related to the case Ms Cottam was involved in, natural curiosity might have at least suggested she watch or read some of it.
Elaine’s Evidence
Jason Beer KC
On Tuesday, after being sworn in, Elaine Cottam was asked questions by Jason Beer KC. Beer first of all wanted to know why, in response to the large number of documents and questions sent to her on 12 July this year, she had submitted a witness statement “two and a half pages long, which contains next to no information.”
“I don’t know what sort of information you wanted me to put in it”, replied Cottam.
Beer took her to the question which asked her to set out her professional background. In response to this, Cottam had written: “I was employed as a Retail Line Manager by Post Office Counters Limited – I do not remember the exact date I took up this post or the date that I left this post.”
Beer pointed out this contained no information about Cottam’s professional background. Cottam replied that this was a “misunderstanding”. Beer asked “between whom?”
Cottam replied: “Between myself and what I was asked for.”
In answer to another question, Cottam had put in her witness statement to the Inquiry that when a Retail Line Manager, she was responsible for 27 Post Office branches. Yet in a 2003 witness statement for the Post Office, she told a court she was responsible for 112 Post Offices. Cottam wasn’t sure when the number had changed and she couldn’t remember if she was responsible for 112 offices at the time of her 2003 witness statement. Beer wondered if the figure had been put into her witness statement in 2003, it was fair enough to assume it was true. Cottam said she couldn’t remember. Beer tried again:
“That’s not a question about memory; that’s asking if you made a sworn statement to the court, which said, “I am responsible for 112 post offices”, in 2003, that’s likely to be…”
“And what date was that? What date was that?” Cottam interrupted.
“16 October 2003, as I told you and as we looked”, replied Beer.
“I can’t remember”, replied Cottam again, apparently misunderstanding the question a second time.
Cottam did remember recruiting Julie Wolstenholme as Subpostmaster in 1999, when, due to ill-health, Julie’s father decided to retire. Cottam assessed Wolstenholme’s suitability, stating at the time: “I have no reason to doubt her honesty”.
Beer wanted to know how she went from this assessment to sacking her for dishonesty just over a year later. Cottam had an interesting take:
“I soon picked up on when I was going to the office – she worked very closely with her husband and he was heavily involved in the day-to-day running of the office. And that was not taken into consideration because I wasn’t aware that that was going to be the case when Julie was appointed.”
Beer was intrigued. “Why are you telling us this?”
“I think it’s relevant” replied Cottam.
“Are you hinting that you think he was the dishonest one, not her?” asked Beer.
“I’d rather not say”, said Cottam, suddenly all prim. She admitted to Beer she had “no proof at all” of any dishonesty or criminality on Julie’s husband’s part, either now or in 2000.
Can she be a witness?
Jason Beer started to explore more of Elaine Cottam’s 2003 witness statement. This became a difficult and protracted process as it transpired that Elaine Cottam not only had very little understanding of the information she had submitted in the witness statement she signed, but seemed to have absolutely no idea there had been a legal case against Julie Wolstenholme in the first place:
Cottam: “I didn’t know there was a civil court. The first I knew that there’d been a court case was when I got this bundle of documents.” Beer: “You provided this witness statement to the civil court?” Cottam: “I don’t remember doing that.”
Beer read out the following passage in Cottam’s 2003 witness statement:
“Mrs Wolstenholme persisted in telephoning the Horizon Helpdesk in relation to any problems which she had with the system and generally, these problems related to the use and general operation of the system and were not technical problems relating to the system. Copies of the call logs for the period 10 January 2000 to 30 November 2000 together with a brief analysis of the calls to the Horizon System Helpdesk which I prepared following Mrs Wolstenholme’s suspension are at pages [then you give some pages to an exhibit]. Whilst there were some problems at other branches, they were not insurmountable and were often due to the system crashing or were general teething problems.”
When asked about this sentence, Cottam said she didn’t remember asking for any call logs, didn’t remember receiving them and didn’t know why she needed them, because she wouldn’t understand them. She seemed utterly mystified at the idea she might be able to offer any analysis of them, and with the air of someone looking at hieroglyphics on a piece of wood, told the Inquiry:
“I don’t understand these. Don’t understand them. I don’t know what it’s saying, “Gateway is now stuck at 3%”. That means nothing to me.”
One thing she did spot was that Julie Wolstenholme’s husband had made some of the calls to the helpline, and on the call log had been classified as the Subpostmaster.
Cottam: “But he’s not the postmaster, is he?” Beer: “What’s your point?” Cottam: “Well, he doesn’t feature very heavily anywhere, does he? And yet his name’s on all these now.” Beer: “What’s your point? Cottam: “Well, it says, “Title: Postmaster”, and he wasn’t, was he?” Beer: “What’s your point?” […] Cottam (suddenly prim again): “Well… well, nothing. It doesn’t matter. “ Beer: “Is this the suspicion without proof issue raising its head again?” Cottam: “I’m not going down that line at all.” Beer: “I thought you just did.”
Beer managed to steer Cottam back to her “analysis” of the call logs and what they might mean. Cottam had been sent them in July this year but seemed to have no recollection of seeing them then, let alone 20 years ago. Then her brain seemed to melt down a little bit and she started crying.
Beer and the inquiry chair, Sir Wyn Williams, immediately stepped in and a fifteen minute break was agreed. Sir Wyn noted how “confused” Cottam appeared to be, and asked Beer where this was all going. It turned out Beer had evidence of Cottam calling the Horizon Helpline third line support to explain various software problems on behalf of Julie Wolstenholme from the Cleveleys branch, yet for some reason none of the calls that Cottam had made were included in her 2003 witness statement to the court. And her witness statement also stated the calls Julie Wolstenholme had made were “not technical problems relating to the system”.
After the break, Beer asked her about it:
Beer: “This is you calling in. Why would you be calling the Helpdesk?” Cottam: “Because I would have been at the office trying to help them sort out whatever it was.” Beer: “Why wouldn’t the subpostmaster call in?” Cottam: “Well, she probably did.” Beer: “No, she didn’t. You did.” Cottam (unable to help herself): “Or he did. We were looking for some advice from somebody.” Beer: “Sorry, did you say “or he did”?” Cottam: “I don’t know, I can’t remember.” Beer: “Was that slipping into the suspicion without proof thing again.” Cottam: “Well, I wouldn’t like to say.” Beer: “Well, but you just did.”
Despite her clear insinuation, which she admitted was based on no evidence whatsoever, that Julie Wolstenholme’s husband might have been responsible for dishonest behaviour in 2000, Cottam insisted her memory was a blank when it came to the very existence of her 2003 witness statement.
Ms Cottam in full flow
“Can you help us as to how it came about that there’s a witness statement to the Blackpool County Court in your name and signed by you as true, which says, “I prepared this analysis”?” asked Beer, after about five minutes of Cottam’s protestations.
“I don’t ever remember seeing it”, she replied. “I mean, it was a long time ago. I may well have done it but I really don’t, I just wouldn’t understand it.”
Beer tried to get Cottam to accept that her call to the Horizon Helpline’s third line support about a mysterious £100 adding itself to the Cleveleys branch balance when the weekly accounts were calculated was evidence of a software problem. Cottam wasn’t having it. Beer kept trying.
“That’s not Mrs Wolstenholme or Mr Harrison [Julie’s husband] adding something to the stock unit, somebody adding something. You’re telling the Helpdesk here that there’s a problem with the system, aren’t you? A stock unit has had something added to it.”
“Well, yeah”, replied a defensive Cottam. “How it was added to it is another matter.”
Beer gave up. But he had another point to make.
Enter Fujitsu
Following the trail of information about Cottam’s call all the way up the support line to Fujitsu, it transpired the problem Cottam was reporting was a known bug in the system. This was evidenced with some notes in the error log between Fujitsu engineers. Because it was a known bug, Fujitsu took the decision to close the call, without telling the Subpostmaster. Or apparently, Cottam:
Beer: “So you didn’t know about the known error log?” Cottam: “No. Never heard of it.” Beer: “There’s no record on here or indeed elsewhere of you or the Subpostmaster being told that a known error in the system occurred, which was affecting the balancing process? Do you see, there’s no record on this PinICL? [technical term for an error note]” Cottam: “No, no, no, I didn’t know about it.”
Cottam accepted this would have been useful information. Beer went back to her 2003 witness statement. He wanted to know why this specific incident and the known error it revealed had not been included with the other call logs attached to the witness statement. There followed some of the most surreal gibberish I’ve ever heard from someone under oath. Here is an excerpt:
Cottam: “I will help you as much as I can but, really, I don’t understand where all this is coming from. Am I supposed to have written all this? I might well have signed it but I don’t remember all this.” Beer: “Generally, when you write something to a court and say, “I believe the contents of this statement are true” and sign it with a pen underneath it, that indicates that you’ve written it. No?” Cottam: “Well, when am I supposed to have signed this?” Beer (wearily): “16 October 2003.” Cottam: “I don’t remember it. I don’t remember it and the very first time I knew there’d been a court case about this was when this has just been raised again, when they sent me this bundle of papers. I didn’t even know there’d been a court case before that.” Beer: “So you can’t help us why the call log recording you on two occasions assisting Mrs Wolstenholme, complaining about the service offered by the Horizon Helpdesk, about a balancing issue and the system adding sums on rollover was not included in the documents exhibited to your witness statement? You can’t help us there?” Cottam: “No, no, I can’t see it.” Beer: “Three weeks before she was suspended?” Cottam: “Am I supposed to be looking at this now? Is this on here? I simply don’t understand what you’re asking now.” Beer: “Well, I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”
Matters reached a head when Beer asked: “Do you think somebody has fabricated your signature on this witness statement?”
“Well”, said Cottam, “I don’t know if that’s the case or not but I didn’t know anything about the court case and I wasn’t called to the court case.” Beer responded patiently: “As I said, it didn’t reach court because the Post Office settled.” “Oh” replied Cottam. “But I didn’t know anything about it. You would have thought that they would have at least approached me about it. They must have wanted some input from me at that stage.”
You would have thought, right? But maybe dealing with Elaine Cottam in 2003 was as difficult as it appears to be in 2023. So maybe they didn’t bother.
Beer tried one last time: “This is a 15-page witness statement signed by you.” “No, this long… this statement of truth, yeah?” replied Cottam, as if she were seeing it for the first time. “Yes.” Cottam paused. “I just don’t really understand what it is I’m supposed to be doing here, really. What… I haven’t got copies of the call logs, so… other than in this bundle… I don’t understand.”
It appears that Elaine Cottam genuinely didn’t know what a witness statement was, nor had she worked out what its purpose might be, even by the end of her inquiry session.
Beer’s questioning concluded shortly thereafter. He had, without being derailed, successfully demonstrated that Fujitsu had kept a serious software problem from a Subpostmaster who then lost money and subsequently her livelihood as a result of the callous ineptitude of Elaine Cottam and her colleagues at the Post Office. Having achieved this, it seems someone at the Post Office went on to produce a misleading witness statement supposedly authored by someone without the capacity or capability of being responsible for it.
The world is full of thick-as-mince, malevolent incompetents like Elaine Cottam. The problems start when they are promoted into positions of power, as the Post Office appears to have done with multiple idiots on multiple occasions. I really hope the Met Police are taking note.
UPDATE: More than one person has suggested to me in good faith that Elaine Cottam, in giving evidence to the Inquiry, might be displaying possible symptoms of early onset dementia. I have no idea if Elaine Cottam has the condition or has been diagnosed with anything of this nature. I have approached in the Inquiry to pass on the concerns of the people who contacted me, in the hope that Ms Cottam might, if she wants to, consider seeking medical advice.
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I’m delighted to tell you that Noel and Sian Thomas’s book The Stamp of Innocence is available as an ebook from Amazon. Noel was prosecuted by the Post Office and sent to prison in 2006. On getting out the Post Office went after his house and pension. Noel had his conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal in 2021.
To mark the auspicious moment of his book’s publication, Rebecca Thomson and I interviewed Aled (Noel and Sian’s ghostwriter) and Noel for our podcast Investigating the Post Office Scandal. Sian was there to sort the technicals (see above pic), but had a sore throat so wasn’t able to participate in the conversation.
If you’d like to listen to the podcast, you can find it on this website, Audioboom, or by searching in Spotify or Apple podcasts (or most other podcast platforms). We had a great chat about the book, about Noel and Sian’s life on Ynys Môn/Anglesey and Aled’s thoughts the scandal as well as writing the book.
The paperback version of The Stamp of Innocence is due to come out within the next couple of months. If you are a Welsh language speaker and would like to buy the Welsh version of The Stamp of Innocence, it is called Llythyr Noel and is already out as a paperback as well as an ebook. Noel and Aled read from both Llythyr Noel and The Stamp of Innocence in the podcast, and it is a delight to hear.
I really hope I can get over to Ynys Môn to do a joint reading of The Great Post Office Scandal, Llythyr Noel and the Stamp of Innocence with Noel, Sian and Aled some time next year. If you have a venue there and fancy putting an event on, do get in touch.
Three days after the historic, celebratory scenes outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 23 April 2021, I got an email from Paul Cousins (Jnr), Wendy Cousins’ son. Wendy Cousins was one of the three Subpostmasters whose conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
Paul wrote:
For us it was another disastrous day. My mother described it as the worst day since the very day the post office was shut without notice and the house was searched.
I noted your piece outside the court on LBC News – talking about collusion with the government and the power of an organisation who have carried out the greatest injustice in the history of the judicial system.
Are we really suggesting that these 3 sub-postmasters are criminals – when we have seen the evidence over the past 2 decades?
Tom Witherow at the The Times asked me if I was in contact with anyone whose appeal had been refused. I thought of Paul. What I didn’t know was that since Paul first got in contact, Wendy had died of cancer.
Paul and his family were also willing to work with me on an ITV News piece about the family and their fight. That went out on Thursday last week – you can watch it here. You can also listen to a podcast I recorded on the same day with the ITV news anchor Julie Etchingham. This is part of ITV’s weekly What You Need to Know series which you can find on Spotify and Apple podcasts. We talk about the Cousins family and where we are now with the scandal.
I am grateful to Ed Henry KC and Lord Arbuthnot for their contributions to the ITV News feature, and I am particularly grateful to (the camera shy!) Paul Jnr and the wider Cousins family for allowing me to film and interview them, when the grief – a year after Wendy’s death – is still raw.
I have news of a new one. This, as it says below – is for any Subpostmaster, branch manager/assistant or Crown Office employee who was threatened with legal action or sued/prosecuted by the Post Office.
The press release reads as follows:
“A research team led by Professor Richard Moorhead at the University of Exeter are inviting you to take part in this research project looking into the Post Office Scandal.
In this study, we will be examining important issues arising from the Post Office Scandal, focusing on potential issues with the management of the Post Office, the criminal justice system, and the behaviour of lawyers. We wish to better understand how wrongful convictions and other injustices occurred on the basis of flawed computer ‘evidence’, and how relevant issues took so long to uncover.
In order to understand more about the scandal, we would like to speak with former sub-postmasters/mistresses or Crown employees that owned or worked in Post Offices, who had experience of the Horizon IT system, and had some form of legal action taken or threatened against them by the Post Office between 2000 and 2015.
This could include those who were convicted after a criminal trial, those who were acquitted after a criminal trial, those who were charged but had the criminal prosecution dropped by the Post Office, or those who experienced any kind of civil justice proceedings brought against them by the Post Office. Taking part will involve being interviewed by a member of our research team.
The interview is expected to take around 60 minutes. If you agree, we will audio record the interview (it will not be videoed). You can choose to take part in a face-to-face interview, which can take place in a location of your choosing, or an interview using Zoom.
You do not need to answer all the questions we ask and can end the interview at any time without giving a reason, should you wish. You may also have someone with you to support you. Your responses will be confidential and will be anonymised for our analysis to prevent you from being identified.
The results of this study will form part of our investigation into the Post Office Scandal and will be disseminated in a number of ways in order to attempt to prevent similar issues occurring in the future. Means of dissemination include, but will not necessarily be limited to, academic publications and policy-related work, and responses to the Horizon IT Inquiry .
If you would like to be involved in this study or would like any further information, please contact Richard Moorhead Professor of Law, University of Exeter Law School, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX44RJ. Email: postofficeproject@exeter.ac.uk“
I have no connection to this project, but I can vouch for the professionalism and expertise of Professor Moorhead and his team – and the care they put into their work. Please do share this post in your networks. If you do get involved and don’t mind telling me how it went – please get in touch through the usual channels. All communication will be in confidence.
Stephen Dilley giving evidence at the Inquiry today
Today, Stephen Dilley, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, gave evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Womble have a long and inglorious history with the Post Office, right up to acting for them (disastrously) in the Bates v Post Office group litigation. Back when they were known as Bond Pearce, Dilley helped the Post Office destroy former Bridlington Subpostmaster Lee Castleton at the High Court. Today, Lee Castleton, and his wife Lisa sat before Dilley at the Inquiry.
“I must have been 8 when I first took note the confusion, frustration and anxiety that was leeching into my home. This was before talks of court, trials and accusations of theft. This was the period that my father started noticing the IT faults that wouldn’t be taken seriously for so many years. In the years running up to my father’s trial in 2006 I vividly recall sitting on the staircase late at night, listening to conversations I barely understood or could really comprehend. To a child, the answer always seemed obvious, my father hadn’t done anything. Why didn’t people believe him? Why is the dining room table covered in papers as well as the back office of the post office, and why is he always down there late at night making phone calls and faxes?..
Millie Castleton
“This was an ordeal that not only cost my father legal fees, this was an event that blackened our name and branded us all with something that was unjustified. Court ruling, local gossip and unyielding arguments from the post office would lead to my whole family being branded as thieves and liars. It’s deeply sickening to look back to my life in that small town. A place that would in time, fill me with anxiety to walk through. How comfortable can anyone be when people spat at you based on what you know is a lie? It was also a lonely time, the financial strain of legal fees and supporting the family saw my dad working near 100-hour weeks, often involving traveling and spending days on end away from us. He became a stranger to me, someone I barely saw and lost close relationship with. My mother worked too during the day, upholding the newsagents we still had, which was failing due to the label attached to us and it after the legal case.
“I remember feeling cold and terrified when a child on the bus in my first week asked, ‘didn’t your dad steal loads of money or something?’ This set me on edge for a long time, causing me to become that ever so anxious child who regularly was the subject of bullying. After a few incidents of supposed friends treating me poorly, I completely disconnected.
“At home I was dealing with parents who were working their hardest to provide, utterly pained by the stress that the post office trial caused them. Dad was working insane hours as well as beginning to work with others to try and solve the many emerging cases of other sub-postmasters and post-mistresses like him. My mother was also working as much as she could but also dealing with a stress- induced epilepsy. She lost her driving licence as a result and had to take medication. These seizures where unpredictable at first when the medication was still new. I remember having to handle her seizures alone as a child, sometimes in the middle of the night.
“I didn’t tell my parents about the bullying or social withdrawal. They didn’t know I spent my breaks sitting alone or just walking around, they didn’t know I could go a day or two without really talking. They didn’t know that I was assaulted on the school bus and had to run off on the first stop, wet from water being thrown at me, being spat on and having been hit by paper balls. In my mind this was an additional stressor they didn’t need. I could deal with it alone and not put more weight on their load. I just felt like such a burden all the time.
“My late teens and early twenties were governed by my eating disorder and mental anxieties. I began to sink under the weight of it all and subsequent grabbed for some sense of control. I was anxious about going to university and leaving my family. Mum was still having seizures and Dad was still fighting a legal battle, I felt guilty. Leaving and not being able to help more. I left, already dealing with an undiagnosed at the time eating disorder. It began in my GCSE year, just eating less bit by bit and skipping out on the canteen and pack lunches to avoid questions. By this point I was visibly skinny. Living alone however gave way to me being vulnerable to all my demons… By the end of my first year of university I had been diagnosed as anorexic and too sick to go to my second year… My lowest weight saw me weighing little more than 5-stone and having to stay in hospital for heart related issues for days on end. I’d be lying if I claimed that this wasn’t a cry for help. The surrender of a broken spirit, the pain and self-loathing if someone who just couldn’t escape a terrible situation. Every part of my late childhood and teens was absolutely tainted by the post office case.
“But I fought. I tried. I’m better for it. Not perfect but better, part of me will always feel a little broken-up. I still feel a burning fear at spending larger sums of money or doing something purely for myself. That nagging voice in my head still says ugly things sometimes. It still tells me that my past and family’s struggle will define me, that it will be a branding on my skin forever. Broken, thief or liar.”
At the outset of his cross-examination, Julian Blake, counsel to the Inquiry, asked Dilley:
“Having reflected on the evidence of the Inquiry as a whole, is there anything that you would like to say to Mr Castleton or his family?”
Dilley replied: “No there isn’t.”
Dilley spent the rest of the day arguing the toss with Blake over his behaviour and attitude towards the Castleton case, covering his backside by justifying his decisions as not just thoroughly professional, but absolutely correct at all times. He tried to re-shape the meaning of contemporaneous documentary evidence when it suited him to do so, and seemed to be suggesting that Castleton was largely hung by his own bad decisions – including his refusal to settle. Settlement, it transpired, was only acceptable to the Post Office on their terms – paying the Post Office a “debt” Castleton did not owe, and signing a non-disparagement statement stating that the errors in his branch were human errors, and that the Horizon system “did not contribute to the error[s] in any way”.
Understandably Castleton was unwilling to “settle” in this way. Flora Page, Castleton’s barrister, called the settlement offer “a sham”, suggesting the real reason for offering such unreasonable terms was so the Post Office could take Castleton to court and make an example of him.
“Absolutely not,” replied Dilley, firmly.
The overall impression I got was that Dilley couldn’t give a **** about Castleton (or his family) then, and he certainly couldn’t give a **** about them now. It was a case of: sorry mate, purely business. I suspect Dilley’s back will be warmly slapped by his WBD litigation colleagues when he gets back to the office.
“As a non-litigation Womble I am deeply angry about this. Stephen was removed from the Post Office litigation team after this case by the client partner who was based in Southampton because Stephen very ironically was not regarded as aggressive enough! The following cases were given to a “young buck” who did the client partner’s bidding and more. Both of them were promoted off the back of Post Office and given culture-busting bonuses. It is an open secret in Wombles about who knew what and when. I only hope we can hold our hands up for the sake of the 33 who lost their lives before they could prove their innocence and for their families. It is about integrity. Time to draw a line. Sadly our board are too weak to stand up and do the right thing. To all of us non-litigators it is deeply depressing and embarrassing. I fear worse is to come.”
Helen Rose giving evidence remotely at the Inquiry today
Helen Rose is a former Post Office auditor and investigator. Mrs Rose has no formal auditing qualifications or training, no training she can recall on the Post Office Horizon IT system and no formal training in investigation. She is also the author of the Helen Rose report, which provided some of the first concrete evidence that incomplete information was being used as the basis of Horizon prosecutions. More on that here.
Today at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, Mrs Rose was asked about a witness statement she made during the trial of Lee Castleton, a Subpostmaster who was bankrupted by the Post Office at the High Court. In March 2004, Mrs Rose “audited” Lee’s branch and found a £23,000 discrepancy. Lee was immediately suspended, later sacked, and then taken to court over the allegedly missing money.
In Helen Rose’s contemporaneous audit report she notes that Lee was pleased to see the auditors turn up at his branch (he had requested the audit). Mrs Rose notes that Lee explained he had called the Post Office helpline “regularly” in an attempt to get the problems with his Horizon IT system fixed. Both these pieces of information were missing from her 2006 witness statement to the High Court.
In the first draft of her witness statement to the High Court, Mrs Rose also stated:
“As part of an audit, we have to complete a procedural security inspection… The inspection revealed that the safe was left open, the safe keys were left in the safe door and it was not secured, that cash and stock were not secured during lunchtime if the Sub-Postmaster was not on the premises, that Travellers Cheques were not kept in the safe and Foreign Currency was not held securely, that standard procedures for adjusting losses and gains were not adhered to (because losses were unauthorised) and personal cheques on hand had been incorrectly treated.”
This was not true. Mrs Rose, or someone on her behalf, had incorrectly transposed information from an incomplete generic report into her witness statement. In September 2006, Mrs Rose was asked by the Post Office legal team to carefully read her draft witness statement to the High Court. She did so, and raised the issue of the incorrect information above.
On 3 October 2006 Mrs Rose had a conversation with Stephen Dilley, the solicitor acting for the Post Office. The note of that conversation records she worked with him to clarify and correctly reflect the situation, which was that, at Mr Castleton’s branch, the matter of the discrepancy was raised first. This led directly to Castleton’s suspension, before the security checks could be properly completed.
On 4 October 2006 Mrs Rose was presented with a second witness statement, which inserted a new paragraph to state:
“As part of a normal audit, we have to complete a procedural security inspection. This was initiated by my colleague Chris Taylor. When a postmaster is suspended then any remaining compliance tests are not completed, because of the large number of compliance tests (including security compliance) that have to be completed for each audit. Accordingly although the procedural security inspection was started as a matter of routine, I do not recall it being completed because Mr Castleton was suspended prior to its completion, and it then became irrelevant.”
Nonetheless, the incorrect paragraph, stating (as quoted above) that “safe keys were left in the safe door and it was not secured… cash and stock were not secured… standard procedures for adjusting losses and gains were not adhered to (because losses were unauthorised) and personal cheques on hand had been incorrectly treated”, remained.
Mrs Rose had no explanation for this. The inquiry chair, Sir Wyn Williams, pointed out that she had signed a witness statement to the High Court containing information which she knew was wrong. He wanted to know why.
“I have no recollection of it. I’m sorry” said Mrs Rose.
Elsewhere in her 2006 witness statement to the High Court, Mrs Rose noted that during her audit, Lee Castleton went for lunch and came back “smelling strongly of alcohol”. This recollection was absent from her 2004 audit report. Asked why it was not in her audit report, but suddenly appeared in a witness statement to the High Court two years later, Mrs Rose said:
“I don’t know why that wasn’t in, or came later” said Mrs Rose.
Mrs Rose couldn’t explain why information which would have been helpful to Mr Castleton – his being pleased to see the auditors and his consistent raising of complaints about problems with the Horizon system – was missing from her witness statement to the High Court. Nor could she explain why an apparently invented (or, charitably, lately recollected) detail about Lee Castleton smelling of alcohol had found its way into her 2006 witness statement to the High Court, when there was no mention of it in her 2004 audit report.
By the time it got to trial, in December 2006, Helen Rose had adjusted her recollection about the alcohol matter to say “it was just a vague memory I had of the office”, and apologised to Lee Castleton for making the suggestion he did smell of booze.
It was interesting to note that whilst the Rose report was an exceptionally important document, and used to inform the Clarke Advice, which led to the cessation of all Post Office prosecutions, Mrs Rose had no information to offer the Inquiry on the recommendations in her report, nor its wider effect on the Post Office Security Team. Nor did she take any interest in the subsequent Postmasters’ campaign for justice. She also had little or no recollection of a Subpostmaster who took his own life after one of her investigations, nor the internal disciplinary process she was subject to afterwards.
The maximum number of people who qualify for the deal are the 86 Subpostmasters whose convictions have been quashed. I have asked if this includes Vipin Patel, Teju Adedayo and Parmod Kalia, three Subpostmasters whose convictions have been quashed, but who the Post Office/government is refusing to compensate because they believe Horizon evidence was not essential to their prosecutions.
There is more information from the government here. At the time the news broke I happened to be with Edward Henry KC who represents several Subpostmasters at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Ed called the offer “cruel”, suggesting the government was displaying “ruthlessness and expediency”. He told me the government should say: “you are guaranteed £600,000 – whether you accept this or not. We are not going to play raw claw litigation with you. If you take us to court or take the Post Office to court and you get more – great. If you take us to court and you don’t, that £600,000 is safe and it’s waiting for you.”
Edward Henry KC
Here’s my studio live report featuring that quote on ITV News last night. Just before I went into the studio I had a quick chat with the Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake, who told me the sort of deal Ed Henry was espousing was something the Business Department was looking at, which, whilst I imagine it would be welcome, potentially adds to the confusion surrounding the compensation debacle.
I had various Subpostmasters contact me about the offer. One was delighted, telling me: “Just incredible… my heart is singing.”
Tim Brentnall
He was something of a outlier. Tim Brentnall, whose conviction was quashed in 2021 said:
“If this payment is available to all – then people with high claims should get it as an interim. Secondly – they have always taken the line that we have to fight and prove everything because it’s the “public purse”. Many claims will be below that figure so why has that now been abandoned? It’s not very “full and fair” for a lot of people! It’s also going to create pressure on the people who’s claims are just over that amount to settle for perhaps less than they are entitled to.”
TIm concludes: “It’s a good step that they’ve said they want to settle, but it sort of flies in the face of everything that’s gone beforehand.”
Janet Skinner, who went to prison, described the offer as a “complete and utter joke”. Seema Misra, who also went to prison, said “It might be okay for some. Some might be forced into it. [It’s] definitely not for me.”
Neil Hudgell, whose firm Hudgells represents the largest number of Subpostmasters with quashed convictions said:
“we are somewhat surprised by this sudden announcement. I expect the reaction of many of our clients will be that this move is another example of the Post Office trying to control the narrative. The Government has said these offers are optional, but my fear is that, due to the delays we have already faced, and the particular circumstances many Subpostmasters face, some may feel pressured to accept this offer even though their claims are worth much more. In isolation £600,000 may sound like a lot of money, and it is. But in many cases it is nowhere near enough to represent what has been lost over the last two decades.”
Last night on The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4, Lord Arbuthnot, a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, called the offer “a choice”, saying that “for some it will be a good way of putting this behind them and getting on with their lives.”
“Any variable pay schemes going forward should not include any metrics relating to the Inquiry.”
So. On scrolling through the terms of the Senior Legal Counsel job (which closed on 31 August), I noticed that as well as a “Generous pension contribution” and “Car allowance”, the Senior Legal Counsel working on the Inquiry would also get an “Up to 18% on target bonus opportunity.”
The successful applicant would be working on the Inquiry team, “formed within Post Office to resolve certain legacy issues [that’s one way of putting it] facing Post Office in connection with its dealings with Postmasters”.
The specific job role involved: “working with the Head of Legal and a dedicated team of Senior Inquiry Counsel individuals supporting all legal work realting to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.”
So very much an Inquiry-specific job. With a bonus opportunity attached.
I drew attention to this apparent anomaly on social media two days ago. The same day I asked the Post Office how the bonus offer for working on the Inquiry squared with its statement making clear that any “variable pay” schemes should not include any metrics relating to the inquiry. I asked for the bonus metric for this job and how it would be measured. I am still waiting for a response, however, I was intrigued to see it brought up by counsel to the Inquiry, Jason Beer KC, at today’s hearing into disclosure issues.
I suppose it was a good time to mention it. After all, Beer was cross-examining Diane Wills, who would be the new Senior Legal Counsel’s boss.
Beer noted the job role and asked: “Is that new post… as has been reported in the media, to be paid in part by reference to a bonus?”
“Yes,” replied Wills.
“And what is the bonus metric?” he asked.
Will replied: “Post Office like many organisations runs a bonus scheme to which its senior professionals and management are entitled to participate in which has business-wide objectives which are set for the whole organisation which include things like financial targets. The [Inquiry] team is entitled to take part in that in the same way that other parts of the Post Office are. In the current scheme and in any future schemes there are no metrics directly related to the Inquiry.”
Diane Wills
“So that lawyer and other lawyers – is this right – are not being paid bonuses that are related to their performance in inquiry work?” asked Beer.
There was a pause.
“I think we have to look at it at two levels.” Wills blustered. “First of all there is a decision which is taken by the remuneration committee as to whether or not the corporate-wide objectives have been met, and that triggers the entitlement in principle to payment of a bonus. At a team level… there are personal objectives for each member of the team which are focused on – in the inquiry team – support for the inquiry. Their performance is then looked at in the round at the end of the year, looking at what they’ve delivered in what context with what standards of behaviour etc. Higher levels of performance could lead to the achievement of a higher bonus award. But the decision has to be taken in the first place that it’s payable at all.”
In other words, yes. Despite the massive outcry, the questions in parliament, the publication of two formal reports, the Chief Executive being forced into a series of grovelling and humiliating apologies, the Post Office is still offering bonuses to its staff for their work on the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Of course it is.
There goes his Knighthood along with his reputation