I am once more grateful to Eleanor Shaikh and Matthew Somerville for bringing important information into the public domain. Matthew runs the “Dracos” Inquiry website which mirrors the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry website whilst making every document on it searchable. There is a manual element to Matthew’s work, which involves scanning the Inquiry website for new uploads. Over the weekend Matthew ran his first full scan since January and found 4,000 new documents had been uploaded to the official site. Eleanor Shaikh immediately started searching for more mentions of the mysterious 2020 report known as Project Brisbane, compiled by one of the Post Office’s external law firms Herbert Smith Freehills.

Project Brisbane is a matter of considerable sensitivity. The Post Office has so far refused to unredact a mere reference to it in an 26 August 2020 email, despite being ordered to do so by the Information Commissioner’s Office. The matter is now going to court. This is the original redaction Eleanor was intrigued by:

We still don’t know if the Inquiry has a copy of Project Brisbane (despite publishing documents which refer to it) and we still don’t know if the police investigation Operation Olympos has asked to see it. The Post Office is refusing to acknowledge any email I send which references Project Brisbane, and I haven’t yet had a response from the Post Office Inquiry. The National Police Chiefs Council, which now runs Operation Olympos, tells me they are “aware” of Project Brisbane “and this will be a future consideration as the investigation progresses”.

But what is it?

One of the new documents uploaded to the Post Office Inquiry website contains the minutes of a November 2020 meeting during which the Post Office board discuss a number of “matters arising” relating to Project Brisbane.

The document reports that the board wants to access the emails of the former Post Office general counsel Jane MacLeod who was sacked in 2019 (and subsequently refused to be questioned by the Post Office Inquiry). Her successor Ben Foat tells the board that this is possible. The board also wants to take a look at “the information and advice provided by Fujitsu to Post Office”. This would include a “timeline… and technical advice procured, if required.”

These matters are two of several which “feed into Project Brisbane, updates on which are coming back to the Board meetings”. Project Brisbane is described as “open and ongoing”. See below:

It looks like Brisbane was a massive undertaking. The meeting notes record that there has been a piece of work under the Brisbane name on “Horizon integrity” which was circulated on 18 June 2020 and a second phase which was “circulated” on 24 July 2020. It’s not quite clear what that means given Brisbane was still “open and ongoing” by November 2020. Was there a super-secret Phase 3? Or was Phase 2 still open?

Going back to published documents from just before those dates, it seems that the first “Horizon integrity” phase of Project Brisbane was expected to come in at no more than £50k. By May 2020, the Post Office (and govt) was being asked how much it wanted to spend on Phase 2. A review of 10,000 documents by the Herbert Smith Freehills team would cost approx £150,000. Looking at 30,000 documents would set them back £275,000.

We still don’t know Phase 2’s exact scope, but it does appear that Brisbane involves an internal review of potential responsibility for decisions taken throughout the 2013 – 2019 cover-up period. No wonder the Post Office has been keen to keep it from the Inquiry.

Brianagain

Incidentally, the November 2020 document also contains lengthy notes on the Post Office’s decision to oppose a Limb 2 abuse of process argument being heard in the Hamilton appeals at the Court of Appeal (which, at its conclusion, led to the famous scenes below).

The board are led directly to their decision by Brian Altman KC, who invokes the “overriding objective” (that a case should be heard “efficiently, expeditiously and proportionately”) to persuade them a Limb 2 decision was not necessary and should not be sought.

After hearing one side of the argument, the board agree “that the court should not consider a second ground of appeal”. How convenient. Luckily the court disagreed and the rest is history. It’s never quite clear to me how the Post Office come to be victims of such poor legal advice (see the recusal disaster for more of this sort of thing). Bad lawyers? Bad company? Bad luck?

On 18 June the Information Commissioner is taking the Post Office to a first tier tribunal in an attempt to force the Post Office to reveal the words in the email relating to Project Brisbane. Eleanor Shaikh is a witness in that case. Even if the contents of the email are revealed it’s not clear whether the underlying report will then be surrendered or whether that will require further action. More as we get it, I guess.

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