mr bates vs the post office

Yes. I think it makes sense to retain them but it definitely needs review, as a parliament committee did a couple of years back.

HMRC lost its prosecutions office capability to CPS due to ineptitude and failure, didn’t have a massive effect on the business.

I see various lawyers are sucking air through their teeth about MPs voting to take short-cuts, mis out the legal route to correct itself (after years of mostly inaction) and essentially over-turning convictions on their say-so. 

Let’s hope that their efforts to put right this horrible mis-carriage doesn’t result in some unintended consequences down the line, for the sake of political expediency, after all that’s never happened before…

Couple of questions/points:

Those prosecutions were brought on the strength of investigations carried out by ex posties/post masters that had been on a three week training course and were rewarded on the numbers of prosecutions brought. Is that right? Keeping the power is one thing, using it wisely is another… (with great power brings great responsibility etc ©Spiderman).

If we were talking about the US and their equivelant of Parliament/The Lords overturning some of the actions against Trump, we’d be up in arms. There’s a very good reason the Judiciary is separated from Government and the proposed route whilst expedient is also a terrible precedent to set…

ex posties/post masters that had been on a three week training course and were rewarded on the numbers of prosecutions brought.

I was under the impression that the Post Office Investigations Branch, or whatever it’s called now, was the kind of place that former coppers etc landed after they left the force. I’m not sure that ex posties etc have the kind of refined skillset needed to mount a sustained harassment and intimidation campaign against innocent people.

There certainly seemed to be a ‘Met in the glory days of the 80s and 90s’ vibe to it.

There is absolutely no reason for the PO to retain its prosecutorial powers after such a record of abuse. In a perfect world, the whole organisation would be taken back into public control and stripped back to the core, as it’s clear from their evasive behaviour even today that a rotten culture still persists.

I was under the impression that the Post Office Investigations Branch, or whatever it’s called now, was the kind of place that former coppers etc landed after they left the force. I

Thats one of the odd things which has come out of the trials. Most of them seem to be lifetime PO staff switching from counter/post delivery staff to being investigators at random.
Maybe the three weeks training was from the Met and concentrated on “culture”.

In a perfect world, the whole organisation would be taken back into public control and stripped back to the core, as it’s clear from their evasive behaviour even today that a rotten culture still persists.

it IS in public control – it is 100% owned by HM Gov.  I think the Gov quite enjoy the ambiguity created by selling off the Royal Mail (the delivery part) so much of the public think this is a symptom of private enterprise gone bad… it is not, it’s a symptom of public sector cover ups gone bad.

I see various lawyers are sucking air through their teeth about MPs voting to take short-cuts, mis out the legal route to correct itself (after years of mostly inaction) and essentially over-turning convictions on their say-so.

What could possibly go wrong? A couple of decades of studied disinterest ‘corrected’ in 48 hours of frenzied activity by a bunch of inept and corrupt shysters, literally sketching out changes to our legal system on the back of a fag packet?

If you missed Ian Hislop on Peston absolutely tearing Jake Berry and his newly-discovered concern a new one, its a thing of beauty. He sums it up absolutely perfectly and theres nobody more qualified to do so as Private Eye has been exposing this for years…

https://x.com/scottygb/status/1745246158031552635?s=20

“You can’t just talk nonsense and not be interrupted!”

“Why didn’t you act sooner? You kept saying ‘this is too difficult’. Suddenly you can do it all in one day.””

Indeed!

Why I’m not sure –

Is removing the PO power to prosecute just for the PO, or other similar organisations too? eg: RSPCA? Is it to punish ‘The PO’ by removing the powers, or after 20 odd years is it a significant warning to put things right so this never happens again. If it’s a policy that organisations should not have prosecution powers, do we also remove from all the others and if so do they keep investigatorial powers still but CPS finally decides. The CPS can’t keep up with their workload already, how quickly would we expect them to step into a breech?

If they lose investigatorial powers and that has to go to police forces, does that really advance things – the types of ‘crime’ being accused of are specialist in nature, do the police have time, expertise, do we trust them any more than the companies really…..

It’s a can of worms and while the impulse is to strip them, I’m not convinced that the result is progress.

Other matters; heartbreaking story on R4 this morning, a SPM who was accused and the case was thrown out in court, but in the meantime lost her business and all she’d invested in it, and life savings making up the false discrepancies. She has been living hand to mouth now for 15 years, but because she wasn’t convicted, her offer is £75K now. As she said she is now 60 and is not future proofed, no pension or savings to speak of, etc., £75K is a lot of money if it’s cash in hand but goes nowhere near to putting her back where she would have been if she’d been allowed to run a successful PO and Village shop throughout.

it IS in public control – it is 100% owned by HM Gov.

You’re right, it’s in a kind of arms-length limbo. It needs to be taken fully into public control.

As for whether to strip them of their prosecutorial power and send that workload back to the police/CPS, I don’t think you can justify them keeping it with their record. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the workload will drastically reduce as soon as someone independent of the PO is scrutinising it, as when PO employees are not being incentivised to convict people.

Fraud in any other walk of public life is investigated by the police. I’m sure a lot of it is complex in nature, and the police have specialist teams to help them pick through it. Still an imperfect system, but I’d rather fraud was missed than invented on an industrial scale.

Thats one of the odd things which has come out of the trials. Most of them seem to be lifetime PO staff switching from counter/post delivery staff to being investigators at random.

Yeah, I may well be mistaken on that one.

I’m not convinced that the result is progress.

I think POL has burned to the ground any defence they may have had that they should be allowed to keep these sorts of powers. It may not be progress, but frankly, who’d trust any prosecution bought solely by POL? Up until the point that MPS intervened to overturn these convictions, POL lawyers were still contesting every single compensation tribunal even after the group action decided in the Postmasters favour, they’ve demonstrated more than comprehensively that even if you could make a case for them retaining those sorts of powers, you’d have to put in place so many safeguards and oversights so to make the point moot anyway.

Let’s hope that their efforts to put right this horrible mis-carriage doesn’t result in some unintended consequences down the line, for the sake of political expediency, after all that’s <em style=”box-sizing: border-box; –tw-translate-x: 0; –tw-translate-y: 0; –tw-rotate: 0; –tw-skew-x: 0; –tw-skew-y: 0; –tw-scale-x: 1; –tw-scale-y: 1; –tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; –tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; –tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; –tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); –tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’;”>never happened before…

Political Pardon’s will be (another) consequence of these, as it’s basically the Govt overriding the Courts decisions rather than bothering changing the laws that Courts are judging folk against – if Lady Mone is ever prosecuted & found guilty, they could just ‘pardon’ her.

A couple of decades of studied disinterest ‘corrected’ in 48 hours of frenzied activity by a bunch of inept and corrupt shysters, literally sketching out changes to our legal system on the back of a fag packet?

It’s a nightmare. What choice have they got though? They’ve broken our court system, and if they don’t bypass it to sort this high profile story, people might start to ask what happened to make the courts so slow and unable to deliver justice for ordinary people.

Is removing the PO power to prosecute just for the PO, or other similar organisations too? eg: RSPCA? Is it to punish ‘The PO’ by removing the powers, or after 20 odd years is it a significant warning to put things right so this never happens again. If it’s a policy that organisations should not have prosecution powers, do we also remove from all the others and if so do they keep investigatorial powers still but CPS finally decides.

I can’t see any reason why for a criminal prosecution there is any need for someone other than “the crown” to prosecute?  Can anyone explain why we want RSPCA, or the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, or Big Bank Plc to lead prosecutions potentially resulting in prison sentences?

Investigational powers is a different question.  If I was on the POL board I would be recommending that the PO Investigation Branch be moved to a separate arms length body, reporting to the minister not to the PO Board.  If I was the minister, I would create their terms of reference to include misconduct by the Board!

Fraud in any other walk of public life is investigated by the police.

it’s not always.  Benefit Fraud, and Tax Fraud are investigated by the gov depts.  Bank Fraud, I believe, is mainly investigated by internal teams but with close liaison with the police.

What’s the betting that any substantial compensation sum will not be tax free? Also the legal bill for righting this wrong is it obscene.

Political Pardon’s will be (another) consequence of these, as it’s basically the Govt overriding the Courts decisions rather than bothering changing the laws that Courts are judging folk against – if Lady Mone is ever prosecuted & found guilty, they could just ‘pardon’ her.

pardons are not new – gov has used them before (Scotland has pardoned those involved in miners strikes, illegal homosexuality etc).  But that is not what the SPM want – a pardon is basically saying, “what you did at the time was illegal, but with the benefit of hindsight society now thinks you did nothing wrong”.  Overturning a conviction is saying, “you did nothing wrong” (or at least we cannot prove you did).  That is what the SPM, quite rightly, want.

I am not that comfortable with Parliament simply creating a new law to fix this and miss judges out the process.  It would perhaps have been better to create a new “Postmasters appeal tribunal” which had powers to quickly review and overturn relevant convictions.  The danger there for gov would be it would need to be independent and there is no way for them to instruct the judge what to do.

Ian Hislop on Peston absolutely tearing Jake Berry and his newly-discovered concern a new one

Came here to post that- feel sorry for his constituents! 😉

I can’t see any reason why for a criminal prosecution there is any need for someone other than “the crown” to prosecute?  Can anyone explain why we want RSPCA, or the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, or Big Bank Plc to lead prosecutions potentially resulting in prison sentences?

It’s not the ability to prosecute that’s the issue, it’s the misuse of that power. As noted, creating independence between the sections that do it and the ‘commercial/operational’ arms might be a step.

It’s a weird one (to a non-lawyer at least) – part of me feels anyone should be able to bring a case against others if they so wish, and then for the courts to weigh up the evidence and decide. But it can’t be without ‘cost’ to the accuser, you can’t have spurious and made up vindictive cases being brought and then the accuser walking away – defending against accusations (from crown or civil type) is a lengthy, damaging and expensive process even if you eventually win.

That is what’s happening here – there are no merits to the PO cases, anyone reviewing ALL the evidence should have killed them at the start – but the evidence was withheld, prosecutors were incentivised to prosecute, etc. A really shitty story.

it’s not always. Benefit Fraud, and Tax Fraud are investigated by the gov depts.

True, it’s more a question of lack of oversight and independence. POL could investigate, interview, make a charging decision and carry on through the court process with zero oversight. I don’t think there’s a future for such special arrangements.

The CPS is an imperfect but important backstop against abuse, whether it’s by the police or any other investigatory force. If it wasn’t already hideously overstretched due to lack of funding, there wouldn’t be much argument against handing them oversight of the PO’s activities.

an Hislop on Peston absolutely tearing Jake Berry and his newly-discovered concern a new one

That’s SIR Jake Berry to you.

Unfortunately there are multiple examples of the pointlessness of the honours system floating around at the moment.

Fraud in any other walk of public life is investigated by the police

Serious Fraud Office (bit of a clue in the name)

FCA

Benefits Agency

HMRC

NCA

that’s six agencies who investigate fraud who are not police forces off the top of my head.

 the police have specialist teams to help them pick through it.

That made me laugh, thanks for brightening my morning up.

“The most robust figures currently available from the Crime Survey of England and Wales reveal there were 3.7 million incidents of fraud in England and Wales in the year ending December 2022 (ONS). 86% of fraud instances are estimated to go underreported. This means that the scale of fraud is very significant, but that under-reporting also hampers our understanding of the threat.” 

The threat from fraud isn’t even understood.

That made me laugh, thanks for brightening my morning up.

Yeah, had another coffee now and thought about that for a minute… 🙂

I guess it’s just frustration at the lack of scrutiny that could be applied to POL investigations.

Theres a po investigator giving evidence at the moment that all the statements he gave to a criminal court were in fact not his statements and were in fact statements written by someone else and handed to him to sign, and then put forward as his own statements.

‘I was just following orders Guv’

if Lady Mone is ever prosecuted & found guilty, they could just ‘pardon’ her.

It’s not a pardon, iirc. A pardon meams your conviction still stands, you are just excused the punishment. They need to have the convictions overturned, per an appeal.

You could, I’m sure, draft a law specifically quashing convictions for the offences where Horizon was the only evidence. I wouldn’t trustbthe current legislature to leave something vague for future wiggle room/abuse. Such as getting Lady Mone off the hook

Just to clarify, HMRCs full criminal investigatory powers are only available to a very few officers, and there is a lot of oversight, senior sign off etc for an enquiry to use them. Assuming theres the resource to do so in the first place.

£75K is a lot of money if it’s cash in hand but goes nowhere near to putting her back where she would have been if she’d been allowed to run a successful PO and Village shop throughout.

This is where it becomes a little tricky, I run a ‘successful village shop and postoffice, but it’s definitely not a money maker – no pension, savings have gone into the shop in the last 12 months due to inflation etc. many village shops have shut or become ‘community shops’ in the last 15 years. It’s a I dieing trade.

They really need to prosecute the grunts like that PO investigator above as well. The ‘following orders’ defence is nonsense – anyone knows signing something you didn’t write and is patently untrue in an audit situation is illegal and they should face the consequences no matter how low down the food chain they were. Otherwise people in similar situations in the future will just do it again and not push back. Sure take down the big guys but take them all – they knew what they were doing was wrong.

The more people at every level that understand actions have consequences the better.

Also the legal bill for righting this wrong is it obscene.

That’s one thing that shocked me, the 555 were awarded some £58m but £46m was apparently swallowed up by legal fees 😯

The more people at every level that understand actions have consequences the better.

Sadly people are motivated by money I turned down the position of technical director in my previous employment because I didn’t trust the owner would have been very lucrative if I’d taken it as they got bought out not long after.

Is anyone actually listening to Stephen Bradshaw, the senior Post Office investigator being questioned by the inquiry?

Its truly staggering. He sounds like an absolute buffoon! Nick Wallis, who wrote the book on the scandal, just described him on five live as ‘the most incompetent investigator on the planet’

He still seems to have no more concept of what the actual problem is then he did ten years ago and zero grasp of how the Horizon system actually works. It appears he was just signing stuff off willy-nilly that he obviously had no understanding of, most of which appears to have been total bollocks!

If this is the standard of the people making decisions then it’s no wonder its such an almighty cluster****!

That’s one thing that shocked me, the 555 were awarded some £58m but £46m was apparently swallowed up by legal fees

That was because it was paid for by a litigation fund.
So it was the legal fees + the return for those fund investors (which tends to be high since they also need to cover the legal fees for the cases they lose).

Is anyone actually listening to Stephen Bradshaw, the senior Post Office investigator being questioned?

The Fujitsu bod hasnt turned up again?

If this is the standard of the people making decisions then no wonder its such an almighty cluster****!

That seems to be a trend with them. Reading the writeups from last year and skimming the recordings does show some incredible incompetence.
I am not sure how the inquiries counsel hadnt ended up with an indented forehead from facepalming.

Came here to post that- feel sorry for his constituents!

That sh!tshow goes not come close to experiencing his venal stupidity first hand. His bone headed self interest is truly staggering. And he gives not two focks for any problems his constituents have unless it furthers him. Can’t wait to see the back of him.

S.Bradshaw – an example of why this has rumbled on for so long. A pathetic yes-man who questioned nothing put in front of him for 20 years and understood even less. I dread to thing how much tax money has been paid to keep him in a job and top up his sizeable pension.

Yeah, had another coffee now and thought about that for a minute… 🙂

I guess it’s just frustration at the lack of scrutiny that could be applied to POL investigations.

I think my concern is, if it’s happening at the PO how sure are we it’s not happening at the Benefits Agency, HMRC or any of the other government bodies with the power to prosecute.  They might not have horizon to systematically mean there is the same impetus or dodgy evidence but are benefits claimants getting badgered into admitting guilt for things they didn’t do (or perhaps weren’t really of sound mind enough to be responsible for) etc.  nobody trusts a benefits claimant so even easier to pursue?

It’s a weird one (to a non-lawyer at least) – part of me feels anyone should be able to bring a case against others if they so wish, and then for the courts to weigh up the evidence and decide.

they can, in a civil case.  “I believe you lost me £20K” please repay it or we go to court.  Lower burden of proof – you win you get my money (if I have any) and costs.  But a civil case can never result in someone being sent to prison (or other criminal sanctions).  In reality the costs of bring a prosecution as a one off against another citizen are so high that only the very richest could consider it, and if you win, likely to bankrupt most defendants so you need to be wealthy with an axe to grind to consider it.  That’s not a healthy thing to encourage.  If it’s in the public interest to prosecute then it should be the job of the public prosecutor.

HMRC did the opposite and loads of actual guilty people got off due to institutional failures (LCB debacle),

That’s one thing that shocked me, the 555 were awarded some £58m but £46m was apparently swallowed up by legal fees

I haven’t seen how the bill was calculated, but I saw a figure suggesting PO had spent £100M pursuing those cases….

now assuming you were a solicitor/ barrister what you have done the work for, on a no-win no-fee basis because the SPMs are all broke?  I think it was five or six different appeals of various different points of law.  No legal aid available for this, your only hope is to win and take a chunk of the winnings.    Of course the PO could have handed over all the documents quickly etc and probably saved them a chunk of those fees which would have been spent pursuing the PO for stuff they were sitting on.

In reality the costs of bring a prosecution as a one off against another citizen are so high that only the very richest could consider it, and if you win, likely to bankrupt most defendants so you need to be wealthy with an axe to grind to consider it.

The costs can be reclaimed from the state so you “just” need to be cover the upfront cost whether they win or lose so long as it isnt too obviously dodgy.
Which makes it even more problematic in my mind. Since it means both faster “justice” for those who can afford the upfront costs but with the bill in the end coming out of the general fund.
A proper two tier system.

Is anyone actually listening to Stephen Bradshaw, the senior Post Office investigator being questioned by the inquiry?

Julian Blake KC is ripping him apart with devastating ease. If it wasn’t so serious it would be entertaining.

He sounds like an absolute buffoon!

I think ‘Total piece of shite’ would be a better descriptive.

Just watched Stephen Bradshaw answering questions.

Wow! Other than covering his own arse, with a lot of difficulty, he seems totally unbothered by what he was part of. Even with the benefit of hindsight!

Bradshaw – a disgrace; incompetence personified.
Talk about trying to defend the indefensible.

I think my concern is, if it’s happening at the PO how sure are we it’s not happening at the Benefits Agency, HMRC or any of the other government bodies with the power to prosecute.

I think a quick look at the caseload would do nothing to put your mind at ease. Those who have no power or representation have always been easy pickings because they can be bullied into pleading guilty or making admissions that lead to a guilty verdict.

It’s like TV Licensing going after the most vulnerable to keep their conviction rates up. eg:

Torquay man, 62, prosecuted for not paying his TV licence.

– He has cancer
– He's a full-time carer for his wife & children
– He's on benefits
– He couldn't pay his bills as they were higher than normal

Decision to prosecute was 17 days after he was first caught. pic.twitter.com/mSDs3Rl2XO

— Tristan Kirk (@kirkkorner) November 28, 2023