Official described a post office manager’s threat of legal action as “saber rattling”
A senior official on the postal service’s board said post office managers were “rattling their swords” when they announced in 2015 that they were preparing to sue the state-run postal service over losses attributed to them at their branches.
Post office managers had been fighting against this for years after many of them had been punished and in some cases imprisoned because unexplained shortfalls had appeared in their branch accounts.
As Computer Weekly reported in November of that year, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) announced that it was preparing a lawsuit against the Post Office over claims against its Horizon computer system. The former post office managers were accused of accounting deficiencies that they claimed were due to the faulty computer system they used in their branches.
Meanwhile, Richard Callard, the government representative on the Post Office’s board, believed there would be no evidence that computer errors had caused the branch shortages, as post office managers claimed. He did not believe they had a case and that law firms would not support their claims once they went into detail.
During the public hearing into the Post Office Horizon scandal last week, it emerged that in response to the JFSA announcement, Callard had written an email to Post Office executives, including communications chief Mark Davies, saying: “But seriously, do you know how many law firms they’ve had? It would be good to take the line to ministers that this is another sabre-rattling exercise and that the law firms will back off once they have evidence.”
Callard was questioned about the language used in the email by lawyer Angela Patrick, who represented victims of the scandal at the inquiry: “Was this another frank conversation between colleagues, Mr Callard?”
Callard said: “No, in this case I actually say, ‘But seriously, do you know how many law firms the JFSA had? I will advise ministers and if I was a minister I would be worried about litigation. And if there had been attempts before that which had failed, I might look at the litigation that is now before me differently than if there had not been that. By ‘saber rattling’ I meant that the mediation process had ended by that point and essentially I think that in that sense the Post Office had withdrawn because the mediation process had ended.'”
Lack of curiosity
Based on the fictional civil servant from the BBC sitcom of the 1980s Yes, Prime MinisterHumphrey Appleby, Alan Bates, the man who presided over the 2018/19 trial, said: “(Callard’s appearance) was a masterpiece of Sir Humphreyism and will no doubt be compulsory public service viewing on the subject of concealment.”
Despite Callard’s confidence, the former post office managers were able to prove that flaws in the Horizon system were responsible for the accounting deficits in 2018/19 through a multi-million pound class action in the High Court. The trials also revealed the extent of the scandal that led to the launch of the current public inquiry and the overturning of the convictions of hundreds of wrongly convicted post office managers.
Callard, who was part of the Shareholder Executive (UK Government Investments) that owned the Post Office, was the government representative on the Post Office board from 2014 to 2018. During the hearing, he was questioned by Jason Beer, KC, about his dismissal of the post office manager’s claims and his planned legal action.
“I thought maybe it was another case that might not go anywhere because up until then no one had actually proven a causal link, a flaw in Horizon that caused a loss,” Callard said. “There were many investigations and every time there was an investigation it came out that there was no real problem, and there were investigations throughout my time there.”
Beer KC asked Callard if he now had “a whole bunch of information that puts things in a completely different light.” Callard agreed: “So obviously I wasn’t curious enough.”
Beer KC continued: “The words you use suggest that you were of the view that there would be no strong evidence in relation to the problems with the Horizon system, would you agree?” Callard said: “I think at that stage that was probably the case. At least that was very likely in my view.”
But just a year before Callard was appointed to the Post Office board, outside lawyer Simon Clarke had warned the Post Office that an expert witness the Post Office had appointed to prosecute post office managers had provided misleading evidence by failing to provide evidence that Horizon’s errors had led to unexplained accounting deficiencies.
Beer asked: “Was (Shareholder Executive) ever informed of Simon Clarke’s advice regarding the credibility of the Post Office’s key expert witness, Gareth Jenkins?” Callard said he first learned of Clarke’s advice when it was revealed during Court of Appeal hearings in 2021 when the wrongful convictions of post office managers were overturned.
When Callard was on the Post Office board, it was also known within the organisation that independent reports to courts had raised doubts about the reliability of Horizon and that in some cases the Post Office had failed to successfully prosecute post office managers using evidence from the system.
Beer asked Callard: “Were you ever told that the Post Office was in possession of expert reports arising from civil litigation it conducted in 2004 and 2006 which challenged the claim that Horizon was robust?” Callard replied in the negative. Beer continued: “Were you ever told about the previous acquittals of post office managers, all of whom had cited the poor operation of Horizon as part of their defence? Callard said he was never told this, but he would have expected to have been informed.
Activist Bates, who was knighted last month for his work for justice, said: “I think I only recognised 0.1% of the truth during the whole (Callard) session.”
Public service in focus
The evidence capped a stressful week for investigating officers.
Also last week, Tom Cooper, who replaced Callard as government representative on the Post Office board at the time of the Supreme Court proceedings, told the public hearing that he “felt like the only player on the field questioning the litigation strategy”.
He said all the Postal Service lawyers involved “the process was completely mismanaged” and there were “serious deficiencies in the Post Office’s processes and therefore in her case.” But Cooper never reported his concerns.
At an earlier hearing, Mark Russell, former CEO of UK Government Investments, told the coroners that the board was the only control body of the Post Office and that the government shareholder would have to rely on “luck” if the Post Office board missed something.
In his testimony to the public inquiry in April, JFSA chairman Bates pointed the finger at the officials.
“Many ministers have to make an effort, but I think the civil service is largely to blame in many cases and (for the reasons) why things didn’t progress at the time,” he said. “I’m sure (the civil service) and the Post Office steered ministers in the direction they wanted.”
The Post Office scandal was first uncovered in 2009 by Computer Weekly, which revealed the stories of seven post office managers and the problems they suffered because of accounting software. It is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history (see below a timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).
• Read also: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal •
• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office: The True Story •
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