How Brian Altman KC saw his role

Part two of the series on Mr Altman's evidence to the Inquiry

Brian Altman took the Post Office job shortly after ceasing to be first Treasury Counsel. He was, and I daresay remains, a top prosecutor with great experience of complex and sensitive cases. Jason Beer’s first line of examination was what the Post Office thought they were buying when they instructed him.

Altman was chosen from a line up of very experienced QCs (as was). Top dogs, one might say. What seemed to distinguish him in the eyes of the Post Offic staff were his connections and perhaps his grasp of the politics of the situation.

Altman is asked about this and says he, “wasn’t conscious” that the Post Office wished to trade on his former status, “but I would say I suppose it didn’t surprise me.” Similarly, someone, the suggestion from the evidence appears to be it may be Mr Altman’s clerk, says he had, as a result of his history, the ear of the DPP and the Attorney General.

People in Post Office are persuaded that his connections “sound useful”. Altman denies but then accepts they would see a political attraction in having him as counsel. He robustly denies ever using any such connections (indeed there is no suggestion that I have seen that he did). He accepts he may have conveyed an impression, in his initial meeting with the Post Office, that he was alive to the political dimensions. When asked to explain what this political dimensions means, he says:

Well, again, speculating, because I can't remember this, it would inevitably be the fact that Post Office was, in effect, a government-owned organisation and, clearly, the balloon was going up in respect of what had happened during the course of past convictions.

He is also seen to emphasise his career history in one of his advices in a way he would not normally do. He can’t remember why he does this, but concedes it was unusual for him, and probably done for the benefit of the Post Office Board (his witness statement seems to make plain he never met them or the relevant subcommittee).

Mr Altman is asked whether he was aware that the Post Office would be relying on his name. Rodric Williams refers to Brian Altman knowing that they may be “name checking” him when fending off press enquiries from Nick Wallis. Altman says he has no recollection of that. His resistance on the point is limited though. He accepts the Post Office came to rely on his work to give Cartwright King’s reviews credibility. He accepts he was privy to correspondence where Post Office do this with the CCRC. And he seems to accept he might have been aware of this from the outset of his instructions or was alive to it at the time.

Beer then seeks this concession:

Q. So, in that sense, the Post Office was treating your work as falling between two stalls; it was private work enjoying privilege but the existence of which was relied on for benefits when deployed outside the organisation?

A. Yeah, I suppose you could say that.

Q. So they kept your advice private but used your name to, would you agree, bolster the integrity of what they were doing?

A. That's a possible inference.

The subject then turns to how he saw this relationship qua lawyer. He is offered a choice between seeing it as either “a prosecutor, briefed by a prosecuting authority, or as a member of the independent Bar, with considerable prosecution experience, advising a commercial entity?”

He says, “Principally the latter but not forgetting the former.”

But he also takes time to emphasise that, “even a private prosecutor has to act as a minister of justice and act with fairness and I made that clear, I hope, pretty early on.” His ethical standards would have been the same, he agrees , as if he were advising the CPS.”

He remembers advising the Post Office early on that it had to act with fairness.

Interestingly the Post Office clearly thought about on which of these bases they should instruct him, but Altman says he only saw it as the latter. If it had been an independent investigation he would have done things quite differently: more resources, a proper investigation, procedural protections for those who might criticise, and so on.

“The whole thing – – the whole approach would have been entirely different, I would have kept them at arms length and I think it would have taken a substantial period of time longer than it actually did”

One further matter of note, it seems to be suggested that he may not have done much of this kind of independent assurance work or investigatory work at this point in his career.

The critical points are: he does not see it as an independent investigation, he sees it as normal advice; it nevertheless had a mixed public-private nature; it was probably understood he was to be relied on to reassure audiences within and beyond the Post Office and, as we will see some parts of it at least were not ultimately privleged.

And in part as a result, it might be said, the balloon that was rising in 2013, was almost tugged back to earth.