No More Drama?

2024 has been quite the year on Post Office fronts...

I am not going to review the year or any of that jazz, but it did feel appropriate to say something about the ‘end’ of the Post Office Inquiry.

Our own work with sub-postmasters and sub-mistresses (SPMs), which we will be publishing more of soon, suggests how important the Inquiry has been in starting to get explanations and justice for them. It book-ended a year that began with the ITV drama. It is almost beyond comprehending how profoundly that seems to have impacted the national conversation. For once a phrase that feels rightly used: in taxis, schools, pubs, theatres, meetings, conferences, podcasts, TV, radio, newspapers. You name it the story of the Post Office’s corporate vandalism has filled it. And again, I believe that has been a boon to so many of the sub-postmasters, who do, can (or should) feel able to hold their heads high in the communities rightly outraged on their behalf.

Many too bear scars that do not bear imagining and remain hidden from view.

Our own work has been exploring this (our latest piece on family members is here, Working Paper 8). And the last two days were also a reminder that questions, buck-passing (or non-finger-pointy finger-pointing as I now like to think of it), and excuse making persists.

I have no doubt that this continues to cause SPMs real and enduring pain.

Ultimately there is much further to go for real accountability and anything approaching closure, with all eyes now on Sir Wyn and his team, the regulators, and the Metropolitan Police. Sadly, there will not be no more drama; it will roll on for several years yet.

The need for full and fair compensation for all those affected remains a running sore as all of us on the Horizon Compensation Board know very well indeed, but of course we cannot really grasp what it’s like to be waiting, with such uncertainty, and often in poor health, after so many years.

We are also very mindful of the systemic problems that drive this and want to try and avoid other victims of similar scandals going through such over-adversarial and defensively-lawyered processes in the future.

I am resisting the urge to indulge in a full blown analysis of the submissions. You had to feel for all the legal teams given, for understandable reason, 100 pages and 1 hour (usually) to make their submissions.

There was of course masterful work, trenchant analysis and, I am told because sadly I could not attend, lots of tears afterwards from the gallery that clapped Sir Wyn out.

I cannot resist one tiny highlight. The last thing I noticed in the submissions before I decided to down tools and put pen to paper. It happens to come from the DBT written submissions.

The part played by lawyers is a recurring theme running through this scandal. It is apparent now that there was a sustained failure by Post Office lawyers to disclose exculpatory evidence to individuals that they were prosecuting or had prosecuted and that there was a failure to inform their expert witness of their duty to the court. It is also clear that the Post Office's assertion of legal professional privilege and confidentiality was regularly used as a mechanism for the restricting of the flow of information and avoiding external scrutiny. Further, it is clear that the Post Office was on occasion given strikingly poor quality advice by external lawyers.* This is something that could not have been anticipated by anyone and is shocking in itself.

* marks footnote 156 (impeccably placed after the punctuation and not before) and refers to Lord Grabiner’s advice to the Board about the “duty” to recuse Peter Fraser. It is interesting that they chose that example to make the point that could have been made about so many other incidents (and was by them and others).

Perhaps it was an accident.

Or perhaps it’s pure gold.