Post Office scandal investigators accused of ‘Mafia-style’ bullying of subpostmasters

Post Office scandal investigators accused of ‘Mafia-style’ bullying of subpostmasters

Grinding quietly away for more than two years the Post Office inquiry chaired by a former high court judge now of course under scrutiny like never before today Steven Bradshaw the post office investigations manager at the time said lawyers from cartright King wrote his witness statement and forced

Him to submit it to past criminal trials and you didn’t think to yourself oh I produced a witness statement in criminal proceedings that um could cause somebody to go to prison um and I signed off the robustness of the Horizon system that that wasn’t something that you

Thought you should reflect on in your witnesses as I said you know this statement was given to me by cartri King and we were told to to put the statement through and how many times reflection yes when you look at it but as I say

It’s it’s some 11 years ago and a a number of statements have been produced since but you were at the post office in a significant role uh during the group litigation during the court of appeal proceedings uh throughout this inquiry and you didn’t think back and perhaps regret having submitted a witness

Statement such as this in criminal proceedings as as I say with Insight you know it’s regrettable that the statement went through like that as if it’s my words which is not correct he denied knowing fujitsu’s post office computer system was faulty would appear that through not being given any

Knowledge from the top downwards that if any bugs errors or defects was there is not being cascaded down from Fujitsu the post office board down to our level as as the investigation manager Mr Brad Shaw’s testimony a hard listen for Shazia sadik whom he investigated seeing

Him today he he still has no idea in my opinion he has no idea of what he’s done still very much different offensive quite arrogant to be fair Mr Bradshaw denied to the inquiry that he used offensive language when investigating postmasters he called me a on one

Occasion he he got that frustrated and angry that I was say no and standing my ground one postmaster accused the post office investigation including Mr Bradshaw of behaving like Mafia gangsters threatening bullying heed that run turn the radio off which many of us in the Justice the moment in the TV

Drama when the central lawyer in this Saga gets involved in terms of the drama they got it pretty much spot on yeah they did today at Free’s legal firm in leads James Hartley gave his first in-depth TV interview since that ITV Drama We asked first off if the post

Office has not just been negligent but malevolent what we are seeing coming out of the inquiry which rein enforces what um we saw when we were running the high court litigation suggests the answer to that is yes so the answer um I think will turn out to be yes some of the victims

Here describing the post office investigators as behaving like the mafia is that over the top I’d like to say it was however having heard the stories firsthand of hundreds of postmasters uh unfortunately that is a fair characterization in terms of Justice first off what does that mean

For Fujitsu what should Fujitsu be doing right now what I would say to Fujitsu for for what it’s worth is they have an opportunity now a window of opportunity to do the right thing not wait until the outcome of the public inquiry but from a financial perspective if they haven’t

Already opened discussions with government about how much Fujitsu would contribute to the overall taxpayer bill for this then open those conversations now and do the right thing Paul ven has returned her CBE is that enough most are saying it’s not most are saying there needs to be something what

Are you say much more significant um that is one area where we do need to await the investigations of the relevant authorities and the output from the inquiry when so Williams produces the report and it will be a very significant report there will be conclusions factual conclusions there will be

Recommendations and there will be the light sha on um who was to blame and who was going to slam the post office and the Senior Management they are it is inescapable and I think it would be it would have be absolutely bizarre if anything else was to happen so we can

Prejudge that I think fair to say in effect it it won’t happen it won’t happen the the the the output from the inquiry will be damning given what happened yesterday are you as a lawyer entirely comfortable with the idea that a bunch of politicians can suddenly set

Themselves up as being a court more Supreme than the Supreme Court and simply tell the Judiciary sorry you got it wrong yeah I really difficult dilemma the government had on on that I think they’ve done I think government has done the I thing it it um there is no perfect

Way of sorting this whole problem out and every step of the way everything that’s done there are pros and cons to it the lawyer James Hardley speaking to Alex Thompson earlier well earlier I spoke to Lord abbu the conservative peer and former MP I put it to him first that

It begs belief that a huge miscarriage of Justice like this could have happened and for so long it’s been going on for so long now with so many different people failing the sub postmasters failed by the courts which didn’t demand that the post office should provide proper disclosure of evidence failed by

The post office itself obviously failed by Fujitsu failed by the politicians ourselves because it if you watch the drama you see that I actually achieved nothing it was only Alan B getting 555 people together to take it to court and to get funding for that that achieved this incredible

Result so James Harley Alan bates’s lawyer who spoke to Alex Thompson earlier today says Fujitsu for instance should be paying millions of pounds right now into a fund that could be used later on that that would be one element of the justice that has not yet been achieved in all

This do you agree with him um I agree with him except that I think it be should be hundreds of millions of pounds um because Fujitsu was the company which was interfering in sub postmaster’s accounts not keeping a record of what it was doing denying that

It could do that and doing all of that while it knew that people were being prosecuted and sent to prison for altered accounts it’s uh is an awful shocking story shocking also because this isn’t about corporate negligence this is about malevolence isn’t it malevolence incentivized by bonuses absolutely right

Yes what the post office did was it installed a program that it knew was faulty and then prosecuted the sub postmasters and demanded money from the sub postmasters on the basis that the program was not faulty and that of itself seems to me to be a simple matter of perversion of the

Course of justice as well as probably theft fraud uh various computer misuse act uh offenses of all over the place and so yes malevolence is the right word maybe it should be stronger than that well given that it might be stronger than that or do you say should be

Stronger than that what do justice in all this look like I mean Justice is the one thing that these poor people haven’t seen yet yes Justice Means a number of things it means overturning these convictions that should never have taken place it means redress for those victims that uh had

Money their money taken away from them and their lives ruined and their marriages broken up and their houses repossessed and bankrupted and some of them took their own lives um it means holding to account the people people who are responsible for this which includes obviously the post office management post office

Investigators uh maybe the civil servants who were overseeing in theory what the post office was doing maybe even the ministers but also Fujitsu which was doing these appalling things are you talking about criminal charges then against those responsible certain certainly criminal charges I I I can’t say against whom or for precisely what

Crimes that’s matter for the prosecuting authorities but it would be awful if there weren’t some form of prosecution campaign beginning now Lord Aban thank you very much indeed thank you and Fujitsu say that they are committed to providing the fullest and most transparent information so that key lessons are learned for the

Future now sticking with the subject lawyers have confirmed to this program tonight the two former sub postmasters in Scotland have had their convictions overturned ahead of scheduled Court appearances to try and clear their names up to a 100 people there could have been wrongly accused our Scotland correspondent Katherine Samson has MN

She joins us now from Glasgow Katherine uh yes Matt this news today doubles number of people in Scotland whose convictions have been overturned from two to four the two individuals affected today are Colin Smith he was convicted of bezman and Don fman in 2018 and Judith Smith not related who is

Convicted of fraud in cker in the Scottish borders all the way back in 2009 uh Judith who managed to get hold of tonight she was still taking all in very excited and she says she is now celebrating with her family now both these individuals were actually due at a

Court hearing in Edinburgh tomorrow before finding out today their convictions had been quashed but that Court hearing is still going to be going ahead because others are trying to clear their names including RAB Thompson who we spoke to on the program last night and I gather the whole issue also

Dominated first Minister’s questions in the Scottish Parliament how did that turn out yeah well you remember yesterday the first Minister Hamza yusf pledged that all victims in Scotland would have their convictions overturned after that Announcement by the Prime Minister which only applied to England in Wales today

Though we are really no clear on exactly how this complicated process is going to be achieved is it going to be a situation where something needs to change to allow the UK law to apply here are they going to come up with something else remember in Scotland it was the

Crown office not the post office that prosecuted people after pressure from opposition parties in the chamber today the head of that Crown office the Lord Advocate has agreed to come to the Scottish Parliament and make a statement on this scandal at the earliest opportunity something we expect might happen next week

A former Post Office investigator has told the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal that he and his colleagues did not “behave like mafia gangsters”.

Stephen Bradshaw admitted he had been aware of problems with the IT software, but claimed he was “not technically minded” and was just “a liaison”.

Warning: This report contains some offensive language