A Post Office investigator described as having a “heavy footprint” in the Horizon IT scandal will give evidence today at the inquiry’s first hearing of the year.
Stephen Bradshaw was involved in the criminal investigation of nine sub-postmasters, including Lisa Brennan, a former counter clerk at a post office in Huyton, near Liverpool, who was falsely accused of stealing £3,000 in 2003.
His evidence will form part of phase four of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, which began in July last year and is looking at the action that was taken against sub-postmasters, including audits, investigations and criminal proceedings.
Jason Beer KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, previously described Mr Bradshaw as having a “heavy footprint” in the scandal. Mr Bradshaw was set to answer questions in November but disclosure failings from the Post Office meant the hearing was delayed until Thursday.
The statutory inquiry, which began in 2021 and is chaired by retired judge Sir Wyn Williams, has independently looked at the human impact of the scandal, the Horizon system roll-out and the operating of the system, and is now probing the action taken against sub-postmasters.
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Hundreds wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal could have their names cleared this year, after emergency laws were announced to "swiftly exonerate and compensate victims".
Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake said they had been victims of a "brutal and arbitrary exercise of power".
He added that £1bn had been budgeted for compensation payments.
There were more than 900 convictions linked to the scandal over 16 years, with only 93 so far being overturned.
Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted hundreds of sub-postmasters and mistresses after a faulty computer system called Horizon made it look like money was missing.
Former sub-postmaster Alan Bates - who inspired the recent ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office - told the BBC the announcement of the new law was "another positive step forward".
However, he said "the devil is in the detail, and we've yet to see that".
Ahead of the public inquiry into the affair resuming on Thursday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons on Wednesday that those previously convicted in England and Wales would be cleared of wrongdoing and compensated under a new law.
The Scottish government also announced similar plans for those convicted in Scotland, which has a separate legal system.
Downing Street said its aim was to complete the process of overturning the convictions of those affected by the end of 2024.
The prime minister's spokesman said the government intends to "introduce the legislation within weeks" and is "confident it will be well-supported".
Speaking in the Commons after the prime minister, Mr Hollinrake said evidence that emerged from the ongoing public inquiry into the scandal suggested the Post Office acted with "incompetence and malevolence".
He described the decision to overturn the convictions through an Act of Parliament as "unprecedented" and said it had not been taken lightly, given its potential ramifications on the legal system.
Mr Hollinrake said the move applying to England and Wales "raises important constitutional issues" around the independence of the courts, which are normally the authority that would overturn a conviction.
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The minister also accepted the new law would risk seeing people who were genuinely guilty of a crime pardoned - though the government estimates that to be a very small proportion of the total number affected.
Asked by the BBC's PM programme why it had taken a TV drama to inspire action on a problem known about for over a decade, Mr Hollinrake said the show released this year had moved the public as well as people in government.
"We are people ourselves of course. We watch TV ourselves and see this stuff, and we and other people within government realise this is a situation we've got to resolve," he said.
While the full detail of the law has not been published, Downing Street said it would amount to a blanket overturning of convictions tied to the faulty Horizon IT system.
Mr Hollinrake told the Commons former sub-postmasters and postmistresses would not be eligible for compensation until they had signed a declaration that they had not committed any crime.
He said by signing the document, they will become eligible for the compensation payment of £600,000 already available to people who have had their names cleared via the courts.
The declaration is designed to prevent "guilty people walking away with hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money", he said, adding: "Anyone falsely signing this will be subject for prosecution for fraud."
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He was later asked by BBC Newsnight whether the compensation payments would be paid for by the taxpayer or Fujitsu, the tech company that developed the Horizon system.
"I very much hope it is a combination of both," he said, adding that it would be "only right" for Fujitsu to contribute if the public inquiry finds that the company shares responsibility for the scandal.
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk echoed the comments as he called for Fujitsu to "face the consequences" if found to be at fault, on ITV's Peston show.
Fujitsu has been awarded more than £6.5bn in public contracts since 2013, according to procurement analysts Tussell.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4's World Tonight, Labour MP Kevan Jones, a member of the independent Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, said the decision to exonerate and compensate victims en masse would be "controversial" but that he believed it was the "only way forward".
"You've got a situation where people... didn't come forward to have their convictions overturned because they would not be able to face a court of law. Likewise, we've got a situation where evidence has been destroyed," he said.
"So how you would do an appeal for some of these individuals? It would be very difficult."
The government has also confirmed it will:
introduce a one-off £75,000 payment ofr the 555 ex-postmasters whose group court case, led by Alan Bates, helped to expose the injustice
review whether people whose convictions were upheld after an appeal can also be overturned by the new law
work with administrations in Scotland and Northern Ireland to ensure sub-postmasters in those nations can also be cleared
The lawyer who represented the 555 in their first legal action against the Post Office, James Hartley, said the compensation announcement was "a sensible step forward" and would give those affected the option to decide "whether or not to accept that payment as fair compensation".
The government is keenly aware that by moving to unpick decisions made by independent judges, it risks setting a constitutional convention which could impact the independence of the courts.
Lord Ken MacDonald, director of Crown Prosecution Service from 2003 to 2008, said the move amounted to "parliament seizing from the courts and from the judges, the right to say who is guilty and who is not guilty".
He continued: "I think the government is going for a rather grand gesture here and I hope it doesn't come back to bite us."
Wednesday's announcement comes after a fortnight in which a scandal that had played out largely in the wings was thrust centre stage by the ITV drama series.
Lee Castleton, a former sub-postmaster who was left bankrupt after a two-year legal battle with the Post Office, was portrayed in the drama.
Mr Castleton said it cost him £321,000 to go through the legal process with the Post Office and his family was "ostracised" in their village in Yorkshire.
"People abused us in the street for being thieves and my children were bullied," he said.
He told the BBC the compensation payment announced by the government was "much appreciated" but that he "would just like to get to the end of this".
Noel Thomas, 77, from Anglesey in Wales, said he was not convinced by Mr Sunak's plan. Mr Thomas was jailed for false accounting in 2006 after his books fell short by £48,000.
He said he would have to "wait to see the small print", and added he had been "promised a hell of a lot" so far only for nothing to come of it.
ITV
Around 700 of the more than 900 prosecutions resulting from the scandal were led by the Post Office, with others carried out by other bodies, including the Crown Prosecution Service.
Some sub-postmasters caught up in the scandal have died or taken their own lives in the intervening years.
A public inquiry into the affair which was launched in 2021 is set to resume on Thursday. The Post Office said it aims to get to "the truth of what went wrong".
A spokesperson for Fujitsu said the company recognises the "devastating impact on postmasters' lives and that of their families" and has "apologised for its role in their suffering".
A Met Office map shows when a snow bomb is forecast to hit Greater Manchester next week - ahead of what could be the 'worst snowstorm in 14 years'.
According to the UK precipitation map, a huge cloud of snow is set to move over our region on Monday evening (January 15) and into the early hours of Tuesday as as an 'Arctic influence' descends over the country. Temperatures are set to plummet to freezing, though it will feel more like -3C.
Freezing temperatures are then forecast into Tuesday morning with the mercury not expected to rise over 3C until the middle of next of week. James Madden, an Exacta weather forecaster, has predicted the snow risk in the UK next week is greater than any year since 2010.
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He told GB News: "Over the next few weeks, there will be a high chance of snow with the risk higher than the same period over the past few years or indeed, since the big freeze of 2010. It is likely we are about to start seeing images of vast regions of the nation covered in snow during a cold spell which is likely to hold out for an extended period.
"As well as the risk of snow, we will see harsh overnight frosts and the coldest temperatures dipping as low as -15C in the coldest parts of the country over the coming week."
Met Office deputy chief forecaster Tony Wardle said: "There is the potential for some disruptive snow through the middle to latter part of next week as warmer Atlantic air attempts to push in from the southwest. As this occurs, some substantial snow could fall in some places, but the details of that are uncertain at the moment."
The Met Office's long range forecast, from Monday January 15 to Wednesday, January 24, says: "Often cloudy across clearing central and southern areas at first. Thereafter, turning colder from the North, with brisk northerly winds likely developing widely across of the UK, bringing a risk of snow showers, most frequent across the north.
"Temperatures remaining cold, and a marked wind chill especially in the north. There is risk of unsettled weather pushing in from the south through this period, which could lead to a band of snow and sleet where it meets the colder air across the country.
"Confidence is low with regards the timing of the arrival of any such disturbance, but there is an increasing risk of something potentially disruptive at some point in this period. Widespread frosts continue to be a feature by night, with a risk of ice in places."
Before the freezing cold snap takes hold over the UK, the next few days are set to be slightly warmer with more settled and cloudy conditions forecast in Greater Manchester. A UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) amber cold health alert remains in place for our region until noon on Friday.
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Fujitsu should repay the “fortune” spent on the Post Office scandal if it is found culpable, the justice secretary has suggested, as pressure increases on the firm behind the faulty Horizon software.
If the statutory inquiry into the saga, which resumes on Thursday, finds the “scale of the incompetence is as we might imagine”, ministers would want to “secure proper recompense on behalf of the taxpayer”, Alex Chalk said.
Hundreds of Post Office branch managers were convicted of swindling money on the basis of evidence from the technology giant’s flawed Horizon accounting system.
Rishi Sunak announced on Wednesday that hundreds of post office operators in England and Wales could have their names cleared by the end of the year under blanket legislation to be introduced within weeks.
Those whose convictions are quashed are eligible for a £600,000 compensation payment, or potentially more if they go through a process of having their claim individually assessed.
While the proposals were widely welcomed, the prime minister faces increasing calls to go further and bar Fujitsu from securing government contracts and pursue the firm for payments.
Chalk said the government would wait for the conclusions of the inquiry chaired by the retired judge Sir Wyn Williams before it decides what action to take against the company.
“But bluntly, if the scale of the incompetence is as we might imagine, then I simply would want to secure proper recompense on behalf of the taxpayer,” the cabinet minister told ITV’s Peston.
“It’s absolutely right that there should be justice across the piece, yes for the sub-postmasters, which we’re talking about today, but frankly also for the taxpayer. This has cost and will cost a fortune.”
If Fujitsu is found to be at fault, it should face the consequences, Chalk added, in a sign ministers could launch legal action against the Japanese company.
The firm has been awarded government contracts worth billions in recent years and its continued involvement in important IT schemes has raised concerns at Westminster.
Ministers tried to prevent Fujitsu getting more official work but this proved “impossible” despite its “woeful” performance, a Tory peer revealed on Wednesday.
Lord Maude of Horsham, who served as Cabinet Office minister under David Cameron, said procurement rules thwarted ministers’ efforts. He said if Fujitsu had “any sense of honour” it would swiftly make a significant payment towards the compensation of wrongly convicted post office operators.
The long-running battle for justice accelerated dramatically after ITV broadcast the drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office this month, which highlighted the scandal.
The public inquiry, whose first hearing of the year on Thursday will feature the Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw, is likely to keep the scandal in the headlines.
Bradshaw has been described as having a “heavy footprint” in the scandal after being involved in the criminal investigation of nine post office operators.
MPs were told on Wednesday that previous evidence from the inquiry had pointed to “not only incompetence but malevolence” in the way the Post Office acted against them.
Alan Bates, the campaigning former post office operator on whom the ITV series centred, said it was “about time” for the move to exonerate Post Office staff.
But asked if he would be celebrating the victory, the 69-year-old told the Times “you must be joking” as he and many others are yet to receive final compensation.
Bates told the Mirror: “The overturning of convictions is very good news but the priority remains full financial redress to everyone impacted. £75,000 is an alternative to having your case independently assessed, so for the smaller cases, it will probably suffice. But for many cases, it is not enough.”
The scale of the scandal has prompted the government to adopt the unconventional approach of introducing new legislation.
Ministers acknowledged the plan could result in some post office operators who did commit crimes being wrongly cleared, but said the process was the most effective way of dealing with the vast majority who were victims of a miscarriage of justice.
Chalk has been discussing the situation with senior judges because of the constitutional concern about parliament being seen to interfere with the legal system.
Sunak announced a £75,000 offer for post office operators involved in a group legal action against the company – with ministers setting aside up to £1bn for compensation.
The Horizon software started to be rolled out in Post Office branches across the UK in 1999 and, over the subsequent years, a series of workers were prosecuted over missing funds.
In 2019, the high court ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.
Victims of the Post Office scandal from Greater Manchester have powerfully spoken out to reveal how false charges wrecked their lives.
They spoke defiantly in unison on breakfast television today as the Government faced increasing calls to immediately compensate all those forced to pay back money they didn't steal - and to quash all wrongful convictions.
The postal services minister, Kevin Hollinrake, said the use of emergency legislation to correct the decades-old wrong wasn't being ruled out, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was expected to address the issue at Prime Minister's Questions in Parliament later on Wednesday.
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Some 130 people affected by the Horizon scandal have come forward since a new TV programme dramatising the miscarriage of justice aired. Ministers are under pressure to address the devastating hurt suffered by hundreds of subpostmasters, as public anger over the Horizon IT scandal saw former Post Office boss Paula Vennells hand back her CBE.
The spotlight has also turned on IT giant Fujitsu, after its faulty accounting software Horizon helped lead to the conviction of more than 700 Post Office branch managers and subpostmasters.
'Recluse': Mohammed Rasul (Image: BBC)
One wrongly convicted postmaster said he became a virtual 'recluse' after being shunned by his community following his wrongful conviction when a £12,000 shortfall in his Post Office's accounts was discovered.
Mohammed Rasul, from Salford, told BBC Breakfast that he worked for the Post Office for 27 years. He said: "I was convicted of false accounting and had to wear a tag for three months. I had a suspended sentence for 12 months. I have carried the shame ever since - I refuse to carry it any longer."
Mr Rasul went on to be cleared when his conviction was overturned in 2021, but has said that the electronic tag he had to wear meant he missed seeing his father before he died because he couldn't leave his home due to a curfew.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, he said: "I had quite a full social life. People came to my house regularly, on a weekly basis, for various gatherings. And when this happened I had to cancel all these engagements. I was totally recluse.
"Even may parents didn't know about it. Although I knew I hadn't done it, it was just the stigma attached. You had to explain what had happened if anyone asked. I just couldn't explain that something had happened that was totally out of my control.
"My shortfall was £12,000 which I paid out of my savings, what little I had, and borrowed money. If I hadn't paid that money I would have gone to prison."
Former postmaster Scott Darlington ran Alderley Edge Post Office in Cheshire for four years from 2005. "I was suspended in 2009 and convicted in 2010," he said. "I couldn't get a job for three and a half years after that. I couldn't afford to pay for my daughter's school uniform. I suffered awful stigma, embarrassment and financial distress ever since.
Scott Darlington (Image: BBC)
"I am glad that things are coming to a head and we are able to speak about it now." Mr Darlington had his name cleared by Court of Appeal judges in 2021. He said: "I knew I hadn't done anything - it has taken all of these years to get to this point now."
The convictions of 93 people have been overturned, with around 700 more going through the process.
Solicitor Neil Hudgell said the extent of the 'victim pool' wasn't yet known and more people were coming forward in the wake of the ITV documentary Mr Bates vs The Post Office. He said people had 'lived in the shadows', but were now 'finding courage' to speak out.
Mr Hudgell said: "We have the convicted, the non-convicted, but there are equally other victims as well that aren't compensated.
"We have got wives that have miscarried children because of stress, we have got relatives that have killed themselves because they have not been able to cope, we've got children spat on in school with behavioural issues. The whole scandal cuts across thousands of thousands of people." He went on to suggest the process of reviewing cases could be taken away from the Post Office.
Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake (Image: PA)
Postal services minister Mr Hollinrake said an announcement on the Horizon scandal could “possibly” be made on Wednesday.
“Possibly, I can’t speculate on that because there are still some issues we’ve got to resolve,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He said since the ITV programme dramatising the scandal some people had come forward “directly to (him)”.
“The key thing is finding a mechanism so we can rapidly overturn convictions,” he said.
Mr Hollinrake said there has always been a “sense of urgency” over redress for victims of the Horizon scandal but stressed the “complexities” surrounding full and final settlements.
Asked by Times Radio whether a Government announcement was likely to be made on Wednesday about the issue, he said: “There has always been a sense of urgency and it has been my number one priority since being appointed Post Office minister in October 2022, also a big priority for me as a backbencher.” He added: “There are some complexities around (making full and final payments), not least the ones you described because of the 980 postmasters that were convicted. So far 93 have managed to get their convictions overturned.
“So there’s a problem there both in terms of the overturning of convictions when people do come forward, but also lots of people just don’t want to come forward or are not coming forward.”
He said he thought part of this may be down to an understandable “nervousness” and a reluctance to deal with the Post Office again.
Ms Griffith said the honours system was "broken" when a former Post Office boss had been awarded a CBE.
Paula Vennells, who served as CEO between 2012 and 2019, received the honour for services to the Post Office and to charity in the 2019 New Year's Honours - despite ongoing legal action against Post Office having been launched by 555 sub-postmasters in 2017.
Ms Griffith said not stripping Ms Vennells of her CBE was "insulting and pays a massive disservice to sub-postmasters and mistresses whose lives have been destroyed".
But she added Ms Vennells' decision to hand the award back did not detract from her own message that the honours system was broken.
"It's a serious thing to do, but I have been questioning the honours system for quite some time now," she said.
"I've just had a very uncomfortable feeling.
"It just became clear to me that I needed to send it back because owning it somehow feels very hollow now."
She said there were many people who "thoroughly and richly deserve these awards" but the system was "devalued" by others.
"The fact is the honours is broken and needs a complete overhaul by No 10 and onwards to the monarch who rubber stamps what happens," she said.
"I completely respect people have been given awards for the wonderful work they do [but] this is a personal decision."
Ms Griffith posted the medal back along with a separate letter to King Charles III.
"There are these sub-posters all around the country whose lives are completely and utterly broken," she said.
"I'm a tiny voice in all of this but I just wanted to stand in solidarity with these people who I can't even begin to comprehend what they've been through."
Plans to clear the names of hundreds of post office operators wrongly convicted in the Horizon IT scandal will be announced “imminently”, a government minister has said.
The postal services minister, Kevin Hollinrake, said ministers were “definitely not ruling out” emergency legislation to quash all the convictions that arose from the Horizon scandal.
Rishi Sunak could seize the opportunity and use the first prime minister’s questions of the year to set out his plan for how the government will exonerate hundreds of post office operators who were accused of swindling money as a result of the flawed computer system.
Hollinrake said an announcement on the scandal could “possibly” be made today, telling the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “I can’t speculate on that because there are still some issues we’ve got to resolve,” but he had said earlier that a plan was “imminent” as the government believed it had a solution.
“We’re very, very close,” he said, refusing to “speculate” as to whether an announcement would come as soon as Wednesday afternoon.
The minister claimed the government had always been operating with a “sense of urgency” over compensation for victims of the Horizon scandal before the ITV show dramatising the scandal had aired.
He admitted that since the drama had been broadcast at least 130 people affected by the Horizon scandal had come forward directly to him or via solicitors.
When asked if there was evidence that the government had been working to quash convictions before the ITV drama, Hollinrake said: “It’s not something we’d put in public, the kind of deliberations we have in government about different options, and clearly this is not an option where the postal affairs minister can make a decision on his own.”
He added that if legislation was brought forward to overturn convictions “en bloc” it could be seen to be “interfering with the independent courts process”.
Bob Neill, the Conservative chair of the Commons justice committee, said on Tuesday that if the government were to publish a bill to quash all the Post Office convictions, the justice secretary should check with senior judges to ensure they agreed that the normal means for speeding up and grouping appeals could not deliver justice within an “acceptable timeframe”.
Hollinrake noted on Wednesday that 980 people had been convicted after a fault in the Fujitsu-made IT system.
David Jones, a Tory former cabinet minister, called on ministers to review their decision to continue awarding contracts to the company. “I have no idea why the government is continuing to give Fujitsu contracts – very, very big contracts,” he said. “I can’t understand why the government wants to continue to deal with them.”
Paula Vennells, who was chief executive of the Post Office during the crisis, said on Tuesday she would return her CBE over the scandal.
Vennells is just one of the high-profile figures who have been caught up in the scandal since the TV drama first aired on 1 January. The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, and other former postal affairs ministers have come under scrutiny and, increasingly, senior figures at the technology company Fujitsu, which has been called to testify next week in front of the Commons business committee.
Tories were attacking Davey over the Horizon scandal because of the “advances he is making in the blue wall”, his party’s leader in Scotland said.
Davey served as postal affairs minister while in the coalition government between 2010 and 2012 and has been accused of having “fobbed off” post office operators affected by the Horizon scandal.
The Scottish Lib Dem leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, said Davey should not stand down, despite increasing pressure from politicians and some of those affected by the scandal.
