Lawyers hauled before the Post Office Inquiry have been lambasted as part of victims’ summing up of the handling of Horizon fraud prosecutions.
In the latest phase of the public inquiry, representatives of sub-postmasters took turns to criticise the conduct of external and in-house lawyers who worked on their convictions.
Sam Stein KC, instructed by Howe & Co representing more than 200 sub-postmasters, said the evidence had ‘pulled back the curtain on the decades of the Great Post Office Cook-Up and Cover-Up’.He said there had been an ‘appalling lack of professionalism’ among lawyers and a refusal to investigate the Horizon system because of what it would reveal.
Stein referred to Mandy Talbot, an in-house lawyer, as the ‘Post Office’s very own ”evil robot”, saying that she was supposed to be responsible for civil actions but ‘deliberately inserted herself in the wider dealings with Horizon cases’.
Stein added: ‘[Talbot] was aware that sub-postmasters were making allegations [about Horizon] since 2001 but chose to disregard expert evidence to the effect that the system was not robust’.
Catriona Watt, of Anderson Strathern LLP representing the National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP), said the evidence to the inquiry about prosecutions had been ‘nothing short of extraordinary’.
Watt said: ‘The NFSP has been shocked by the displays of incompetence by some of those giving evidence to the inquiry. In particular, the evidence of [retail line manager] Elaine Cottam and [in-house solicitor] Jarnail Singh call into question the Post Office’s and their lawyers’ understanding of basic concepts, such as how to answer questions in a witness statement and whether information that is not written down is disclosable.’
She suggested that, despite being aware that expert evidence had been discredited, Singh had provided a quote to the Post Office PR team that ‘he knew must be untrue’ to defend the Horizon system.
‘[Singh] seemed equally unapologetic for his part in his role as head of criminal law, or whatever the title may have been: Mr Singh seemed not to be able to remember,’ said Watt. ‘Instead, he compared himself as aggrieved, in the same way as victims of Horizon were, because he was in a position to do something and he didn’t. His evidence and that of Elaine Cottam was shocking in its incoherence and, whether deliberate or not, adds to the obfuscation created by so much of the witness evidence.’
Tim Moloney KC, instructed by Hudgell Solicitors, said the inquiry had been shown that lawyers working for the Post Office were ‘underqualified, undertrained and ill supervised’.
‘Jarnail Singh ascended to head of criminal law, seemingly because he was the only one left, whilst simultaneously practising in a completely different area of law in his spare time,’ said Moloney. ‘The internal and external lawyers, acting as prosecutors at times, appeared to put the interests of the business before their professional obligations and failed to take obvious steps to meet the requirements of fairness, justice and proper criminal procedure.’
Meanwhile, the inquiry is set to hear from a string of lawyers in its next phase, which is dedicated to examining issues around governance, redress and how the Post Office reacted to the scandal when it emerged in the public spotlight.
The list of witnesses required to give evidence includes former and current general counsel Susan Crichton, Chris Aujard and Ben Foat, Womble Bond Dickinson partner Tom Beezer and Post Office in-house solicitor Hugh Flemington. Oral evidence will begin again from the week beginning 9 April.
