The former sub-postmasters wrongly pursued and convicted for crimes they did not commit are – sadly – no stranger to legalese.

But even for those dragged through courtrooms so often in the past 20 years, the jargon being used in the Post Office Inquiry must be bamboozling.

As an example, this week’s hearing featured extensive debate about whose idea it had been to apply item-level deduplication to the disclosure process for supplying documents to the inquiry.

Herbert Smith Freehills partner Gregg Rowan explained that the firm’s cohort of legal staff sifting through the documents had applied a ‘multifactorial assessment’, prompting bemused looks from the public gallery, where several of those wrongly convicted dutifully attend each day.

But perhaps the top honour for impenetrable language should go to the Post Office’s inquiry director Diane Wills. When asked to describe how the Post Office has improved its disclosure record, Wills said the organisation had been on a ‘trajectory of understanding’.

After years of injustice, is it too much to ask that the victims of this scandal be spoken to in plain English?

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