To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

[5foot5]

There is already a thread about this on the Telly Addicts forum here

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4970440-mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-mon-to-thur-itv-9pm-tv-pace-no-spoilers

However this seems like such an important subject that I thought I would draw attention to it on AIBU.

The first episode aired tonight but the whole series is available on itvx.

Most of you will no doubt have heard about the Horizon scandal, but whether you have or you haven't this program is compelling. It will probably make you furious but it deserves as wide an audience as possible.,

I do think that the SRA will need to take a very good look at all the lawyers involved on the Post Office side at the earliest possible opportunity. But also someone needs to look at the way the PO Legal Department was set up. In a well-run company, the Head of the Legal Department is very senior and may be a board member, and there's an understanding that the others have to listen to and follow their advice even if at first sight it's against the interests of the company. There should never be a question of solicitors feeling afraid to advise their employers fully out of fear for their jobs, or feeling that they've got to help them cover things up when it's directly against professional ethics.

Just started listening to today's evidence. It began looking at the Post Office policy of shredding documents they wanted to make not to exist. Rodric Williams is arguing that this issue is not very connected to the issue of the Post Office using an expert witness (well, someone they presented to the court as an expert witness who wasn't), who withheld important information in the evidence that he gave to the court.

The way he's arguing, he's suggesting that withholding information in giving evidence to a court is unrelated to not providing information in the form of documents to a court because you've destroyed them. What is he trying to do? He is destroying any credibility he might have had remaining from yesterday.

That's counsel for the Inquiry done with Rodric Williams. Next is the counsel for the core participants really going for him.

He is not coming across very well is he!

No he's not. It's a remarkably awful performance as a witness. His main problem is that he was in the thick of it and the documents are damning and he can't claim not to have been involved or that he couldn't have been expected to understand the significance of what he was dealing with. What makes it worse is that he's still employed by the Post Office in a senior role, and I have doubts whether he'd get a similar role elsewhere, and so is stupidly fighting this to protect him and his employer.

Can't devote chunks of time to it today, but you're making it sound like a day I should watch in entirety when I get the chance...

Meanwhile, I'm reading this very informative article on the 2019 JFSA legal action:
https://www.thelawyer.com/how-justice-done-in-post-office-scandal/

'[The judge] then went onto lambast [Angela van den Bogerd] for deliberately trying to mislead the court. When cross-examined about a document relating to losses the lead claimants had suffered, van den Bogerd sought to come across as unprepared and had “come to the matter cold”. '

'In fact, as MacKenzie had skilfully spotted, she had signed a very detailed witness statement a few days before in preparation for the upcoming Horizon Issues trial which dealt with those very issues. It was an example of, as Donnelly describes, “just proper good lawyering” made possible by having the same team on top of the documents across all trials.'

Oooh, fortuitous x-post with you @nauticant !

How similar is that!

I'm definitely here for Angela van den Bogerd next week (Thurs and Fri). I'm regretting that I have a full day out with friends that will keep me away from my viewing her testimony.

Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells asked her husband to find a “non-emotive word for computer bugs”

"Bugs" became “branch exceptions”; innocent postmasters continued to be prosecuted.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/23/ex-post-office-boss-paula-vennells-searched-for-non-emotive-words-to-describe-horizon-bugs-inquiry-hears

And senior managers didn’t want things to get re - examined because they didn’t want the Post Office’s reputation to be damaged.

So it was ok to damage the reputation of innocent post masters , who often were arrested and taken away in handcuffs in full view of their communities , losing their homes and freedom?

Current PO Chief Exec Nick Read has allegedly repeatedly threatened to resign unless his pay was increased.

Post Office boss ‘obsessed with his pay’, claims former HR director
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/23/post-office-boss-obsessed-with-his-pay-claims-former-hr-director

Never has the MN phrase seemed so apposite: "Off you fuck, cunty chops."

A fascinating day of testimony by General Counsel Susan Crichton. Broadly, and I believe her even though some of her testimony I didn't believe, she was supportive of the 2nd Sight investigation being independent while Alice Perkins and Paula Vennells were vexed considerably that they couldn't be brought to heel and to say safe things.

This was one of the highlights of today's evidence (read it carefully):

"result in copulation"?

Well, it does mention they might get hold of their members of parliament. Copulation is one of their specialties according to press reports about the number of MPs suspended or standing down due to their sexual incontinence.

Also significant today was Paula Vennell's note of a meeting with Crichton. She wrote, "Susan was possibly more loyal to her professional conduct requirements and put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business". This demonstrates clearly that Vennells was out of her depth. A lawyer is, first and foremost, an officer of the court regardless of who pays their wages. As such, Crichton was required to put her integrity ahead of Post Office's interests. Any half-decent CEO would know this.

It is also clear from the evidence that Vennells and the then chair, Alice Perkins, considered protecting the reputation of the business as far more important than finding out the truth or any concern for those subpostmasters whose lives had been ruined by Post Office. They didn't want a proper independent investigation by Second Sight. They were only interested in an investigation that delivered the result Post Office wanted and blamed Crichton for the fact that Second Sight didn't give them what they wanted.

Van Den Bogerd is on later this week. That will be interesting. It seems clear that she was at the heart of Post Office's attempts to cover up the truth. Other highlights to come include Vennells (22-24 May), Perkins (5-6 June), Ron Warmington and Ian Henderson of Second Sight (18 June), Gareth Jenkins, the Fujitsu engineer who is under investigation for perjury (25-28 June) and Tim Parker (Post Office chair whilst Bates & Co finally got to court and who oversaw the strategy that appeared to be an attempt to make sure they ran out of money - 2-3 July).

Vennell clearly missed her true calling as a politician prepared to state black is white with a straight face. To put in writing that a colleague is putting her professional standards before the interests of an employer is both supremely arrogant and supremely stupid. Every time I look at this scandal I'm appalled by something new.

Quote:

According to Davies, Read wrote in an email on 16 December 2022 that his “bonus situation is intolerable”. The Post Office annual report shows that he was paid £137,000 in bonuses for the year 2022-23.

Only £137,000 in bonuses on top of his £400K+ salary? Poor love, he must have been really hand to mouth.

Also significant today was Paula Vennell's note of a meeting with Crichton. She wrote, "Susan was possibly more loyal to her professional conduct requirements and put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business". This demonstrates clearly that Vennells was out of her depth. A lawyer is, first and foremost, an officer of the court regardless of who pays their wages. As such, Crichton was required to put her integrity ahead of Post Office's interests. Any half-decent CEO would know this.

This is just extraordinary. In any well-run business, the duty of the legal department to comply with professional conduct standards is taken as a given and is valued. I was talking recently to someone who had been over the same sort of period in the legal department of a very large and successful business. The head of department was on the Board of Directors and essentially it was axiomatic that the legal department's advice had to be followed. If the department head vetoed a deal, no matter how lucrative, it didn't happen.

It's off the point, but I do wonder about Vennell's religious affiliations if she seriously believed that employees had a duty to forget about integrity if it conflicted with the Post Office's interests. Wasn't she working towards taking holy orders over a chunk of this time? You have to think that if there really was a god she'd have been struck with lightning long ago.

@Anisette She wasn't working towards holy orders. She was already an ordained non-stipendiary (i.e. unpaid) minister in the Anglican church when she became Post Office CEO. She continued her role in the church until 2021. According to reports, she was one of three candidates shortlisted to become Bishop of London in 2017.

Thank you Mr Bates, I believe you've saved the people of London from the wrath of the Almighty. 🙏

Wow. It's really worrying that the C of E seriously considered appointing a Bishop so lacking in basic ethics.

Is everyone, including @PerkingFaintly, ready for Angela Van den Bogerd tomorrow and Friday? She is a highly anticipated witness because of her reputation for lying about very important things in court, along with many other behaviours. In the judgment of the Common Issues trial, the big one that destroyed pretty much everything the Post Office was seeking to argue in court, the judge made this remarkable statement:

Unless I state to the contrary, I would only accept the evidence of Mrs Van den Bogerd and Mr Beal in controversial areas of fact in issue in this Common Issue trial if these are clearly and uncontrovertibly corroborated by contemporaneous documents.

Today's bombshell came from Chris Aujard, who succeeded Susan Crichton as Post Office General Counsel. He revealed that the executive committee wanted to pause all prosecutions of subpostmasters, but Paula Vennells wanted some to continue. Susan Crichton's evidence was that she also said that prosecutions should stop but was ignored.

Earlier, there was evidence that it was Vennells who authorised Post Office spending over £300k pursuing former subpostmaster Lee Castleton for an alleged debt of £23k. This bankrupted Castleton and ruined his life, but Post Office weren't interested in that, nor were they really interested in recovering the debt. They spent the money to discourage other subpostmasters from challenging Horizon.

Thanks so much for the reminder, @nauticant .

I'm shall put it on in the background while tackling the next rounds in:

a) my ongoing complaint to the Energy Ombudsman (year-long cock-up by power company); and

b) my ongoing complaint to the Information Commissioner (major organisation systematically breaking Data Protection law).

<sigh>

I'm going to be fizzing with Righteous Anger all day, aren't I?

Best make myself some strong

Unless I state to the contrary, I would only accept the evidence of Mrs Van den Bogerd and Mr Beal in controversial areas of fact in issue in this Common Issue trial if these are clearly and uncontrovertibly corroborated by contemporaneous documents.

Buuurrrrn