Perhaps the most eye-catching element of my last post on Susan Crichton was Paula Vennells’ assessment. We should remember this was written with, it is likely, at least half an eye on either managing Susan out or coping with any aftermath from her resignation:
“…Susan was possibly more loyal to her professional conduct requirements and put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business. She did not communicate clearly what she was concerned about. If as she says she felt compromised (personally and for the business) by being asked to manage [Second Sight] more closely, then her misjudgement was that she did not make that clearer to me on the two or three occasions that I asked her to do so.”
I have noted also that Crichton was under severe pressure, and showing signs of being unwell by the summer of 2013. Her decisions, and any moral responsibility for them, might well be significantly diminished as a result.
That said, less kindly, I have also already noted a conflation of influence and reputation, professional integrity and independence in Crichton’s own assessment of why she left.
In my own assessment, based on the evidence so far, she did not have a clear enough idea of what she should be doing and what independence really meant in this situation of acute difficulty. Not surprisingly. It is very difficult.
With those thoughts in mind, let me try to take you quickly through the essence of her story.
She joined the Post Office in 2010 as a commercial lawyer not versed in litigation. She is quickly made aware of problems with legal cases where Horizon is being challenged; they are both civil and criminal cases. Mandy Talbot is seen to want to get a stronger grip on cases in the future, and it appears, as Crichton is reviewing the commerciality of litigation strategies, that civil litigation is paused for a while.
By 2012, the Post Office had separated from the Royal Mail Group (RMG), and the conduct of civil and criminal litigation falls under her responsibility as the senior lawyer in the organisation. She recalls raising the issue of prosecutions, and the need for the board to be aware of what the Post Office does in this regard with Paula Vennells.
She says she sought to pause prosecutions that relied on Horizon evidence, where such cases did not have strong corroboration beyond Horizon (an interesting echo of the Court of Appeal’s approach the matter).
That pause appears to have been either unsuccessful or only partially successful. It was clearly resisted by Jarnail Singh, the Post Office’s sole criminal lawyer, ennobled as the head of criminal, having been transferred across from RMG without, Crichton pointed out, the Post Office itself having any say in who they got.
Around this time, Crichton sees the now infamous Ismay Report having not been sent it in 2010 when it was produced, even though she was in role. She thinks it was only sent to those in RMG who are involved in Horizon Litigation.
The sense that Crichton conveys is that she was uneasy about Post Office using criminal prosecution for shortfalls. It was a matter to be looked into, rather than a definite sense that they had a problem.
She becomes involved in the appointment of independent investigators. One lead in the business, the CIO Lesley Sewell, wanted to appoint Deloittes to conduct a review of Horizon. The Chairman, Alice Perkins, did not think that would satisfy one the MPs led by James Arbuthnot. She wanted something which engaged directly with their constituents complaints. Crichton agreed, she’d seen from her work in financial services that systems need to be understood from the point of view of the user, in assessing how well they work.
Second Sight are appointed in 2012. Crichton had suggested they be considered, but she says she did not take part in the actual decision to appoint. She had worked with Ron Warmington in a previous role and new him to be someone who would dig into problems.
As the process is beginning, concerns are raised from the Post Office project manager for the Second Sight investigation, Simon Baker. His point? The review should not include cases of postmasters who had been prosecuted already. There is an attempt to exclude such cases, supported initially by Susan Crichton. Interestingly, Crichton is aware of Seema Misra’s case, she worries that including her in the investigation may be like a “red rag to a ball”.
Alice Perkins resists, saying such cases have to be included, if evidence gives rise to appeals, the suggestion is, so be it.
On another occasion, Crichton is seen to want to “box off” a problem raised by Second Sight with transaction corrections.
And in January 2013, she appears to support attempts by the Post Office, led by Baker, to limit Second Sight’s investigation. She denies, however, wanting to close it down.
By June 2013, Ron Warmington emails Susan Crichton talking about shockwaves being sent through the Post Office, making clear that things are getting difficult. Matters reached a crisis point with the production of Second Sights interim report.
If we note PVs pressure on Crichton to “manage” Second Sight we should note too that she agrees she asked Second Sight to make changes. She felt their draft was too emotional. She says this was only to make sure the report was evidence-based. She says that she was only keen to ensure they got the information they needed and were able to complete the work as soon as possible.
Susan Crichton instructs CMS to be ready to review the draft for defamation and consider whether an injunction can be brought to stop it coming out. She indicates, as I understand it, the desire for this came from the Head of PR/Comms.
Counsel to the Inquiry suggests a number of times she was involved in drafting reports of the Second Sight investigation and associated matters which were less than candid, even misleading. One such report included details of audits carried out to test Horizon. The report was produced to brief Arbuthnot and other MPs, which her co-author Lesley Sewell is seen to have said was “carefully drafted”.
The Inquiry’s counsel suggests that the way this was drafted was designed to convey a misleading impression of robustness. Crichton disagrees but conceded that there was a degree of “smoke and mirrors” about the report.
There are other examples such as a suggestion (fair or otherwise we will have to wait and see) that Crichton gave misleading reports on audits to the Board which she could have corrected but did not. An internal audit said to have been reviewed by Deloittes appears simply to have had a Deloittes’ trainee in the internal audit team on secondment.
It is suggested too that she diluted a report to the Board, including critical dilutions on to sections on whether the Post Office should be proactive or reactive in its handling of SPMs with complaints and who might want to appeal their convictions.
She seeks to distance herself from the Post Office’s practice of seeking to ensure legal professional privilege was be attached to any document that might contain criticisms of Horizon by saying that advice came from her civil litigation colleagues. Yet other evidence suggests she sought to attach privilege to the internal audit report before disclosing it to the Board and she sought (according to PVs evidence) to resist a post-mortem into the Second Sight process by Richard Hatfield, by pointing out privilege would not attach to it.
Vennells criticises the “blandness” of some of Crichton’s reports on key matters (again possibly self-servingly given she knows Crichton is likely to resign). Crichton is asked about it in the context of the report to the Board on Second Sight and Cartwright King’s involvement:
Julian Blake: Do you think that you were producing bland Board papers that didn’t accurately set out the risks?
Susan Crichton: I don’t think so and, certainly as I mentioned, my intention would have been to have a better discussion about the risks face to face because, at that stage, we weren’t sure what the risks were. There were a sort of range of potential risks and outcomes from the actions we were having to take and I would have preferred to discuss that range, rather than just have it set out in a Board paper.
This was in the context of the Board meeting she expected to be, but was not, called into. Her nadir. The difficulty she has now is she cannot clearly recall telling either Paula Vennells, the executive group about the nature and significance of what was driving Cartwright King’s involvement at this stage and it was not set out int eh written report she had prepared for the Board.
In essence, the nature and significance of Simon Clarke having said PO prosecutions past, present and future are were profoundly impacted by Mr Jenkins having given misleading evidence in writing and to the court as an “expert”.
She recalls discussing the outcome with key individuals (that Cartwright King were conducting a review and considering disclosure issues) but not the central problem.
More concerning still, she is not able to recall how she responded to the suggestion that John Scott had shredded documents at the start of the disclosure review process instigated in response to the Clarke advice. In fairness, it should be observed that she may have been in a state of turmoil at this stage.
Her only engagement with Scott, which may predate her full knowledge of the problem, is rather modest and her reply to the Cartwright King is I think properly described as not showing a grip on the problem (Counsel to the Inquiry, not unfairly, suggests Crichton (the letter was drafted by Rodric Williams but signed off by her) might be less than candid with the firm they are instructing).
It’s a deeply concerning episode.
She suggests she thinks she may have raised it with people other than Scott, but more importantly still, she cannot recall or demonstrate attempts to raise it with the Board and perhaps Paula Vennells.
It is not at all clear she knew whether shredding had occurred or put in place a proper investigation of it.
Sir Wynn Williams takes pains to ensure that he understands her to know she should have put in place a process to bring it to the Board’s attention. She sets out what she would have done in other organisations, but she did not do it, still less do it with force or urgency.
I started out by saying in essence Crichton’s timid professionalism lacked forcefulness and clarity. Jenifer Swallow has written this great list of lessons to be learnt from the story. There’s one last thing to point out about the curate’s egg.
Susan Crichton stuck up, to a point, for the independence of Second Sight’s investigation. She also left quickly and, it seems, quietly when challenged. The client Board were not fully appraised of the difficulties, though of course they may not have listened.
Paula Vennells in her note of those final days says of their difficult conversations, “She threatened that we would have to back her – – implying of the importance of references.” And there is also a “reference to Alice believing Donald and the biz comments about a post office cover-up.”
An NDA was signed as part of her settlement agreement. This is normal but also dangerous. We do not know its terms.
We also do not know what compensation she was paid but we do know her role at Lloyds TSB was announced in December 2013 and she was mainly on leave at the Post Office for the period from her resignation until, I think November.
Meanwhile Cartwright King and others set about their work. An acting General Counsel was drafted in: Chris Aujard. Available quickly, he sought to steady the ship.
