Alan Bates gave evidence to the Post Office Inquiry yesterday. The transcript isn’t up yet, but I caught the end of the day. I will come to the document that led to Alan Bates quote in the title, in a passage where he said he was convinced that the Post Office executives were concerned to fight off the group litigation to protect the brand and protect those who had taken decisions on the matter. The quote above, he says, he was told came from the Board.
Bates’ train of thought was prompted by a document he was taken to by Ed Henry KC, leading counsel for one group of sub- postmasters. It is an email from a solicitor in (Womble) Bond Dickinson (now a partner) to Post Office’s then General Counsel and another PO in-house lawyer (who became “Head of Legal” in 2014 and now works at the same company as Chris Aujard according to his LinkedIn profile). Womble Bond Dickson were the solicitors for the Post Office through much of the Bates “flat earth” litigation.
Parson had been asked to review a draft letter informing Post Office’s insurers about Horizon issues by Susan Crichton. D&O insurance covers the cost of compensation claims made against the business’s directors and key managers for alleged wrongful acts.
By this stage Simon Clarke had advised the Post Office that their prosecutions may be profoundly flawed because of unreliable evidence given by a Fujitsu witness, treated as an expert in criminal prosecutions. It’s a bit more than mere press reports they are contending with as everyone knows.
And then Henry takes Bates to this further email.
So the advice is to manage the risk by either not disclosing or doing so only orally to reduce the risk that PO will look bad.
We know from FOIed Board minutes (with thanks to the indefatigable El Shaik) that by the 29th September Susan Crichton had left the business, and the appointment of Sir Anthony Hooper to Chair the Mediation Scheme (a former Court of Appeal judge of strong repute) was in hand…
And that the issue of D&O insurance appears to have arisen previously as it is picked up in a status report in the minutes, and so was raised at this meeting.
This suggests that the notifications had not been made (so Parson’s advice to not disclose appears to have been followed) but would be. There is no record here as to whether they were made in writing or how extensive or accurate the disclosures. We do know that it was just such a record, perhaps this very one, which was the thread pulled by the legal team led by Paul Marshall, with Flora Paige and Nick Gould of Aria Grace, that prompted the disclosure of the Clarke Advice. That was in 2020, more than seven years after Mr Parson have this advice.
In seeking to protect themselves they had laid a trail of crumbs that eventually blew the doors of the Post Office cases and appear to have rejected Mr Parson’s advice.