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Civil servant said subpostmasters’ threat of legal action was ‘sabre-rattling’

Post Office scandal public inquiry hears damning evidence capping off a bad week for the reputation of high-profile civil servants

Karl Flinders
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Published: 15 Jul 2024 9:45

A senior civil servant on the Post Office board said subpostmasters were “sabre-rattling” when, in 2015, they announced they were preparing to sue the government-owned Post Office for the losses they were blamed for in their branches.

Subpostmasters had been campaigning for years after many had been punished, with some sent to prison, when unexplained shortfalls appeared in their branch accounts.

As reported by Computer Weekly in November that year, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) announced it was preparing litigation against the Post Office in relation to claims against its Horizon computer system. The former subpostmasters were blamed for accounting shortfalls that they alleged were due to the flawed computer system they used in branches.

By this point, Richard Callard, the government’s representative on the Post Office board of directors, had formed the view that evidence about computer errors causing the shortfall in branches, as the subpostmasters’ claimed, would not be found. He did not believe they had a case and that legal firms would not support their claims once they got into the detail.

During the Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry hearing last week, it emerged that, in response to the JFSA announcement, Callard wrote an email to Post Office executives, including communications boss Mark Davies, which said: “Seriously though, do you know how many legal firms they’ve had. It would be good to take the line with ministers that this is yet another sabre-rattle and once legal firms get into the evidence they pull away.”

Callard was asked by barrister Angela Patrick, representing scandal victims at the inquiry, about the language he used in the email: “Was this another frank conversation between colleagues, Mr Callard?”

Callard said: “No, this one is actually [me saying] seriously though, do you know how many legal firms the JFSA have had because I am about to provide advice to ministers, and if I am a minister, I would be concerned about litigation. And if there had been attempts before which had failed I might take a different view of the litigation that is now in front of me than if that hadn’t happened. By 'sabre-rattle' I meant, by this time, the mediation scheme had come to an end, and essentially, I think the Post Office had disengaged in that sense because the mediation scheme had completed.”

Lack of curiosity

Referring to the fictional civil servant from 1980s BBC sitcom Yes Prime Minster, Sir Humphrey Appleby, Alan Bates, the man that led the 2018/19 court action, said: “[Callard’s appearance] was a masterclass in Sir Humphreyism, and no doubt will be compulsory viewing on the civil service module on obfuscation.”

Despite Callard’s confidence, the former subpostmasters went on to prove errors in the Horizon system were to blame for accounting shortfalls through a multimillion-pound group litigation order in the High Court in 2018/19. The trials also laid bare the extent of the scandal, which led to the current public inquiry being established and hundreds of wrongly convicted subpostmasters having their convictions overturned.

Callard, who was in the Shareholder Executive (now called UK Government Investments) that owned the Post Office, was the government representative on the Post Office board from 2014 to 2018. During the hearing, he was questioned by Jason Beer, KC to the inquiry, about his dismissal of subpostmaster claims and planned legal action.

“I did perhaps think it was another case that might not come to anything, because up to then nobody had actually shown causality, a bug in Horizon causing a loss,” said Callard. “There were lots of investigations and each time there was an investigation, it came back that there wasn’t really an issue, and there were investigations throughout my time.”

Beer put it to Callard that he is now aware of a “whole host of information that puts an entirely different complexion on things?” Callard agreed: “So, clearly, I was not curious enough.”

Beer continued: “The words that you use appear to suggest, would you agree, that you had formed the view that there would be no smoking gun found in relation to problems with the Horizon system?” Callard said: “I think by that time I probably had. At least strongly on the balance of probabilities, that’s the view I’d taken.”

But it was only a year prior to Callard’s appointment on the Post Office board that external barrister Simon Clarke warned the Post Office that an expert witness used to prosecute subpostmasters had given misleading evidence by failing to disclose evidence that Horizon errors had cause unexplained accounting shortfalls.

Beer asked: “Was [Shareholder Executive] ever made aware of the Simon Clarke Advice in relation to the credibility of the Post Office’s main expert witness, Gareth Jenkins?” Callard said he first knew of the Clarke Advice when it was revealed during hearings in the Court of Appeal in 2021, when subpostmasters had their wrongful convictions overturned.

When Callard sat on the Post Office board it was also known within the organisation that independent reports to courts had raised questions about Horizon’s reliability and that the Post Office had failed in some cases to successfully prosecute subpostmasters using evidence from the system.

Beer asked Callard: “Were you ever told that it, the Post Office, was in possession of expert reports as a result of civil litigation that it had engaged in, in 2004 and 2006, which challenged the proposition that Horizon was robust?” Callard said he wasn’t.

Beer continued: “Were you ever told about the previous acquittals of subpostmasters, each of whom had raised the defective operation of Horizon as part of their defence? Callard said he was never told, but that he would have expected to have been briefed on this.

Campaigner Bates, who was knighted last month for his efforts to seek justice, said: “Throughout [Callard’s] session, I think I only recognised 0.1% of truth.”

Civil service under spotlight

The evidence capped off a damning week for civil servants at the inquiry.

Also last week, Tom Cooper, who replaced Callard on the board of the Post Office as the government representative at the time of the High Court case, told the public inquiry that he “felt like the only player on the pitch questioning the litigation [strategy]”.

He said all the lawyers involved for the Post Office “completely mismanaged the litigation” and that there were “major defects in Post Office processes and therefore its case”. But Cooper never reported his concerns.

In an earlier hearing, Mark Russell, former CEO of UK Government Investments, told the inquiry that the board of directors was the only check on the Post Office, with the government shareholder relying on “luck” should the Post Office board miss things.

Jo Hamilton, a former subpostmistress who had a wrongful conviction  overturned in 2021, was at the inquiry to see all three give evidence. She said: "The civil servants sum up everything that went wrong in this whole sorry saga. Lifers who are incurious, mediocre and over-promoted. I sincerely hope their inability to learn lessons and continued failure in their senior executive roles leave them without the usual gongs and huge pensions. This has to stop and empty apologies don't cut it."

In his evidence to the public inquiry in April, JFSA chair Bates pointed the finger at civil servants.

“A lot of ministers come in for stick, but I hold the civil service more to blame in a lot of the instances and [for the reasons] why things didn’t progress at the time,” he said. “I am sure between [the civil service] and the Post Office they were briefing ministers in the direction they wanted.”

The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to accounting software. It is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history (see below for timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal, since 2009).

• Also read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal •

• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story •

Timeline: Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009

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