Former government minister Vince Cable said the Post Office lied to the government to prevent the truth about the mistreatment of subpostmasters becoming known by ministers.
During the latest Post Office scandal public inquiry hearings, the former Liberal Democrats Leader also described the Post Office as “authoritarian” in their dealings with subpostmasters, while fellow former Conservative minister Greg Clark was equally scathing of Post Office culture.
The public inquiry heard from Cable and Clarke, who were the most senior ministers in the business department at key moments during the Post Office scandal cover-up.
In his witness statement to the inquiry, Cable, who was secretary of state in the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) department from 2010 to 2015, accused the Post Office of lying to civil servants in the government organisation which owns the Post Office, the Shareholder Executive (ShEx).
The Post Office is an arm’s-length public body with “operational” independence from government, therefore ministers only become involved in “strategic” decisions.
Cable wrote in his witness statement: “It was clear that in my period in office, the operational failures were sufficiently widespread and serious as to justify government intervention. But these were not identified or recognised within the government. The reason, so far as I can tell, was that officials in ShEx were misinformed or lied to by their counterparts in the Post Office.”
Later in his witness statement, he said that while operational matters at the Post Office were out of the government’s remit, there were times when operational matters cross into strategic issues justifying the involvement of the government: “It is clear that in my period in office, the operational failures were not identified or recognised as systemic or engaging. The reason, so far as I can tell, was that officials in ShEx were misinformed or lied to by their counterparts in the Post Office.”
Beyond its attitude in dealing with the government, Cable said the Post Office was “authoritarian” towards subpostmasters, and he supported the assertion regularly made by campaigner Sir Alan Bates that the Post Office staff were “thugs in suits”.
During the hearing, Greg Clarke, who was secretary of state for Businesses, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) from 2016 to 2019, was asked about the Post Office culture. He said he had experience of how the Post Office treated subpostmasters before his time as a government minister when he had supported a subpostmaster in his constituency who, like many others in the scandal, had been prosecuted for unexplained account shortfalls.
“Drawing on my experience with my constituent, I am inclined to think the management of the Post Office was insensitive to the point of abject rudeness towards subpostmasters,” he told the inquiry.
During Clark’s evidence, it was revealed that he and his junior – the minister in charge of the Post Office, Kelly Tolhurst – were “opposed” to the Post Office’s controversial plan to remove High Court Judge Peter Fraser from the group litigation it was battling out with 555 subpostmasters, when things weren’t going in its favour.
In March 2019, the multimillion-pound group litigation, where subpostmasters were attempting to prove errors in the computer system caused unexplained shortfalls and not them, was suspended when the Post Office questioned the impartiality of Judge Fraser, and called for him to be removed, or recuse himself, from the trial.
The application was widely seen as a delaying tactic by the Post Office and an attempt to ramp up costs, after damning evidence had emerged over the course of the court battle, which began in November 2018. The Post Office, which is owned by UK taxpayers, spent more than £100m on legal costs in an attempt to silence the former subpostmasters.
Clark said he knew nothing about the formal recusal application until he received a phone call from Tolhurst, who had been told about the decision to apply to recuse the judge. “I thought it outrageous,” he told the inquiry.
“[Tolhurst’s] view throughout all this was identical to mine in every conceivable respect – that the Post Office had to accept the judgment and give restitution to subpostmasters and change its whole approach,” he said.
The recusal application was made and Fraser rejected it, as did the Court of Appeal when the Post Office appealed against his decision. Lord Justice Coulson, in the Court of Appeal, said: “The recusal application never had any substance and was rightly rejected by the judge.”
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).
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• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story •