The first volume of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry Report Volume 1 was published midday Thursday 8th July 2025. Volume 2 of the report is expected later this year or early next year. I intend to blog about this as it released. Volume 1 can be found here.
I have to say I was very disappointed in one small part of the report. Let me backtrack a little bit. I expected the Inquiry to deal with all aspects of the Post Office Scandal. I was particularly interested in two aspects. One part being the legal aspects, specifically the conduct of the prosecutions. How did they construct the evidence against the postmasters? The Inquiry did consider a lot of legal evidence but I felt they did not consider the legal aspects of those prosecutions. The other part being the Software aspects but I will return to that in another blog.
For this entry I’m concerned with a couple of paragraphs in the report. At the hearings postmasters were asked to comment on whether they were subject to plea bargains. The postmasters were allowed to choose their own interpretation of this term as it is problematic for older English Lawyers. What I was expecting in the report was a count of how many sub-postmasters were affected by these. It turns out that part of the evidence was largely ignored! The fact is some number of postmasters were advised to give a guilty plea (possibly all). The Group Litigation Order (GLO) saw the Post Office abandoned their cases against about 500 postmasters. At the CACD the appeals of around 100 postmasters were allowed. The Inquiry will not deliver its full report until next year. How could Lawyers in those first instance cases advise people to give a guilty plea? Guilty of what?
I expected that some of those Lawyers would appear at the Inquiry and explain their reasoning for giving that advice. That did not happen. From the report volume 1 there is barely any mention of this aspect. What did the report say:
3.15. Once a decision to charge a person has been made, the accused will, ordinarily, require legal advice about the strength of the case brought by the prosecutor and whether the charge should be admitted or denied. Such advice can be difficult to deliver for the lawyer and extremely difficult to receive for the accused person. An accused’s legal advisor is duty-bound to advise the accused upon the strength of the case presented by the prosecution and on the sentence which is likely to be imposed if the accused is convicted of the charges brought by the prosecutor. Crucially, the lawyer will need to advise on a range of potential sentencing options and, of particular importance in the context with which I am dealing, explain that a plea to a lesser offence may have the effect of reducing, very substantially, the likelihood of an immediate custodial sentence.
3.16. From the evidence I have heard, it seems very likely that many of those prosecuted were charged with offences of theft and false accounting. I have little doubt that many accused persons were advised by their lawyers to plead guilty to the offence of false accounting when charged with that offence. Setting aside, at this stage, the propriety of charging the offences of theft and false accounting as alternatives, I have no doubt that most barristers skilled in the practice of criminal law would have advised their clients that a conviction for stealing from a Post Office would, almost inevitably, carry a more severe sentence than a conviction for false accounting. They would also have advised that a conviction for theft would probably carry with it a sentence of imprisonment to be served immediately whereas a plea to false accounting which was accepted by the prosecutor would probably mean either a suspended sentence of imprisonment or a community sentence. Discussions about these issues would inevitably result in very significant stress and worry for an accused who had never before had to consider such life-changing consequences. In essence, an accused would have known that they were engaged in a decision which might involve the difference between retaining their liberty and losing it. Those who decided to plead guilty, I heard, may have done so in the hope, or even the expectation that they would avoid an immediate sentence of imprisonment. Until sentence was passed, however, there would always be nagging doubts as to their fate.
In other words the inquiry is offering no criticism of their work, in fact it barely mentions it.