Ed Davey and the Horizon scandal

In the last few days the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, has been the focus of questions about his role in the Post Office Horizon scandal.

ITV's drama Mr Bates v The Post Office has, unsurprisingly, led to the expressions of anger at the miscarriage of justice and the dishonesty of the Post Office. It has also, less understandably, resulted in a focus on Mr Davey - who has been portrayed by some news outlets as a useless minister who refused to meet Mr Bates and naively believed Post Office management. Others, such as Kelvin McKenzie, have gone so far as to say Davey's "refusal to meet Mr Bates makes him unsuitable for your vote". Today's Sunday Times accuses Mr Davey of "shrugging off warnings". 

Meanwhile, on social media, attacks from Labour and Conservative representatives and activists have become rather personal. The Daily Mail's Andrew Pierce has pointed out that Mr Davey worked for the same legal firm that represented the Post Office, with the implication being that his association with. Herbert Smith Freehills prevented him proactively supporting the sub-postmasters. Others suggest Mr Davey's inaction was responsible for the scandal that unfolded. .

So, let's have a look at the facts.

Alan Bates was a sub-postmaster who began asking questions about the Horizon IT system as early as 2000. 

In 2009 Bates helped to create the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance campaign group (JFSA).

Bates and, later, JFSA sought meetings with government ministers to discuss their concerns. Several Labour ministers refused to meet with them from 2003 onwards.

On 20th May 2010 Ed Davey was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs. On the day of the appointment, Mr Bates wrote to Mr Davey requesting a meeting - a response from Mr Davey stated: "the integrity of the Post Office Horizon system is an operational and contractual matter for Post Office Ltd. While I do appreciate your concerns and those of Alliance members, I do not believe a meeting would serve any useful purpose."

Despite this apparent initial rejection Mr Davey did meet a representation from JFSA, which included Mr Bates, in October 2010. 

In response to that meeting, Mr Davey wrote to Mr Bates on 7th December 2010: "Following our meeting, the points you raised as chairman of JFSA are being followed up on my behalf by officials as part of our dialogue with the company. However, as I made clear at the meeting, neither I nor the Department can intervene in cases which are sub-justice or where court action had been determined, as in Mrs Misra's and Mrs Buffrey's cases." Mr Davey also emphasised he had reassurances from the Post Office in regards "the integrity of the Horizon system". 

Consequently, Mr Davey was the first minister on record to meet with Mr Bates and the JFSA.

Lib Dem MPs, including Mr Davey, later called for a full, independent inquiry into the Horizon scandal. Conservative ministers were opposed to this.

Adam Crozier, current chairman of the BT Group, served as chief executive of Post Office Ltd until 2010. It was under his watch that prosecutions of sub-postmasters began at an average of one per week. 

Paula Vennells took over as chief executive of Post Office Ltd in 2012 and held the role until 2019. She continued the tactic of prosecuting sub-postmasters for fraud, false accounting and theft despite increasing evidence suggesting the Horizon system was at fault. She received a CBE in  2019 New Year Honours List for "services to the Post Office and to charity". 

In December 2019 the High Court awarded compensation to sub-postmasters amounting to £58million. Mr Justice Fraser criticised the Post Office's "institutional obstinacy", which he claimed amounted to  "the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat".

In response to that, here are a few of my views:

Firstly, the Horizon scandal represents a terrible miscarriage of justice. It cannot be allowed to be repeated, and the lessons from the experience must be well and truly learned. 

Not one conviction is safe, and every sub-postmaster found guilty of fraud, theft or false accounting during this time should have their convictions overturned. 

The tragedy - and it is a tragedy for anyone on the receiving end of what was allowed to pass for justice -  is not primarily a political one. I do think there are questions for successive ministers with responsibility for the Post Office to answer questions but this has to be with a view to establishing facts, what people knew, and what ministers were told. Questions should not be asked in an attempt to turn the scandal into a political football.

Ed Davey is correct - ministers have no right to intervene in such cases. They are also accountable to government. But that wouldn't necessarily mean a meeting would be unhelpful, and clearly Mr Davey changed his mind at some point between May 2010 and October 2010. I agree with those who suggest Mr Davey was wrong to have refused a meeting in May, but if we're going to be critical on that point we also have to be critical of earlier Labour ministers and later Conservative ministers who also refused to meet with Mr Bates and the JFSA. Labour do not get a free pass here. Mr Bates was expressing his concerns for years and Mr Davey was the first minister to take the time to listen to him. Attempts to portray Mr Davey as somehow exceptional and uniquely obstructive are as dishonest as the Post Office's attempts to claim Horizon was a flawless and accurate system.

Both Mr Bates and Mr Davey, albeit from different perspectives, have noted that Post Office Limited lied for years - to the public, to sub-postmasters, to the media, in the courts and to ministers. It is not surprising that successive ministers took seriously the advice of the civil service, which itself trusted the Post Office. This is not an excuse, but the wider context of how ministers work needs to be understood.

As for the accusation that  Mr Davey worked for the same legal firm that represented the Post Office - this is technically correct. But he worked as an advisor on environmental law. There is absolutely no reason why he should even be aware of the firm's other legal activities. I have worked with a firm of solicitors in relation to mental health law and know most of their mental health solicitors, but I don't involve myself with their civil and criminal work and wouldn't know who their clients were - and, due to confidentiality rules, neither should I. This is desperate stuff. 

It is curious that many of those who are outspokenly critical of Mr Davey are happy for Paula Vennells to retain her CBE. Whatever Mr Davey's mistakes as a minister - he admits he believed the Post Office, and regrets he didn't do more to help - he was not involved with bringing the prosecutions against sub-postmasters and was not in a position to prevent them. 

Ed Davey was certainly no worse than other ministers with responsibility for the Post Office, and arguably better because, despite his initial refusal; he did meet with Mr Bates and JFSA and listened to their concerns. Of course, with hindsight we can reasonably point out that more could - and should - have been done. But that criticism applies to countless others across all parties who took Post Office reassurances at face value.

One of the by-products of the politically-motivated focus on Mr Davey is that it distracts from the real issues at stake. It is right that we should be angry, but that anger is best directed elsewhere. While there are some questions that Mr Davey and others should answer, there are far more pressing questions I'd like to ask Ms Vennells. I'd like to ask her about why she withheld evidence of Horizon's unreliability. I'd like to ask her about her tactics, which effectively amounted to bullying sub-postmasters into admitting wrongdoing. I'd like to know if she feels she deserves the millions paid to her in performance-related pay. I'd also like to ask her when she'll be handing back her CBE. 

I want to see justice for everyone affected and there's still some way to go on that score. It is positive that the ITV drama has raised public awareness, but that alone doesn't address injustice and neither do personal attacks on ministers. Instead, we need to investigate further (as is happening). It is not enough to compensate victims (even that process is overly-complicated and hampered by bureaucracy) but to ensure every conviction is quashed and those responsible for unnecessary human suffering are held accountable. To date only 93 convictions out of approximately 700 have been overturned and that simply isn't good enough. We need to know why things happened, and also whether those responsible acted illegally in misleading ministers and pursuing non-existent sums of money from innocent people.

Personally, while I'm highly critical of Mr Crozier, Ms Vennells and Fujitsu (who created and developed the software) I also have criticisms of the legal profession and the lack of checks within the prosecution system. For example, one thing notable from the ITV drama was the way in which individual sub-postmasters believed they were alone. While we can blame Post Office dishonesty for that, it should also have been obvious to legal practitioners that a proliferation of cases against sub-postmasters was a significant development with equally significant implications. Why did HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) not find this unusual? Surely it didn't seem plausible that hundreds of sub-postmasters were turning to crime - and the same type of crime - at roughly the same time? Why was the prosecutor (the Post Office) not pressed by defence counsel or judges about similar cases? Why were Horizon records alone accepted as evidence to confirm fraud or theft given that any IT system can have its flaws and glitches? Why is it acceptable for the Post Office to act as prosecutor? Why, even after Horizon's failings have become public knowledge, is the appeals process being overseen by the Post Office - the very entity that caused the problem? There are serious questions to be asked of a justice system that found hundreds of innocent people guilty of the same non-crime. 

This isn't about Mr Davey, who held at best a relatively insignificant peripheral role. He, his predecessors and his successors may have made mistakes, not least in believing what Post Office management and civil servants told them. Davey and other ministers, reassured by dishonesty from those they trusted, must have proved very frustrating for JFSA. I'm not going to defend them as such other than to say it's hypocritical for Labour to be pointing accusatory fingers, but let's not lose sight of the fact that real responsibility lies with Adam Crozier, Paula Vessells, Fujitsu and endemic corruption at the Post Office. Our anger would be better directed at those actually responsible, and to call for lasting changes to our legal and corporate practices to avoid a repeat of the scandal.