Chamber and committees

I appreciate that the cabinet secretary is going to consider that, but one other thing to consider is that, in the case that I raised, in which the person was not a sub-postmaster, the evidence that was used to convict him was still the same evidence, and there was no stealing of any money. Therefore, it amounts to the same principle.

This is a very important week in the Post Office inquiry, with Paula Vennells giving evidence for three days from tomorrow. As others have said, this is the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. I agree with Keith Brown that the result should be criminal proceedings, and I hope that there are such proceedings.

The cover-ups, the lies that were told and the dysfunctional nature of the Post Office’s internal investigation and prosecution functions led to many lives being ruined—not just the lives of sub-postmasters but their families’ lives—suicides, financial ruin and families leaving the country due to the talk of scandal in small villages.

It must never be allowed to happen again. Politicians, including Government ministers, should take note of the role of those who did not listen to sub-postmasters or did not question things when there was an obvious sniff about the reliability of Fujitsu’s Horizon computer system.

We owe Alan Bates a great deal for having the strength to take on an institution that did everything to intimidate, bully and make criminals of sub-postmasters. In 2019, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance won a High Court case. Bugs, errors and defects were found in the Horizon system, which had caused discrepancies in postmasters’ branch accounts. However, despite that case winning compensation for victims, the question of compensation has still not been dealt with satisfactorily.

As far back as 2009, Computer Weekly wrote an article questioning the Horizon issues, so they have long been known about.

What we have heard during the public inquiry in the past few weeks has been quite shocking. Following news that sub-postmaster Martin Griffiths, who had suffered huge unexplained losses, was critically ill after attempting to take his own life, Post Office chief communications officer Mark Davies’s actions were to hire a specialist media lawyer, while he bragged about his political connections and how he might steer MPs away from looking closely at the Horizon issues. Thankfully, however, many MPs did not turn away.

Dr Alisdair Cameron, the chief finance officer, said that, when he joined the Post Office in 2015, there was an attempt to shut down the work of the forensic accountancy organisation Second Sight, which had been hired to independently review Horizon. There was unease that it was, in fact, doing its job. Second Sight was sacked after completing its damning report. Surely by then alarm bells must have been ringing up and down the United Kingdom. Second Sight revealed that the Post Office had prosecuted some postmasters for theft and false accounting without investigating claims that the Horizon system was to blame for the shortfalls.

Last week, Jarnail Singh, an in-house lawyer who had saved an attachment about discrepancies to his hard drive, claimed in his evidence not to know how to save a document. What we are hearing is incredible. That was the man who led the team to which Russell Findlay and Fergus Ewing referred, which came to Scotland after panic set in that the Crown Office in Scotland was about to recommend that all cases involving Horizon be terminated. By 2013, it was clear that the Post Office had a secret agenda to prevent that policy from happening. We can imagine the implications of Scottish authorities saying that they would terminate all cases, and the ripples that that would have caused in England and Wales. If that had happened, I believe that things would have been different. That is why I think that the Scottish Government was wrong to pursue legislation at Westminster. I believe that there would have been less scrutiny of the role of our Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. There must be accountability for such decisions, but we still do not have full accountability for them.

Another example that has been mentioned involved a Gorbals post office that was run by sisters Jacquie El Kasaby and Rose Stewart, where the accounts were beginning to show deficits to the tune of £34,000, which we know now did not exist. In 2014, the sisters handed over £10,000 of their own money to settle the case, as many others did in their own cases. That was despite the Second Sight report being available for all to see.

In 2014, prosecutor Angus Crawford became unconvinced by the Horizon evidence, which he thought was too weak to stand up in court. I believe that other cases were not proceeded with, and I would like those to be clarified.

As has been mentioned, following the meeting with Jarnail Singh and senior procurators fiscal, the guidelines for the Crown Office appeared to change from recommending that cases using Horizon for corroboration be terminated to one of assessing matters on a case-by-case basis. That was on the basis of a full report. I assert that if the Post Office had not lied to procurators fiscal and the Crown Office had stuck to its original recommendation, and—as I said at First Minister’s question time a few weeks ago—had been a little less naive, those four cases would not have proceeded.

It is the duty of all procurators fiscal to disclose, if they uncover the fact, that there have been unsafe convictions, and we still require an answer from the Lord Advocate as to why, from 2019 to this day, no victims were written to. It is not acceptable.

I will, in a minute.

As the Lord Advocate said in her letter to me, in those four cases there was a plea of guilty when the people concerned were obviously innocent—a plea of convenience, it would be called—and it is obvious that those victims pleaded guilty in order to get a way out of prosecution.

Exactly. If I may paraphrase, the dogs in the street knew that there was a sniff around Horizon, as did Computer Weekly in 2009, so why was that not enough at least to halt cases at that time?

I maintain that, if the Crown Office had stuck to its recommendation and its officials had even contacted Second Sight forensic accountants, they would at least have had a conversation, as I have done in my office, with Ron Warmington, the director of Second Sight, who said that Second Sight could have explained why it said in its report that there were bugs and defects and that 76 branches had unreliable accounts.

I have other questions about the four cases that were proceeded with using Horizon, where there was a plea of guilty.

I agree that that is a central question that still needs to be answered by the Crown Office. Why was that so, when it was clear that the evidence that was used as corroboration might have been unsafe? That is where the duty of disclosure should have applied. We require answers to that.

However, in cases in which no actual money was missing in the first place, as a layperson, I ask the question: were bank accounts checked? Why was it only the Horizon system that was relied on, because, in most cases of fraud, it is a requirement to find where the money went?

Crucially, contractually, sub-postmasters were obliged to make good any losses. Given that knowledge, surely any prosecutor would ask what the motive is of a sub-postmaster who is contractually obliged to make good any losses. That is the questionable bit when it comes to looking at whether the evidence was there.

I acknowledge and applaud the Scottish Crown Office, which has now stripped the Post Office of its status as a reporting body, but many other reporting bodies report to the Crown Office. It is vitally important that lessons are learned here, because it is not inconceivable that other reporting bodies are relying on poor evidence. We need to be sure about that.

Scottish Labour supports the Government in its emergency legislation to ensure that all victims are exonerated. We will never be able to put those lives back together, but, in our dealings, we can record this as a monumental miscarriage of justice with breathtaking levels of cover-up and cruelty beyond comprehension. We will stand up today and do what we think is right, and get those who should be answerable for this dreadful situation held to account.

Jamie Greene is correct. That is why Scottish Labour believes that we need answers, that we should be debating the matter here in Scotland and that the legislation should be dealt with here in Scotland. The system that was set up to help sub-postmasters to run efficient businesses was the one that wrongly criminalised them.

Maggie Chapman is right to say that both Parliaments must act with emergency legislation, but it will require considerable effort to find all the sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted. We knew following a court case in 2019 that there were unsafe convictions, so I wonder whether the Scottish Government raised any questions in 2019 about what action should have been taken following the court case to find out whether there were unsafe convictions in Scotland. Given the earlier discussion about the duty of disclosure, I wonder whether the cabinet secretary could deal with that. I know that she was not in post at the time, but the question is pertinent.

The emergency bill will be important, but it is useful to understand how many people might benefit, and to know about the pipeline of cases that exist. I will talk about a case that I mentioned to the cabinet secretary—that of Ravinder Singh Naga, who pled guilty when he was innocent, in relation to the case of a Post Office that it was ordered be shut in 2009 and which is still closed. He appeared alongside his mother. He was not employed in the post office, but helped his mother in his spare time. However, to save her, he pled guilty even though he was innocent and was given a community sentence. He sadly contracted tuberculosis and almost died. He is as much a victim as anyone else. I plead with the Scottish Government to consider how we could amend the bill to ensure that it covers him.

It would be helpful if we worked together on the issue and shared with each other all the amendments as early as possible, because we want Thursday to go smoothly. However, Michael Marra and Katy Clark are absolutely right about the institutional cover-up, the lies and the deceit by not just one official, but several among the top brass in Post Office Ltd. The star witness is appearing tomorrow for the next three days: the scandal will be even deeper than it is right now.

Alasdair Allan highlighted the compensation failures. That issue must be addressed and rightly so. Scottish Labour supports that being done as a UK bill.

Let us work together to make sure that such an injustice never happens again. Let us get the bill right, ensure that the convictions are overturned and track down as many people as possible who can benefit from the emergency legislation.

Thank you.

It is when a case goes to the procurator fiscal that it can take up to six months, although the times are getting better.

I am thinking that complaints of assault against police officers must be quite common.

We heard from the PIRC yesterday that it has a target of up to 90 days, and it seems to be meeting that.

Good morning. Thank you for your evidence; it has been helpful to hear it.

You have partially answered some of my questions, which are around time limits and getting the balance right. The committee does not have a lot of information about the categories of complaints against police officers—we are a wee bit in the dark—but there are two scenarios that I can think of. If we insisted that the Government attach time limits, would that undermine the provisions in the bill?

The idea of extending proceedings against former police officers up to 12 months, or beyond if the PIRC thought it was proportionate to do so, seems to be generally welcomed. However, those police officers might have sought other employment and gone on to new lives during that time. Notwithstanding what you said about the possible complexity of the cases, would setting some time limits undermine the new provision?