Post Office inquiry chair warns of ‘criminal sanction’ over disclosure failures
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Failing to provide evidence about Post Office workers wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting may lead to imprisonment, the chairman of the inquiry into the scandal has warned.
The Post Office has identified a total of 700 convictions of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses (SPMs) in cases it prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 in which Horizon computer system evidence might have featured.
In December 2019, a High Court judge ruled the system contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were in fact caused by it.
Since then, many SPMs have had their criminal convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting overturned.
Sir Wyn Williams, chair of an inquiry into the debacle, accused the Post Office of “grossly unsatisfactory” and “significant” failings to disclose important and necessary documents.
On Friday, he announced all future requests for evidence will be under Section 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005, which “carries a threat of a criminal sanction”, including a sentence of up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment.
Sir Wyn noted that in oral submissions on behalf of SPMs, there was no attempt to disguise the view held by many that the Post Office disclosure failings are deliberate.
He added: “It does not surprise me that this is the attitude of many former sub-postmasters.
“After all, a failure to disclose crucial information about Horizon was a central finding leading to the quashing of criminal convictions in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) and the Crown Court.”
Regular discrete hearings about the handing over of evidence will be held during the remainder of the inquiry, Sir Wyn also said.
He went on: “It would be remiss of me to fail to guard against the possibility that there are those who are engaged in the process of disclosure of documents on behalf of the Post Office who are unwilling or unable to comply strictly with requests for disclosure of documents made of them by the inquiry.”
The inquiry resumes on July 26 to look at action taken against a sub-postmaster by the Post Office.
