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An exterior lawyer suggested the Publish Workplace to take away apologies from letters despatched to put up workplace operators and “preserve a extra chilly, procedural strategy”, a public inquiry has heard.
The inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal was instructed that Andrew Parsons, a associate at regulation agency Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD) who suggested the Publish Workplace for greater than seven years, wrote that apologising to the operators could be “admitting some extent of culpability”.
The inquiry is inspecting how lots of of people had been pursued and prosecuted for greater than a decade by the Publish Workplace over alleged monetary shortfalls of their department accounts. It has since emerged the problems had been attributable to bugs within the state-owned physique’s Horizon IT system.
The inquiry heard that, in 2013, Parsons had reviewed drafts of letters as a result of be despatched out by the Publish Workplace to various department operators. The people had recognized monetary discrepancies of their department accounts proven on the Horizon IT system which the Publish Workplace had agreed to right.
In an e-mail to Publish Workplace executives despatched in June 2013, Parsons wrote: “I don’t assume we must always apologise within the letters. I do know this sounds laborious however in apologising we’re admitting some extent of culpability. I believe we must always preserve a extra chilly, procedural strategy to correcting what’s successfully an accounting irregularity.”
On Thursday, Parsons was requested by Julian Blake, counsel to the inquiry, what the issue was legally in making an apology.
“Typically apologies could be interpreted as admissions,” Parsons instructed the inquiry. “I believe it’s fairly frequent for attorneys in letters to think about whether or not an apology is suitable or not. For my part, it leads folks to think about there was an admission of authorized fault when actually the Publish Workplace’s view was, sure, there had been an issue, however it had been corrected.”
Parsons was additionally questioned by the inquiry about one other e-mail, despatched in 2016, during which his regulation agency had urged the Publish Workplace to “attempt to suppress” disclosure of a key doc for “so long as doable”.
At the moment, attorneys appearing for the department operators led by Alan Bates, whose marketing campaign for justice was dramatised by ITV this 12 months, had been asking the Publish Workplace for disclosure of its investigation pointers within the early phases of their excessive court docket authorized battle.
The e-mail was despatched in October 2016 by a junior lawyer at WBD. Parsons agreed that he had checked her draft e-mail and inserted a paragraph during which he spoke about “in the end withholding a key doc”.
His addition learn: “For now we’ll do what we are able to to keep away from disclosure of those pointers and take a look at to take action in a approach that appears legit. Nevertheless, we’re in the end withholding a key doc and this may occasionally entice some criticism … we’ll undertake this strategy till such time as we sense the criticism is changing into critical.”
Parsons instructed the inquiry it was a “very poorly worded e-mail and I remorse sending it”.
He mentioned the junior solicitor “had despatched a draft for my approval earlier that day which didn’t comprise this last paragraph. I responded to her including it into her draft, although my objective in doing so seems to have merely been to clarify what motion we required from POL [Post Office Ltd] on this level.”
He added there have been “substantive legit causes for resisting disclosure of the investigation pointers at this early stage”.
Parsons was additionally questioned about exchanges between himself and Rodric Williams, an inside Publish Workplace lawyer, about doable responses to an version of the BBC’s Panorama programme in 2015 which had raised questions concerning the Horizon IT system. The documentary had featured the instances of convicted put up workplace operators Noel Thomas, Seema Misra and Jo Hamilton, who had been all exonerated in 2021.
On the time, Parsons wrote that his most well-liked choice had been for the Publish Workplace to do nothing and await the choice of the Prison Circumstances Overview Fee about doable miscarriages of justice – or alternatively it may go on “full assault.”
He mentioned within the e-mail, which was learn out to the inquiry, that the Publish Workplace may “begin attacking the postmasters’ credibility by calling out Thomas, Misra and Hamilton because the liars and criminals that they’re”. Parsons instructed the inquiry: “On reflection that language is simply too sturdy.”
Individually, on Thursday, a Scottish regulation which can routinely exonerate Scots wrongly convicted as a part of the Publish Workplace Horizon scandal obtained royal assent and can come into drive on Friday.
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