Post Office only agreed to accept reduced charges in some cases if accused accepted ‘nothing wrong’ with Horizon – UK politics live

Key events

Near the end of his evidence session Stephen Bradshaw, the Post Office investigator, was asked about a claim from Rita Threlfall, a branch manager he investigated.

In a statement read out to the inquiry Threlfall, who uses a wheelchair, said:

Upon arrival, they left my husband and me in a hallway. We asked for a chair and never received one. I ended up having to sit down on the stairs. The interview room was up the stairs. I told them there was no way I could make it up the stairs. In order to make it to the interview room, I was placed in a tiny parcel lift.

Bradshaw said this was not true. He told the inquiry:

I can only keep repeating that it is not a small parcel lift. It is wheelchair accessible.

At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry the final lawyer to question Stephen Bradshaw was Christopher Jacobs, representing another group of sub-post office operators.

He challenged Bradshaw over a document relating to one prosecution in 2010 where Bradshaw said he wanted the prosecution to go ahead because “the integrity of the Horizon system was in question”.

Statement from Bradshaw Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry

Jacobs said this showed that Bradshaw was actively trying to discredit the campaign by post officer operators at the time who were arguing the Horizon system was flawed and leading to miscarriages of justice.

Bradshaw said this was another example of “flamboyant” language. (He used the term earlier – see 11.57am.)

The hearing has now ended.

Bradshaw accepts Post Office’s investigations department ‘drenched in information’ about complaints with Horizon

Edward Henry KC asked Stephen Bradshaw to confirm that his department was “drenched in information” about complaints with Horizon. He said:

Mr Bradshaw, contrary to what you say, you and your department, the security department, were drenched in information that Horizon wasn’t working from the very beginning.

Bradshaw replied: “The information came through, yes.”

And Henry continued:

That information came from scores and scores, and ultimately hundreds and hundreds, of innocent subpostmasters who were suffering an epidemic of shortfalls.

Bradshaw replied: “Yes.”

Updated at 11.33 EST

Post Office used threats of theft charges as ‘nasty crowbar’ to get people to plead guilty to false accounting, KC claims at inquiry

Back at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Stephen Bradshaw, the former Post Office investigator, is now being questioned by counsel for core participants.

Edward Henry KC, who is representing some sub-post office operatives, put it to Bradshaw that people were accused of theft, even when there was no evidence for that, as a tactic to get them to plead guilty to false accounting. He said the Post Office was using theft as “a nasty jemmy or crowbar to leverage pleas to false accounting”.

Bradshaw said those were matters for the lawyers.

Updated at 11.21 EST

Post Office only agreed to accept reduced charges in some cases if accused accepted ‘nothing wrong’ with Horizon, inquiry told

Back at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Julian Blake, counsel for the inquiry, asks about another prosecution of a post officer operator. He shows the inquiry a document showing the Post Office indicated that it would accept a guilty plea on a less serious charge provided the defendant agreed to accept that there was “nothing wrong with Horizon”.

‘Plea bargain’ document. Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry

Blake asks if this was acceptable.

Stephen Bradshaw, the Post Office investigator giving evidence, at first avoids the question, saying this may reflect what had been said earlier.

Sir Wyn Williams, the chair, says it’s a simple question. Was it appropriate?

Bradshaw replies: “Probably not.”

When Blake presses Bradshaw on this, he appears to retract at a little. It would not be acceptable “with today’s knowledge”, Bradshaw says.

Q: What about the knowledge you had then?

Bradshaw says that is the way cases happened then. The instructions came from solicitors.

Blake says there is evidence of this approach in two cases. Whose idea was it?

Not mine, says Bradshaw.

Q: Was this coming from the Post Office?

Bradshaw says the lawyers took the key decisions. He says those decisions were made “at a higher level than me”.

Updated at 10.44 EST

Bradshaw declines to express regret about Horizon reliability evidence being withheld from defence in false accounting case

Back at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Stephen Bradshaw, a Post Office investigator, is now being asked about a case involving Angela Sefton and Anne Nield. They were convicted of false accounting in 2013 but cleared a decade later. Bradshaw was the investigator.

Julian Blake, counsel for the inquiry, asks about a description of the women facing investigators at the post offfice. It says there were tears.

Description of Sefton/Neild case. Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry

Bradshaw says he does not remember there being tears. He says the women “didn’t seem particularly upset”.

He claims his inquiry in this case was about money not being deposited. He argues that this was not a Horizon problem.

Blake puts it to him that problems with the Horizon system were the underlying cause of what went wrong. Bradshaw disputes this.

Blake reads extracts from the defence’s case in Sefton’s trial. These show that the defence did make problems with Horizon an issue.

Sefton’s defence statement. Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry

He also shows an extract from the defence statement in Neild’s case, and he says both show that problems with the Horizon were central to their defence. He says these claims show why evidence relating to the unreliability of Horizon should have been disclosed in the case.

Bradshaw continues to insist that the case wasn’t mainly about Horizon. It was about deposits not being credited with an account. Horizon was a “secondary issue”, he says.

He also argues that what was relevant was ultimately a matter for the lawyers. He was there to gather evidence, he says.

Blake shows a letter showing the Post Office’s lawyers decided not to disclose material relating to concerns about Horizon.

Lawyers’ letter regarding disclosure. Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry

Asked if he agreed with this, Bradshaw says it was not a matter for him. He says he thought you should disclose what you have, but it was a matter for the lawyers.

Q: But you are the prosecuting authority?

Bradshaw says he was not the prosecuting authority. He says he gathered information and handed it to the lawyers.

Q: Do you have any further reflections on this?

Bradshaw says this case was primarily about the suppression of cash deposit slips.

Q: So we can take it you have no further reflections on this?

Bradshaw replies: “If you wish to take it that way, yes.”

Updated at 09.53 EST

Back at the inquiry Stephen Bradshaw is now being asked about the prosecution of Khayyam Ishaq, a post office operator. Julian Blake, counsel for the inquiry, asks Bradshaw about the prosecution case. It included the prosection asserting that there was “no fault in the [Horizon] system at all”.

Extract from prosecution case Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry

Asked if he was happy about that claim, Bradshaw says that that was the claim being stated by the lawyers.

Blake puts it to him that this was 2013, and that at this point Bradshaw was aware of allegations about problems with the Horizon system.

Bradshaw says he was not in court for the prosecution’s opening statement because he was a witness.

The hearing breaks for lunch.

Bradshaw says he’s ‘small cog’ as he suggests lawyers to blame for evidence about Horizon flaws not being disclosed

Back at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Stephen Bradshaw, the Post Office investigator, is being asked about a trial where the defence asked for the disclosure of evidence about wider problems with the Horizon system. Julian Blake, counsel for the inquiry, highlights various documents showing that Bradshaw was asked for information but gave little or nothing in response. Bradshaw repeatedly says that he relied on the Post Office’s lawyers to decide what should be disclosed. “I’m a small cog in this,” he says.

Asked if he ever had concerns when he realised the lawyers were refusing to hand over more documentation about wider problems with the Horizon system, Bradshaw says he cannot remember what was said.

But he repeats the point about how he viewed this as an issue for the lawyers, even though he was the disclosure officer in the case.

Updated at 08.03 EST

Back at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry Stephen Bradshaw is being asked about what he did to establish that the computer system was working properly.

Julian Blake, counsel for the inquiry, shows an extract from a report by Bradshaw into a particular inquiry where Bradshaw said he was not aware of any problems with Horizon’s “product integrity”.

Extract from investigation report. Photograph: Post Office inquiry/Post Office Horizon IT inquiry

And Blake brings up this extract from Bradshaw’s witness statement, where he implies it was not for him to question the integrity of the Horizon system.

Extract from Stephen Bradshaw’s witness statement. Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry

Blake questions why Bradshaw was not more sceptical of Horizon, given that by this point doubts about the system were being raised.

Bradshaw says in the investigation referred to, Horizon was not the issue.

Updated at 07.16 EST

In the inquiry hearing Stephen Bradshaw, the Post Office investigator, defended saying that he wanted a particular case to go to trial to defend the integrity of the Horizon IT system.

Julian Blake, counsel for the inquiry, quoted from Bradshaw’s self-appraisal in the case of Jacqueline McDonald. (See 11.12am and 11.49am.) Bradshaw said:

The offender pleaded guilty to false accounting but would not accept theft. I challenged the recommendations of the barrister and persuaded him that a trial would be necessary, as the reason given by the defendant, Horizon integrity, would have a wider impact on the business if a trial did not go ahead.

Blake then asked:

It seems, certainly from your own feedback, from your own appraisal, that you saw it as in some way career-boosting to press on with Ms McDonald’s case because of problems with the Horizon system having a wider impact on the business. Do you not accept that?

Bradshaw replied:

The issue would been discussed with the prosecution barrister. As you’re well aware, when you’re filling in one-to-ones, there’s always a flamboyant way of putting the words across.

Bradshaw also denied suggestions that his bonuses were related to getting convictions in cases like this.

Updated at 11.44 EST

Post Office investigator made accused post office operator think she was only person with missing money, inquiry told

At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry extracts were shown from a statement made by Jacqueline McDonald, who claimed she was “bullied” by Stephen Bradshaw during an investigation into her alleged £50,000 shortfall. In the statement, she said:

Shortly after I had been audited and my post office was taken away from me, I read an article in a magazine which highlighted other people who have suffered or [were] about to suffer the same hell I was going through. I then got in touch with the writer of the article who then put me in touch with the JFSA (Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance).

This was a very big surprise to me as I was led to believe by the investigator for the POL Stephen Bradshaw that I was the only one in this position and this has never happened before.

Stephen Bradshaw is a liar and he knew the whole time as I am friends with another person he has prosecuted that was a member of the JFSA. It is just unbelievable how I was made to feel like I was the only one and it made me isolated and paranoid.

Asked about this Bradshaw said: “I’ve never said that to her. That’s incorrect, that statement.”

Updated at 07.40 EST