Barrister who advised Post Office says it defended Horizon IT with ‘religious panic’

Simon Clarke gave evidence to the Horizon IT inquiry on Thursday – PA

A barrister who advised the Post Office has told the inquiry into its IT system scandal that staff there defended Horizon with “an almost religious panic” and has claimed information was deliberately withheld from him.

Simon Clarke told the Horizon IT inquiry he was “misled and deceived” throughout the scandal by Jarnail Singh and Rodric Williams, Post Office lawyers, particularly in the case of Seema Misra, the jailed sub-postmistress.

Mrs Misra, who began running a branch in West Byfleet, Surrey, in 2005, was handed a 15-month prison sentence while eight weeks pregnant in November 2010 after being accused of stealing £74,000.

Mr Clarke also described an instruction to shred meeting minutes about Horizon bugs allegedly given by John Scott, then the company’s head of security, as a “deliberate back-covering exercise”.

Mr Clarke worked as a barrister for law firm Cartwright King at the time he advised the Post Office – and said he told the company to cease prosecutions after learning that leading Horizon engineer Gareth Jenkins had not disclosed knowledge about bugs in the system.

More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted as a result of the Horizon scandal, which saw the software mis-record shortfalls on their accounts as a result of bugs that Post Office bosses had repeatedly insisted were not there.

Seema Misra was pregnant when she was wrongfully imprisoned for fraud – Lucy North

Mr Clarke also criticised the culture at the business during his evidence to the inquiry on Thursday, saying Post Office staff “appeared to work in silos, no one department either communicating meaningfully with, or listening to, the other” and that there appeared to be a fanatical defence of Horizon.

In his witness statement, he wrote: “Looking back, I now see what appears to have been three strands of thought within the Post Office on the topic of disclosure.

“The first strand amounted to an article of faith: ‘Horizon is both robust and reliable – there is nothing wrong with it and if Horizon says money is missing, then it is missing.’

“The second strand considered that the cost of providing disclosure was prohibitive and should always be discouraged.

“The third strand, I felt, arose out of an almost religious panic: ‘Horizon must not be seen to have been impugned.’”

Information ‘deliberately withheld’

During an exchange with chairman Sir Wyn Williams, Mr Clarke told the inquiry it was now his view that the prosecution file in the case of Mrs Misra was “deliberately withheld” from him by the Post Office.

Mr Clarke told the inquiry that he was never shown the prosecution file on Mrs Misra’s case, despite asking for it on a number of occasions.

Sir Wyn then asked if Mr Clarke believed he was misled “on a wider basis”. “Yes,” said Mr Clarke. He added: “Post Office repeated the protestations that since day dot there was nothing wrong with Horizon when they clearly knew that there were issues with Horizon.”

Addressing the instruction allegedly given by Mr Scott to shred minutes of meetings about Horizon bugs, Mr Clarke said it was not due to incompetence.

He said: “This instruction was not, in my then view, an act of incompetence on the part of John Scott or the Post Office. He was a former police officer with experience of the criminal investigative process.”

The inquiry continues.

Play The Telegraph’s brilliant range of Puzzles – and feel brighter every day. Train your brain and boost your mood with PlusWord, the Mini Crossword, the fearsome Killer Sudoku and even the classic Cryptic Crossword.