Ex-Post Office lawyer Jarnail Singh denies cover up

That was quite a day. Exchanges were volatile and accusations often damning.

So, before we head off, let's take a moment to recap the key lines in the evidence of former Post Office lawyer Jarnail Singh:

• Inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC put it to Singh over and over that he was involved in a cover-up to keep Horizon bugs a secret. Singh denied this repeatedly
• He was also asked several times to admit what he knew about the bugs and when, but denied knowledge of any faults prior to 2013
• The inquiry was shown a 2010 report detailing bugs that Singh saved and printed out, and he was accused of telling a "big fat lie" to the inquiry about his knowledge of bugs

• Singh offered an apology to Seema Misra, whose case he was involved in prosecuting. "I admit mistakes were made and I am sorry that Mrs Misra had suffered," he said
• As questioning turned to the shredding of documents, Singh's head fell into his hands, and he was instructed to sit straight and speak clearly, but he returned to that position a number of times through the rest of his questioning
• The inquiry saw emails that showed Singh advised against disclosing a report finding no evidence of theft in the case of Jo Hamilton to the Post Office mediation group

BBCCopyright: BBC

"This is making me more and more angry, I cannot believe it," Seema Misra tells the BBC, having sat through Jarnail Singh's evidence to the inquiry today.

As a reminder, Singh was involved in the prosecution and wrongful imprisonment of Misra in 2010. She was pregnant at the time.

Speaking to BBC's business correspondent Emma Simpson, Misra says: "It looks like there was a massive cover up. It was all in their control but they decided not to disclose" what they knew about the Horizon bugs, she says.

"When we were fighting, we thought we would find some justice. But they didn't care about innocent people going to jail. They were only concerned about Horizon's name...and their ego."

When asked if she believed what Singh said this morning, she says: "A big no."

BBCCopyright: BBC

We mentioned the case of former sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton a little earlier - well she's in the inquiry room today (as she often is) and her legal team were the last ones to ask questions before the inquiry closed for the day.

One of her lawyers, Angela Patrick, took Singh through bits of his evidence that she wants clarification on.

She began by taking Singh through an application for a public interest immunity certificate to prevent disclosure to the defence of the fact a Second Sight report was to be presented to Parliament and that report contained references to bugs in Horizon.

Patrick asks Singh what the basis for the immunity certificate "was to be", to which he says he can't recall and that the decision would've been made by people above him.

"I don't know the ins and outs," Singh repeatedly says, distancing himself from the application and its impact.

The entire time they're talking, Jo Hamilton keeps eye contact with Singh.

The inquiry is now seeing a long email exchange sent by Singh in 2014, which discusses the information and findings about Horizon and whether they should be shared with the Post Office and Cartwright King solicitors.

In one email, Singh writes that if there are any concerning findings, they should be flagged to him for consideration.

Beer suggests Singh's concern was if experts found uncomfortable things about Post Office prosecutions, they either be told to stop looking or their appointment would be terminated, but Singh denies, saying that it was not the intention.

Beer insists that it was their real approach at the time that the Post Office did not wish to discover anything wrong with Horizon, and they would terminate the appointment if anyone finds out the hard truths.

Singh says this wasn't the case.

Jarnail Singh was again accused of being part of a ‘’cover-up’’ by lead counsel Jason Beer KC. This time was to do with the decision to hold back documents from the Post Office mediation group.

The group brought together MPs who were trying to get help for their sub-postmaster constituents and senior managers at the Post Office.

The Inquiry was shown an email written by Jarnail Singh in May 2014 where he said it was right to exclude from the mediation a report written by the Post Office investigator in former sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton’s case.

As we just mentioned in an earlier post, Singh wrote that the officer "was unable to find any evidence of theft, or cash in hand figures having been deliberately inflated’’.

The exchange that followed between Singh and Beer bordered on the farcical as Singh kept trying to distance himself from what he had written in the email by saying that he hadn’t read the inspector's report in Hamilton’s case.

Beer kept putting to him that he must have read it. Eventually, the Chair, Sir Wyn Williams, interjected and pointed out that Singh’s email had begun ‘’having looked at the papers’’.

At this point Singh was forced to concede that he had in fact seen the report. Watching on throughout was Jo Hamilton. She looked bemused. Her conviction for false accounting was finally overturned in 2021.

Proceedings have been slightly stalled as a tense exchange breaks out between Singh and Beer now.

Beer begins by asking why, if reports showed any kind of weakness existed in Jo Hamilton's case, were they not disclosed?

Singh attributes this to a "mistake", but Beer doesn't accept that.

"This is part of a cover-up, isn't it?" Beer says.

"No, this is not part of a cover-up," Singh replies.

It's at this moment that Sir Wyn Williams intervenes once again to remind Singh (and the inquiry) that the email being dissected by the prosecution begins with Singh saying "having looked at the papers" - suggesting this means that there was a file on the Hamilton case that Singh had in fact read.

It seems to be a moot point, as Singh once again denies being fully across the case.

There is a long silence before Beer seems to give up, telling the chair he doesn't think he can move any further on this point with Singh.

We're back to discussing the issue around disclosure and whether Singh and the Post Office were involved in a cover-up of evidence - and it's another head in hands moment for Singh.

Singh wrote in an email in 2014 that it was the "correct decision" by the Post Office not to disclose investigating officers' reports, and said had they been disclosed in the case of ex-sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton, it would've been "an extremely dangerous approach".

Jo Hamilton, the mother-of-two, was prosecuted for a shortfall of £36,000 at her Post Office in South Warnborough, Hampshire in 2006 and was persuaded to plead guilty to a charge of false accounting.

The same email shows Singh quoting the report into Hamilton's case - which says investigators have been "unable to find any evidence of theft, or cash in hand figures been deliberately inflated".

Singh tells the inquiry that he denies that he had read the investigation report into allegations against Hamilton, and was therefore unaware of the faults in her case.

Beer pushes back against this, and says it seems he'd read the report because he quoted directly from it, adding it's there "in black and white".

The chair of the inquiry, Sir Wyn Williams, then intervenes to say Singh must have read the report or been told verbatim its contents, to which Singh apologises and says he hasn't read it but he obviously knew about it.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

BBCCopyright: BBC

The inquiry is then shown a witness statement from former Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw from the case against sub-postmistress Kim Wylie 2012.

A section of it uses the same wording, "word for word", as Beer puts it, as the "story" that we outlined in our last post that Singh wrote and was agreed upon by the Post Office.

It's important here to know that witness statements are supposed to be written in the witness's own words.

Singh says this shouldn't have happened, and denies sending Bradshaw the wording to use in his witness statement.

Beer then asks how the wording has ended up there.

Singh replies that he doesn't know and hadn't seen that until now.

As a reminder, Bradshaw was involved in the criminal investigation of nine sub-postmasters and told the inquiry when he faced them in February that he and colleagues did not behave like "mafia gangsters" towards wrongly accused sub-postmasters.

An email chain from 2012 is now being shown to the inquiry, in which Jarnail Singh and other Post Office lawyers attempted to figure out how to put into words the appointment of Second Sight project, the forensic accountants, to look at Horizon issues.

At one point, the Post Office's head of media and PR replied on email to say this text would "find its way into the media" and so they needed to "get the message across from the start that we have full confidence in the robustness of the Horizon system".

Beer asks, "why was the head of PR and media at the Post Office involved in the creation of a 'story' that would be told defence solicitors" about Horizon and Second Sight's involvement?

"I didn't know they were going to be involved," Singh responds.

"All I wanted was to get the general counsel and head of legal to help me with it but they referred it because they were the experts. That's the way they did things."

Post Office InquiryCopyright: Post Office Inquiry

We begin the afternoon session remaining on the topic we left off - instances in which Singh has said prosecutions protected the Post Office brand a reputation.

In one email from 2014, Singh advises that "immediate intervention and suspension" would be justified in cases of shortfalls of £20,000-£30,000.

Singh says it's not his personal view, but part of his role to give advice to the business.

We and the inquiry are back from lunch - with former senior Post Office lawyer Jarnail Singh continuing to be questioned by inquiry counsel Jason Beer.

There'll be the usual live text updates right here and remember you can follow live by tapping Play at the top of the page.

A clearly exasperated Jason Beer KC, suffering from flu today, has made it clear on a couple of occasions that he’s not at all impressed with the way Jarnail Singh is approaching this evidence session.

“I wasn’t aware of it” and “I wasn’t involved in it” seem to be his stock answers, but Beer finally lost patience when Singh mentioned, unprompted, that he hadn’t met Second Sight, the forensic accountancy firm looking into Horizon bugs.

“Mr Singh, you’re answering questions that haven’t been asked," Beer said.

And then a little later, Singh gave the answer: “Whatever you’re suggesting is not true….I don’t know about that”.

“I haven’t suggested anything yet,” said Beer.

“Is that your default position? When coming to give evidence in answer to the questions from counsel to the inquiry, if he suggests things, they’re not true?” Beer added.

“Well, ok. Make the suggestion then”, Singh responded, sheepishly.

Jarnail Singh was given a self-incrimination warning before he started his evidence this morning.

Jason Beer KC accused him of telling a “big fat lie” about his evidence: Singh says he can’t remember reading or printing out material about the bug that was emailed to him on the eve of the Seema Misra case.

This information should’ve been disclosed in the trial starting the following week.

We were told it was also saved on his hard drive but he insisted he didn’t know how to do this.

"You’re not a details man are you," says Beer.

Singh said he didn’t come here to lie: “There is no way I would cover up anything of that magnitude.”

But his credibility, yet again, is being seriously tested with the paper trail of emails and documents that are being thrown at him today.

Post Office Horizon IT InquiryCopyright: Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry

A June 2012 email, from Singh to former Post Office general counsel Susan Crichton, continues to be looked at - it says that the decision not to prosecute a former sub-postmaster cannot be kept secret as it may open the Post Office up to criticism.

Beer asks Singh if this is really how he felt about the prosecution of postmasters, whether this email is a “window" into his mind.

Singh says it's not and that Crichton had asked him for general advice relating to the risks posed for the Post Office and he had looked at the situation from a business lens.

Moving on - "Was it important to the Post Office that there should be no public blaming of the Horizon system,” Beer asks, to which Singh, again, says no.

Beer then pulls up emails from Cartwright King Solicitors and asks Singh why it was a necessary part of the guilty plea that the defendant does not challenge the integrity of the horizon system.

That had been the established position of the PO or the Royal Mail Group Limited, Singh replies.

The hearing returns to a 2012 email from Singh to ex-top Post Office lawyer Susan Crichton, discussing sub-postmaster Tracey Merritt's case.

Merritt, from Somerset, was prosecuted for theft but the charges against her were dropped.

The email reads a decision to prosecute will undermine faith in Horizon and may send a "green light" to defendants to get a hold of their MP and end in capitulation.

Beer asks him why he thinks stopping one case might result in capitulation.

"I don't know why I thought that," Singh says.

Beer asks if he meant it would be the Post Office capitulating.

"I don't know, Sir," says Singh.

Asked again there is a long silence from Singh.

Inquiry counsel Jason Beer asks Singh whether he received instruction from senior Post Office managers to protect the business's brand or reputation or that of Horizon.

Singh says no and claims he had limited contact with senior members in the business.

"Why was it important to send a message to sub-postmasters that Post Offices cannot be used as a bank?" Beer asks.

Singh again struggles to answer this in a straightforward manner, but essentially says those were not his words.

Was this a commonly held view, that sub-postmasters used the Post Office as a bank, Beer asks - to which Singh says no. He adds it was a naïve thing to say.

Post Office Horizon IT InquiryCopyright: Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry

Jason Beer KC, inquiry counsel, now shows an email sent by Singh to Susan Crichton, former general counsel to the Post Office, in 2012. In it, the pair discuss the prosecutions of sub-postmasters.

Crichton is seen asking whether there are any risks if they decide to not go ahead with cases.

"Did you see prosecutions as a way of maintaining faith in Horizon," Beer asks, pointing to the email that Singh wrote. "No," answers Singh.

"Then why did you write that?" Beer asks. Singh says he doesn't know why, adding: "All I was thinking was you have got to have a consistent approach."

Beer insists, saying "You are dealing with a separate issue here, you are saying in the email that if you don't prosecute it would undermine faith in Horizon."

"So you think prosecutions were a way of maintaining faith in Horizon?" Beer asks again.

Singh says "No".

Just before the break, Beer continued to grill Singh on document shredding. The inquiry counsel asks whether anything was done to treat this as a serious matter - other than imparting information to Simon Clark, a barrister and senior counsel at law firm Cartwright King at the time.

"Not to my knowledge, no," Singh says, prompting Beer to suggests there was a fundamental misunderstanding of the rules of disclosure at the Post Office.

“Maybe I should have done more,” Singh concedes, adding that he “felt annoyed with myself”.

“It’s scary that something like that can happen, especially when you’ve been advised on it."

The inquiry is now breaking for lunch, with the afternoon session to resume from 14:00 BST.

We have a few more exchanges to catch you up on that occurred in the minutes before the break was called, so stick with us.