Horizon inquiry: Post Office fraud investigator denies team ‘behaved like mafia gangsters’
A Post Office fraud investigator today denied he and other investigators “behaved like mafia gangsters” – as he faced questions at the inquiry into the Horizon IT system.
Stephen Bradshaw, a Post Office employee for more than 45 years, was involved in the criminal investigation of nine sub-postmasters.
During more than seven hours of questioning at the inquiry in London, a bullish Mr Bradshaw…
• Denied he and other investigators “behaved like mafia gangsters”;
• Refuted claims he was a bully and called a sub-postmistress a “b****h” on the phone;
• Said he was “not technically minded” when asked why he did not question Horizon system;
• Told the inquiry he was “no expert” on the system, but had working knowledge;
• Said statement he signed saying Post Office had “absolute confidence” in Horizon was not written by him.
Throughout his witness statement, submitted earlier to the inquiry, Mr Bradshaw said his investigations had been conducted in a “professional” manner.
He also said in the statement: “I refute the allegation that I am a liar.”
‘Not technically minded’
Mr Bradshaw, a witness in the inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal, began giving evidence on Thursday morning.
His evidence was given at the start of phase 4 of the inquiry, which has been hearing witnesses since February 2022 and has already heard from many of the victims.
Mr Bradshaw was involved in the criminal investigation of nine sub-postmasters, including Lisa Brennan, a former counter clerk at a post office in Huyton, near Liverpool, who was falsely accused of stealing £3,000 in 2003. She was one of the first witnesses to the inquiry.
Stephen Bradshaw gives evidence to the inquiry
Mr Bradshaw was questioned by counsel to the inquiry, Julian Blake, about why he did not question the reliability of the Horizon system.
He acknowledged he was aware of newspaper reports of technical bugs but said: “I’m not technically minded with that. I would expect that to come from the people above.
“If there was an issue, I would expect Fujitsu [the maker of Horizon] to inform the Post Office and the Post Office to let us know what the issues are.”
Asked how early on he was aware of Horizon being an issue, he said 2010, but “some may have mentioned it earlier”.
‘Investigations done correctly’
Mr Blake also asked Mr Bradshaw if, over the past 20 years, he “may have been involved in what has been described as one of the largest miscarriages of justice in British history?”.
Mr Bradshaw said he had “no reason to suspect at the time” that there was anything wrong with the Horizon system, because his team had “not been involved”.
“The investigations were done correctly,” he said.
“The investigations were done at the time, no problems were indicated by anybody that there were issues with the Horizon system.”
‘You have told me a pack of lies’
Mr Bradshaw had previously been accused by Merseyside sub-postmistress Rita Threlfall of asking her for the colour of her eyes and what jewellery she wore, before saying: “Good, so we’ve got a description of you for when they come”, during her interview under caution in August 2010.
Another sub-postmistress, Jacqueline McDonald, claimed she was “bullied” by Mr Bradshaw during an investigation into a shortfall of more than £94,000.
In her interview with Mr Bradshaw, which was read to the inquiry, Ms McDonald was accused by the investigator of telling him a “pack of lies”.
The exchange between Ms McDonald and Mr Bradshaw, read by Mr Blake, included the investigator saying: “Would you like to tell me what happened to the money?”
Ms McDonald replies: “I don’t know where the money is I’ve told you.”
Mr Bradshaw continues: “You have told me a pack of lies.”
Ms McDonald says: “No I haven’t told you a pack of lies because I haven’t stolen a penny.”
Mr Blake said the witness’s words sounded “somewhat like language you might see in a 1970s television detective show”.
Read more from Sky News:
Investigators ‘offered bonuses’ to prosecute sub-postmasters
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Responding to Ms McDonald’s allegations of his aggressive behaviour in his witness statement, Mr Bradshaw said: “I also refute the claim that Jacqueline McDonald was bullied.
“From the moment we arrived, the auditor was already on site, conversations were initially (held) with Mr McDonald, the reason for our attendance was explained, Mr and Mrs McDonald were kept updated as the day progressed.”
At the inquiry, Mr Bradshaw added: “Ms Jacqueline McDonald is also incorrect in stating Post Office investigators behaved like mafia gangsters looking to collect their bounty with the threats and lies.”
Post Office bonuses
Mr Bradshaw was asked about whether staff were paid bonuses for successful prosecutions.
He told the inquiry that “bonuses have always been paid by the Royal Mail Group and Post Office”.
Sir Wyn Williams is chairing the inquiry
Asked if success in a criminal case would impact the amount paid, Mr Bradshaw replied: “No, not at all.”
“I’m paid whether one case is done or a thousand cases,” he said.
“We don’t get any extra bonus because of this. It’s how well you do your job.”
Mr Blake then asked: “If you’re considered to have protected the business and prevented the wider impact on the business, do you think that that might lead to a bonus?”
Mr Bradshaw replied: “It may do, and it may not do.”
‘Absolute confidence in Horizon’
Mr Bradshaw was asked about a letter, signed by him in November 2012, in which he declared the Post Office’s “absolute confidence” in the “robustness and integrity” of the Horizon system
He told the inquiry that the statement was written by lawyers from the law firm Cartwright King.
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Asked if it was appropriate for him to declare “confidence” in the IT system in the 2012 statement, he said: “I was given that statement by Cartwright King and told to put that statement through.
“In hindsight… there probably should have been another line stating, ‘These are not my words’.”
Mr Bradshaw told the inquiry he was not “technically minded” and was not equipped to know whether there were bugs or errors in the Horizon system.
The statutory inquiry, which began in 2021 and is chaired by retired judge Sir Wyn Williams, has previously looked at the human impact of the scandal, the Horizon system roll-out and the operation of the system, and is now probing the action taken against sub-postmasters.
The probe was established to ensure there is a “public summary of the failings which occurred with the Horizon IT system at the Post Office” and subsequently led to the wrongful convictions of sub-postmasters.
“That smell of maggots, rotting food and maggots, my house smells like that.”
For Louise, not her real name, home has become a hell she cannot escape.
“We just couldn’t move for flies, and then we noticed an increase in rats,” she says.
Louise lives near Bolton House Road in Wigan. At the end of a row of terraced houses sits a former scrapyard, which has been transformed into an industrial-scale illegal dump site.
The wagons started coming last winter, “20, maybe 30 times a day,” Louise remembers.
“Eighteen-tonne wagons. Full of all sorts; nappies, black bin rubbish, chemicals, plastic.”
Within a few weeks, she and her neighbours realised the waste was just being dumped, not sorted or managed. It piled up, higher and higher.
They contacted the council, the Environment Agency and the police – but Louise claims no one did anything to stop the lorries.
Her retired neighbour, Tom, says it felt like the authorities “didn’t want to know”.
Though he does remember someone from the council asking him if he could go and “have a look for them” and “report back” information about what sort of waste was being dumped.
Louise and Tom are both so worried about who could be behind this that they are only comfortable speaking anonymously.
The fire which lasted nine days
By July’s heatwave, the site had long been full. The wagons had stopped months earlier, so 25,000 tonnes of waste, several storeys high, sat festering in the sun.
Lorries and vehicles in the former scrapyard lay buried, unseen, beneath the shredded and rotting filth – and then the fire started.
For nine days, dozens of firefighters from across Greater Manchester fought to bring the fire under control.
Pic: Wigan Council
Pic: Wigan Today
The nearby primary school had to shut due to the acrid smoke.
The sheer amount of water needed by fire engines to tackle the blaze left residents without any – while many were forced to keep their windows and doors shut in the 30C-plus heat.
Some were left with chest infections, others were hospitalised.
“I think it’s awful to let people live with that toxic rubbish right next to our house after us all asking for help and nothing’s materialised,” Louise says.
The crime costing the economy billions
Sky News has been investigating how, across the country, waste crime is a growing scourge and a booming business being exploited by criminal gangs.
Being paid to remove rubbish only to dump it illegally without sorting it or paying tax is an easy way of making huge amounts of money, with poorly enforced legal repercussions and a huge cost to the environment.
It’s something the previous head of the Environment Agency called “the new narcotics”.
– It’s thought a fifth of all waste in England is being illegally managed
– That’s around 34 million tonnes a year, enough to fill about four million skips
– It costs the economy around a billion pounds a year, with legitimate operators thought to be losing a further £3bn from missed business
In July, we tracked down a group of suspected organised fly-tippers who waved wads of cash on TikTok after dumping waste in the countryside.
‘Absolutely soul-destroying’
The residents of Bolton House Road are not the only victims of this toxic dump.
Last winter, Neil Hardwick rented out three diggers to an individual, unaware of the growing illegal dump site in Wigan.
By March of this year, he had not received several rental payments and had received a call from the Environment Agency warning him about what was happening at the site.
Neil and Carla Hardwick
With his daughter Carla, he went to Bolton House Road in an attempt to retrieve the machinery, worth approximately £300,000 in total.
At the site, Carla says a group of men slapped her, as well as spat at her. The men allegedly told her father: “We want you to give us £100,000, and we’ll allow you to take your diggers back, or we can cut your throat.”
Carla and Neil say an officer from Greater Manchester Police dismissed their report, and claimed their machinery was not stolen.
That officer also threatened to arrest the pair if they did not leave the area, they say.
“I just wanted us to get those machines back. But the fact that a man can spit in a woman’s face and get away with it, and the police are not interested, well, it is maddening,” Carla said.
The Hardwicks returned to the site 10 days later with officers from the National Crime Agency but found their machines smashed up and destroyed.
Mr Hardwick said the ordeal was “absolutely soul-destroying”.
“It’s caused us so much grief, damage to business, just absolutely brought us to our knees,” he said.
A vehicle used to transport waste to the illegal dump
Greater Manchester Police told Sky News there is an ongoing complaint relating to the incident involving Neil and Carla Hardwick at Bolton House Road, and “this process will take time”.
“As part of this complaint, our Professional Standards Directorate are assessing all elements of the investigation including all crimes and reviewing bodyworn footage,” a spokesperson said.
The £4.5m bill
Finding out how the illegal dump in Wigan happened, and who’s responsible, is hugely challenging.
The landowner has not responded to Sky, nor have the companies which allegedly own the lorries seen by residents transporting the waste.
They appear to be either refuse or haulage companies that boast of their environmentally friendly credentials.
The firms seen moving waste to the illegal dump did not reply to Sky News
One company’s website claims it diverts most of its waste away from landfill, and advertises its “innovative approach” to waste management.
“We’re passionate about the environment,” the website says.
Josh Simons, the local Labour MP, has been outraged by the case.
Speaking before his promotion to the Cabinet Office, he said it is “buck-passing” between Wigan Council, the police, and the Environment Agency.
Mr Simons says he was told at the start of the year that there was a criminal investigation, “and therefore no action can be taken to prevent people from dumping more on the site or intervening”.
“That just doesn’t seem right to me,” he says.
He also says information and financial support from the Environment Agency to Wigan Council has been poor.
“The number [the council] have come up with is about £4.5m to clear the waste.
“Anybody who knows local authority budgets at the moment knows they don’t have nearly five million pounds stashed behind the sofa. So what’s supposed to happen?”
The land itself is not worth £4.5m – and Mr Simons thinks this makes working-class areas uniquely vulnerable to this kind of crime.
The funding and powers of the Environment Agency need to change, says Josh Simons MP
Paul Barton, director for environment at Wigan Council, said: “Our top priority is to ensure those residents feel heard and safe while the Environment Agency carries out their investigation with our full cooperation.
“We want the site to be cleared as a matter of urgency and are continuing to work with the Environment Agency to survey and sample the waste so polluters/landowners – who are the responsible parties – can progress this as soon as possible.”
Paul Clements, director of operations at the Environment Agency, said: “We are prioritising local people, businesses and the nearby school as we work… to deal with this illegal waste site as quickly as possible.
“Our staff continue to visit the site and at the forefront of our minds is the impact the illegal waste is having on the local community.
“We are continuing to progress our criminal investigation as a priority. This includes actively pursuing many lines of enquiry, interviewing under caution and using the enforcement tools available to us.”
Additional reporting by Adam Parker, OSINT editor, and Niamh Lynch, planning producer
The Environment Agency (EA), police and other agencies are failing to stop fly-tipping by organised crime groups, a cross-party group of peers has found.
In a damning letter to the government, members of the House of Lords’ Environment and Climate Change Committee called for an independent review of waste crime, with the current approach “inadequate”.
Their report described the EA as “slow to respond to even the most flagrant and serious illegality” – and said its taskforce on waste crime appears “ineffective”.
Police are accused of showing a “lack of interest” in the crime, while penalties for criminals do not match their profits and are “insufficient to deter future offending”.
Read more:
Dirty work: The fly-tippers turning trash into cash
The Lords’ committee has called for the EA’s Joint Unit for Waste Crime to do more to encourage collaboration between various authorities, and for the Department for Environment, Rural and Food Affairs to develop and publish targets for tackling this issue.
Peers have also demanded an end to what they call the “merry-go-round of reporting” where members of the public who report fly-tipping and waste crime in their area get bounced between various agencies.
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Criminals benefitting from trash
This is something Sky News has often heard from victims – they will call the police, only to be told to speak to the council, which then pushes them over to the EA.
Peers want a “single telephone number and web portal” which would triage responsibility for each case.
Read more from Sky News:
Could the UK run out of drinking water?
Mystery of what killed billions of starfish solved
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The boom in waste crime
An EA spokesperson said: “We recognise the recommendations of the report and are committed to doing more.
“Last year alone, our dedicated teams shut down 462 illegal waste sites and prevented nearly 34,000 tonnes of waste being illegally exported – showing that we can make real change despite the challenges involved.”
The King has been heckled over his brother Prince Andrew’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a visit to a cathedral.
Charles was shouted at by a man in the crowd outside Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire on Monday, who asked: “How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein?”
The protester, who was filming on a mobile phone, also said: “Have you asked the police to cover up for Andrew? Should MPs be allowed to debate the royals in the House of Commons?”
King Charles during his visit to Lichfield Cathedral. Pic: AP
The King did not respond to the comments, which came as the monarchy faces increasing pressure to resolve the controversy surrounding Andrew, who earlier this month said he would stop using his Duke of York title and his knighthood after revelations in the posthumous memoir of sex assault accuser Virginia Giuffre.
The prince has always strenuously denied all allegations against him from the late Ms Giuffre.
Reports also emerged that claimed Andrew asked a royal close protection officer to “dig up dirt” on Ms Giuffre. The Metropolitan Police said it is “actively looking into the claims”.
At the moment, Andrew resides at Royal Lodge, a Windsor mansion where he effectively lives rent-free. He’s done so since 2003.
Obstacles to a settlement are reportedly where the prince, who remains eighth in line to the throne, will live and what financial recompense he will receive for the funds he spent renovating the home.
The Sun reported he is keen on Harry and Meghan’s former home Frogmore Cottage.
Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein. Pics: PA/Sipa/Shutterstock
‘The royals need to be challenged’
Calls are still growing for Andrew’s dukedom to be revoked, which can only be done by an act of parliament.
Downing Street has indicated it its reluctance to do so, suggesting the King would not want the issue to take up politicians’ time.
Graham Smith, chief executive of anti-monarchy group Republic, said: “The royals need to be challenged, and if the politicians won’t do the job and the police won’t investigate, then more and more members of the public will be asking tough questions.”
He said he believed Monday’s heckler was “one of our own members but doing their own thing”.
After the visit to the cathedral, the King laid flowers at the UK’s first national memorial commemorating LGBT armed forces.
He was joined by dozens of serving and former members of the armed forces, as he met veterans who told of the trauma inflicted by the military’s former “gay ban”.
The memorial, titled An Opened Letter, was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum.
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