Sub-postmaster wrongly sent to prison while pregnant rejects apology from ex-Post Office boss David Smith
A victim of the Post Office scandal who was wrongly jailed while pregnant has rejected an apology from a former Post Office executive – who celebrated her conviction as “brilliant news” at the time.
Former managing director David Smith made the apology to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, saying: “I would absolutely never think that it was ‘brilliant news’ for a pregnant woman to go to prison and I am hugely apologetic that my email can be read as such.”
That victim, Seema Misra – who was sentenced to 15 months in jail and served four months while pregnant – said it wasn’t good enough.
“They’re apologising now, but they missed so many chances before,” Ms Misra told Sky News.
“We had my conviction overturned, nobody came at that time to apologise. And now they just suddenly realised that when they have to appear in a public inquiry, they have to apologise.”
The inquiry is investigating who knew what and when about the faulty accounting software that ruined lives, resulted in huge debts, ill-health, ruined reputations, and led to the conviction of hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters for theft and false accounting.
The scandal received renewed attention after an ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, aired early this year and brought to life how Horizon software, developed by Fujitsu, incorrectly generated financial shortfalls at Post Office branches throughout the UK.
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Post Office hero Bates had seemingly been preparing for this day
‘Brilliant news’
In 2010 Mr Smith emailed Post Office prosecutors, congratulating them on a job well done in jailing Ms Misra for theft.
“Brilliant news. Well done. Please pass on my thanks to the team,” he said.
The message was intended to celebrate proving Horizon was robust, Mr Smith said, rather than someone going to prison.
“Regardless of the result, I would have thanked the team for their work on the case.”
“However, seeing this email in the light of what I know now, I understand the anger and the upset that it will have caused and sincerely apologise for that,” Mr Smith’s evidence statement to the inquiry said.
“It is evident that my email would have caused Seema Misra, and her family, substantial distress to read and I would like to apologise for that.”
Ms Misra’s conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2021 but the memories of her time in prison still give her nightmares, she said.
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Sub-postmistress wrongly jailed while pregnant
A ‘test case’ that added confidence in Horizon
Mr Smith told the inquiry Ms Misra had been used as a “test case”.
The success of the case led to more confidence in Horizon, he said.
He said: “I do know that from this point forward, we didn’t really think about whether we should have an inquiry [into Horizon] again while I was at the Post Office and certainly if you looked at board minutes from the month after and the month after that which had been shared with me, we’re not talking about Horizon at all.”
In response, Ms Misra told Sky News: “How can they do a test on a human being?”
“I’m a living creature,” she added.
“I heard that my case has been used as a test case before. But hearing it again and again, it’s just annoying. It makes me more and more angry, to be honest.”
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A wrongly convicted pregnant sub-postmaster has told Sky News she
Flora Page, a barrister representing some sub-postmasters, said the trial of Ms Misra was being “actively used by Post Office as part of [its] campaign to claim that Horizon was robust”.
This was denied by Mr Smith.
Ms Page questioned Mr Smith at the inquiry about what the Post Office knew before putting Ms Misra behind bars and said prosecutors were alerted to bugs in Horizon on a Friday.
On the following Monday Ms Misra’s trial began, the inquiry heard.
Documentation submitted to the inquiry showed a Fujitsu witness in Ms Misra’s case was present at a pre-trial meeting where bugs in Horizon were being discussed, Ms Page said.
The meeting “made it perfectly plain that Fujitsu had the power to remotely alter branch accounts”, as the option was put forward as a way to resolve the receipts and payments mismatch bug in Horizon, she added.
At the time, Mr Smith said, he was unaware of the meeting and documents.
Former managing director of Post Office Ltd David Smith, arrives to give evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry.
Pic: PA
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‘Inherent risks’ in Post Office prosecuting
The Post Office was allowed to investigate and bring prosecutions itself and did not require Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) involvement.
Reflecting on how prosecutions were carried out, Mr Smith told the inquiry there are “risks” within the system.
In-house prosecution “can lead you to a position where you might not think as independently as you should do about the quality of the information”, he said.
None of these issues occurred to Mr Smith during his tenure.
He said: “I cannot recall thinking that any risk or compliance issues arose from [the Post Office] undertaking this role, but with the benefit of hindsight, and in light of the wrongful prosecutions, I can see the inherent risks in the prosecutions taking place ‘in house’ and not by an independent enforcement authority.”
At the time the organisation was too focused on other issues, such as the Post Office separating from Royal Mail, the new coalition government, and the need to refinance the business, he said.
The company board was “pre-occupied” with investment from the government, his witness statement said.
“Therefore, although we were aware of the case, at board level we were not heavily focused on it as our attention was on keeping the business running,” he added.
It was down to “institutional bias” that led executives not to interrogate what was being said by sub-postmasters and the public about Horizon, he added.
Representatives of Thames Water’s multinational syndicate of shareholders are poised to quit as directors of its corporate entities after refusing to inject the billions of pounds of funding required to bail it out.
Sky News has learnt that a number of board members at companies connected to Kemble Water Finance, Thames’s parent, are expected to resign in the coming days.
City sources described the move as “the logical next step” after the owners of Britain’s biggest water utility said they would not commit more than £3bn to help upgrade its ageing infrastructure and shore up its debt-laden balance sheet.
A default on part of Thames Water‘s holding company debts last month has raised the prospect that the company is heading towards special administration, a form of insolvency that would effectively leave the government liable for managing a utility firm which serves nearly a quarter of Britain’s population.
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Thames Water under threat
Thames Water is owned by a group of sovereign wealth funds and pension funds from countries including Abu Dhabi, Australia, Britain, Canada and China.
A number of the investors are represented on boards which sit at various points in the group’s labyrinthine capital structure.
It was unclear on Wednesday whether Michael McNicholas, a representative of the giant Canadian pension fund Omers and who sits on the board of Thames Water Utilities Limited, was among those in the process of stepping down.
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Even bigger surge in bills proposed under new plans
Along with the rest of the privately owned water industry, Thames Water faces a crucial moment next month when Ofwat, the industry regulator, publishes its draft determination on companies’ five-year business plans.
The draft rulings will be subject to negotiation before final versions are published in December.
Thames Water and a spokesman for Kemble declined to comment.
Business
Royal Mail ‘minded’ to accept £3.5bn takeover proposal by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky
The owner of Royal Mail has said it is “minded” to accept a revised takeover bid by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky.
The latest offer from Mr Kretinsky’s investment firm EP Group values the Royal Mail parent company International Distribution Services (IDS) at £3.5bn.
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Mr Kretinsky’s firm already owns most of IDS as a 27.6% shareholder but wishes to buy the remaining shares.
An earlier offer of £3.20 a share had been rejected last month for being too low.
But now he has offered to pay £3.60 for each share. The day before the original offer was made a share in IDS cost £2.14.
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An extra shareholder pay out of 8 pence a share has been offered by EP Group, if the deal closes, as has a 2 pence per share payment to every stakeholder, expected to be paid in September.
It would bring the total value of an IDS share to 73% more than it cost before the prospect of a buyout was raised.
‘Good value’
“Having considered the proposal, the board has indicated to EP Group that it would be minded to recommend an offer to IDS shareholders”, the IDS board said.
The price is “fair” and reflects the value of current growth plans, the IDS chairman said.
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Royal Mail could be allowed to deliver letters just three days per week, under a series of options outlined by the industry regulator.
Consideration was given by the board to the national significance of Royal Mail as the operator of the postal network.
“The board is particularly mindful of Royal Mail’s unique heritage and responsibilities as the designated universal service provider in the United Kingdom and a key part of national infrastructure”, it said.
In assessing the proposal, the board has also been very mindful of the impact on Royal Mail and GLS and their respective stakeholders and employees, as well as broader public interest factors”.
EP Group has until 29 May to advance or withdraw its takeover bid.
Who is Daniel Kretinsky?
There has already been scrutiny of Mr Kretinsky’s part ownership in the postal company but a government national security concerns review into his investment led to no intervention.
He also owns parts of West Ham Football Club and Sainsbury’s.
EP Group, which he controls, has financial interests in energy, logistics, and food retail.
The boss of the world’s biggest bank has told Sky News that Western economies have a “good hand” in the “economic battlefield” with China but declared it does not have to be war.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sky’s Wilfred Frost, chief executive and chairman of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon said the West was going to have a “hard time” as long as China had close ties with Russia.
But he said it was well placed due to the resilience of their collective economies and long-standing partnerships, such as NATO.
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However, he warned of the dangers of fragmentation since Donald Trump, when US president, pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.
He also said that Joe Biden’s administration should have worked with allies over the effects of his Inflation Reduction Act.
The massive programme of incentives to bolster the green economy had the effect of taking investment out of Europe at a time when Russia’s war in Ukraine was dominating the agenda.
The bank boss warned too of a backlash from China over US tariffs against its electric cars and solar panels announced just this week, arguing that a joint approach from western powers over China more generally would carry more weight.
Mr Dimon, who has run JPMorgan since 2005 and is widely seen as the most influential boss of a financial services company in the United States, said: “We have competition with China.
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Why is the US taking aim at China?
“I think the American government is doing the right thing to fully engage. That doesn’t mean the Chinese are going to like everything we do just like we don’t like everything they do but it doesn’t have to be war, it can be tough competition and we should be prepared for that.”
“The most important thing”, he added, “is that we do it together”.
“They’re not an enemy, you know, but they’re competing. They want a different world than we want. And I think they want a different world than we want in the Western world… it’s worth fighting for.”
“We all made a little bit of mistake in how we kind of expected them after WTO (World Trade Organisation) to become more Western and things like that. It’s okay. Don’t cry over spilled milk,” he concluded.
Mr Dimon was speaking 24 hours after the US-based bank, which has 22,000 staff and a 200-year history in the UK market, announced £40m in new investments to help connect young people and underserved communities to economic opportunities.
They followed the opening of a new tech centre in Glasgow.
JPMorgan Chase – perhaps best-known in this country for its Chase retail division – is the biggest bank in the world by market value with a capitalisation of almost $600bn (£475bn).
Mr Dimon, who was initially critical of Brexit following the UK’s split from the EU, spoke of the bank’s continuing commitment to the country having called the future of its UK operations into question in 2021.
Asked about the looming election, he said that talks with Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer had left him in no doubt that both the Conservatives and Labour were “pro business”.
He described how growing economies benefits everybody as it allows for investment.
“Everybody I heard… Conservative and Labour, (is) talking about growing the economy, technology, research and developments, simplifying regulations, making it easier for people to start businesses and grow businesses, making sure schools educate… those policies work,” he said.
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