A Put up Workplace investigator and his colleagues ‘behaved like Mafia gangsters’ trying to ‘accumulate bounty with threats and lies’, the general public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal heard yesterday.
Stephen Bradshaw interviewed a string of postmasters wrongly accused of stealing cash beneath warning, berating them for telling ‘a pack of lies’.
Mr Bradshaw, who has been on the Put up Workplace for greater than 45 years, allegedly ‘hounded’ one girl in additional than 60 calls the place he referred to as her a ‘b****’ in ‘extraordinarily distressing’ conversations.
A disabled sub-postmistress mentioned he positioned her in a ‘tiny parcel raise’ to interview her beneath warning which has left her with ‘anxiousness’.
It was put to him that he used ‘language you may see in a Nineteen Seventies detective present’, to which the investigator mentioned: ‘The questions need to be requested.’ He additionally mentioned it was ‘incorrect’ to state he and colleagues ‘behaved like Mafia gangsters trying to accumulate their bounty with the threats and lies,’ as one postmaster alleged.
Stephen Bradshaw (pictured) interviewed a string of postmasters wrongly accused of stealing cash beneath warning, berating them for telling ‘a pack of lies’
The British authorities has introduced a brand new regulation that can exonerate wrongly convicted sub-postmasters caught up within the Put up Workplace scandal
Mr Bradshaw was the primary witness to seem on the hearings for the reason that airing of the explosive ITV drama, Mr Bates Vs the Put up Workplace, provoked outrage.
In a witness assertion put earlier than the panel chaired by Sir Wyn Williams, he mentioned: ‘I refute the allegation that I’m a liar.’
Mr Bradshaw was concerned within the felony investigation of 9 sub-postmasters, together with Liverpudlian Rita Threlfall in 2010, who he quizzed over a £33,000 shortfall. The wheelchair-bound subpostmistress mentioned she was positioned in a ‘tiny parcel raise’ to take her upstairs to be interviewed beneath warning. He requested her the color of her eyes and what jewelry she wore and, when she answered, replied: ‘Good, so we have got an outline of you for once they come.’
Ms Threlfall mentioned she is ‘nonetheless shaken’ by the expertise and suffers ‘crippling anxiousness and despair’. Mr Bradshaw insisted the raise was ‘not a small parcel raise’ and is ‘wheelchair accessible’.
Former postmistress Shazia Saddiq mentioned she acquired greater than 60 ‘significantly intimidating’ calls from the investigator who ‘did not establish himself’ in 2016.
He allegedly would ask: ‘The place’s the cash gone? Why will not you speak to me?’ Ms Saddiq mentioned: ‘I refused to talk to him as a result of I didn’t know who he was.
‘In that decision . . .he referred to as me a bitch, which I discovered extraordinarily distressing.’ Mr Bradshaw referred to as it ‘unfaithful’, denied ‘hounding’ her and insisted he would all the time say who he was on a name.
However Ms Saddiq’s husband was listening to the trade on speakerphone and confirmed it.
Jacqueline McDonald claimed she was ‘bullied’ by Mr Bradshaw over a £94,000 shortfall in 2010. A transcript of his interview was learn by Julian Blake, counsel to the inquiry, the place the investigator asks her: ‘Would you want to inform me what occurred to the cash?’
When she mentioned she did not know, he responded: ‘You might have instructed me a pack of lies.’
Katie Noblet, who was employed by Ms McDonald, wrote to the Put up Workplace to complain ‘concerning the unprofessional, disgusting behaviour and actions’ of Mr Bradshaw and his colleague.
Ms McDonald, of Preston, was convicted of theft and 6 counts of false accounting and sentenced to 18 months in jail after a plea cut price to simply accept the false accounting cost was rejected. It was later overturned.
The inquiry was proven Mr Bradshaw’s self-appraisal for that yr the place he bragged he persuaded legal professionals to push ahead with a trial for theft, too. He mentioned that an accepted denial of theft on the premise she blamed Horizon ‘would given credence’ to the subpostmasters’ marketing campaign for justice.
In a witness assertion put earlier than the panel chaired by Sir Wyn Williams, he mentioned: ‘I refute the allegation that I’m a liar’
Mr Blake mentioned it seems he noticed it as ‘profession boosting’ to push for additional prices and requested if getting a great appraisal rating would assist get a bonus. Mr Bradshaw mentioned: ‘It might do and it could not do relying on who seems to be on the types.’
He and fellow investigator Anthony Gardener additionally quizzed Lisa Brennan over a £3,482 shortfall in 2003 as a part of a probe that noticed her wrongly convicted of 27 counts of theft. A transcript reveals Mr Bradshaw, referring to the supposedly lacking cash, telling her: ‘I do not suppose it is carelessness.’ Mr Gardener mentioned: ‘No one else is making errors such as you.’
Ms Brennan, from Merseyside, misplaced her marriage and was left homeless together with her daughter following her wrongful conviction.
Requested if he and Mr Gardener had behaved ‘professionally’, Mr Bradshaw instructed the inquiry: ‘Sure.’
In an interview beneath warning with Janet Skinner, who was jailed after being wrongly convicted of stealing practically £60,000 in 2007, Mr Bradshaw instructed her to ‘stand up earlier’. Ms Skinner wrongly suspected a member of workers who opened her Put up Workplace within the mornings, to which Mr Bradshaw recommended she had ‘rewarded’ a suspected thief ‘by giving her the keys’.
Ms Skinner mentioned she needed to get the lady to open up as clients complained she was ‘arriving late’, to which Mr Bradshaw mentioned: ‘Stand up earlier. Your accountability, you took the position of being sub-postmaster.’
Mr Bradshaw instructed the inquiry he was not ‘technically minded’ to know if there have been errors with Horizon’s system. But he signed a witness assertion utilized in a 2012 prosecution the place he mentioned the Put up Workplace has ‘absolute confidence within the robustness and integrity of its Horizon system’. He claimed the assertion was not in his phrases however that he was handed the draft and instructed to signal it by Put up Workplace authorized agency Cartwright King. Mr Bradshaw mentioned: ‘In hindsight… there most likely ought to have been one other line stating, ‘These should not my phrases’.’
Edward Henry KC, who represents among the sub-postmasters, mentioned the investigator and his division ‘ignored something that did not match the narrative Horizon was working’.
Ms Saddiq, mentioned after the listening to: ‘At this time the bully was requested questions and he did not prefer it.’
