A Post Office investigator and his colleagues ‘behaved like Mafia gangsters’ looking to ‘collect bounty with threats and lies’, the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal heard yesterday.
Stephen Bradshaw interviewed a string of postmasters wrongly accused of stealing money under caution, berating them for telling ‘a pack of lies’.
Mr Bradshaw, who has been at the Post Office for more than 45 years, allegedly ‘hounded’ one woman in more than 60 calls where he called her a ‘b****’ in ‘extremely distressing’ conversations.
A disabled sub-postmistress said he placed her in a ‘tiny parcel lift’ to interview her under caution which has left her with ‘anxiety’.
It was put to him that he used ‘language you might see in a 1970s detective show’, to which the investigator said: ‘The questions have to be asked.’ He also said it was ‘incorrect’ to state he and colleagues ‘behaved like Mafia gangsters looking to collect their bounty with the threats and lies,’ as one postmaster alleged.
Stephen Bradshaw (pictured) interviewed a string of postmasters wrongly accused of stealing money under caution, berating them for telling ‘a pack of lies’
The British government has announced a new law that will exonerate wrongly convicted sub-postmasters caught up in the Post Office scandal
Mr Bradshaw was the first witness to appear at the hearings since the airing of the explosive ITV drama, Mr Bates Vs the Post Office, provoked outrage.
In a witness statement put before the panel chaired by Sir Wyn Williams, he said: ‘I refute the allegation that I am a liar.’
Mr Bradshaw was involved in the criminal investigation of nine sub-postmasters, including Liverpudlian Rita Threlfall in 2010, who he quizzed over a £33,000 shortfall. The wheelchair-bound subpostmistress said she was placed in a ‘tiny parcel lift’ to take her upstairs to be interviewed under caution. He asked her the colour of her eyes and what jewellery she wore and, when she answered, replied: ‘Good, so we’ve got a description of you for when they come.’
Ms Threlfall said she is ‘still shaken’ by the experience and suffers ‘crippling anxiety and depression’. Mr Bradshaw insisted the lift was ‘not a small parcel lift’ and is ‘wheelchair accessible’.
Former postmistress Shazia Saddiq said she received more than 60 ‘particularly intimidating’ calls from the investigator who ‘didn’t identify himself’ in 2016.
He allegedly would ask: ‘Where’s the money gone? Why won’t you talk to me?’ Ms Saddiq said: ‘I refused to speak to him because I did not know who he was.
‘In that call . . .he called me a bitch, which I found extremely distressing.’ Mr Bradshaw called it ‘untrue’, denied ‘hounding’ her and insisted he would always say who he was on a call.
But Ms Saddiq’s husband was listening to the exchange 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 read by Julian Blake, counsel to the inquiry, where the investigator asks her: ‘Would you like to tell me what happened to the money?’
When she said she didn’t know, he responded: ‘You have told me a pack of lies.’
Katie Noblet, who was employed by Ms McDonald, wrote to the Post Office to complain ‘about the unprofessional, disgusting behaviour and actions’ of Mr Bradshaw and his colleague.
Ms McDonald, of Preston, was convicted of theft and six counts of false accounting and sentenced to 18 months in prison after a plea bargain to accept the false accounting charge was rejected. It was later overturned.
The inquiry was shown Mr Bradshaw’s self-appraisal for that year where he bragged he persuaded lawyers to push forward with a trial for theft, too. He said that an accepted denial of theft on the basis she blamed Horizon ‘would given credence’ to the subpostmasters’ campaign for justice.
In a witness statement put before the panel chaired by Sir Wyn Williams, he said: ‘I refute the allegation that I am a liar’
Mr Blake said it appears he saw it as ‘career boosting’ to push for extra charges and asked if getting a good appraisal score would help get a bonus. Mr Bradshaw said: ‘It may do and it may not do depending on who looks at the forms.’
He and fellow investigator Anthony Gardener also quizzed Lisa Brennan over a £3,482 shortfall in 2003 as part of a probe that saw her wrongly convicted of 27 counts of theft. A transcript shows Mr Bradshaw, referring to the supposedly missing money, telling her: ‘I don’t think it’s carelessness.’ Mr Gardener said: ‘Nobody else is making mistakes like you.’
Ms Brennan, from Merseyside, lost her marriage and was left homeless with her daughter following her wrongful conviction.
Asked if he and Mr Gardener had behaved ‘professionally’, Mr Bradshaw told the inquiry: ‘Yes.’
In an interview under caution with Janet Skinner, who was jailed after being wrongly convicted of stealing nearly £60,000 in 2007, Mr Bradshaw told her to ‘get up earlier’. Ms Skinner wrongly suspected a member of staff who opened her Post Office in the mornings, to which Mr Bradshaw suggested she had ‘rewarded’ a suspected thief ‘by giving her the keys’.
Ms Skinner said she had to get the woman to open up as customers complained she was ‘arriving late’, to which Mr Bradshaw said: ‘Get up earlier. Your responsibility, you took the role of being sub-postmaster.’
Mr Bradshaw told the inquiry he was not ‘technically minded’ to know if there were errors with Horizon’s system. Yet he signed a witness statement used in a 2012 prosecution where he said the Post Office has ‘absolute confidence in the robustness and integrity of its Horizon system’. He claimed the statement was not in his words but that he was handed the draft and told to sign it by Post Office legal firm Cartwright King. Mr Bradshaw said: ‘In hindsight… there probably should have been another line stating, ‘These are not my words’.’
Edward Henry KC, who represents some of the sub-postmasters, said the investigator and his department ‘ignored anything that didn’t fit the narrative Horizon was working’.
Ms Saddiq, said after the hearing: ‘Today the bully was asked questions and he didn’t like it.’