I’m a small cog in this, said the investigator. Yes, but a prickly cog who went vague when asked about his bonus

MEET Stephen Bradshaw, long- serving Post Office ‘security manager’ ( hygienic term). More than a decade ago, when managers developed the erroneous belief hundreds of sub-postmasters were on the nick, boot-boy Bradshaw was one of the charmers ordered to question suspects.

he accepted the task with nonchalant balefulness. Suspects were menaced in police-style interviews. Telephoned incessantly at home. Given a feathering, know what I mean. The process was ‘ not nice’, admitted Mr Bradshaw.

Now a reversal of fortunes. Yesterday morning Mr Bradshaw found himself in the witness box at the Post Office-horizon inquiry. what followed wasn’t ‘nice’ in a legal sense. actually, it was startling.

Mr Bradshaw bluntly declared that he signed an untrue witness statement whipped up for him by a pressrelations man and by the Post Office’s solicitors, Messrs Cartwright King. ‘I’d have done whatever they requested,’ explained Mr Bradshaw.

we learned that he failed to disclose doubts about the horizon system, even when it was a legal duty to do so. he left suspects with the impression they were the only ones who had trouble with horizon.

he sexed up a corporate form in which he gave himself credit for getting a judge to put sub-postmasters on trial. ‘There’s always a flamboyant way of putting things across,’ he said with a rub of the jaw. a flamboyant way of putting things across? Or a flamboyant way of having innocents thrown behind bars?

Scouser Bradshaw, a Pete Postlethwaite lookalike in black shirt and black tie, occupied a world quite unlike the bucolic idyll of Postman Pat. The inquiry is being held on the fifth floor of an office block on London’s aldwych, not far from the royal Courts of Justice.

Mr Bradshaw was questioned by a youthful barrister, Julian Blake, playing the part of prosecutor.

Not that these are (yet) criminal proceedings. Centre- stage sat Sir wyn williams, an outwardly avuncular judge who runs an unpompous show. when he entered there was no usher’s command (as at Lady hallett’s Covid Inquiry) to ‘all rise’.

Sir wyn opened proceedings by saying, in his welsh lilt, that his wife was distressed by rumours the inquiry could drag on for another year. ‘I was under severe pressure on that, I can tell you,’ said the twinkly eyed beak.

Though Mr Bradshaw might seem a gritty customer, we were being led to imagine Lady williams an altogether more terrifying proposition, an Echidna of the Valleys.

Sir wyn’s inquiry started months before ITV aired ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’. with his jest he was perhaps trying to say he will not rush to judgment merely to assuage public anger inflamed by that TV drama; there are other, stronger reasons to crack on with his inquiry, and some of them were sitting among us.

at the start of the day I met Shazia Saddiq, 40, from Banbury, who once ran three Post Office branches before Mr Bradshaw invaded her life. ‘he bombarded me with telephone calls, over 100 of them, tormented me, called me a bitch.’

Mrs Saddiq’s husband Ishfaq nodded. ‘he didn’t realise the call was on speaker-phone, and I heard it.’ Eloquent Mrs Saddiq lost her business and is now a payroll assistant.

‘I’m a small cog in this,’ claimed Mr Bradshaw. Speaking on oath, he insisted he had not heard, back in 2012, about problems with horizon. ‘I’m not technically minded.’

This, at least, was easy to believe. he was an unbookish specimen whose handwriting, seen in one evidence slide, was a mixture of capitals and lowercase letters.

a small cog? Maybe. But a willing, prickly cog who went vague when asked about his bonus arrangements. and what about the solicitors who exchanged emails with him and wrote the witness statement to which he so obediently added his thumbprint? Feed them to Lady williams!

Mrs Siddiq watched it all from the front row. ‘I tried to get him to meet me in the eye,’ she said, ‘but he just looked elsewhere.’ his speciality.