‘Brilliant news’... what postal chief said when pregnant worker was jailed
A FORMER Post Office boss who celebrated the conviction of a pregnant subpostmistress issued a grovelling apology yesterday after she was later absolved of any wrongdoing.
David Smith initially said it was ‘brilliant news’ that mother-of-one Seema Misra had been convicted in 2010 of theft and false accounting after nearly £75,000 disappeared from the accounts of the post office she ran in West Byfleet, Surrey.
She was handed a 15-month jail sentence and gave birth to her second child shortly after being released from prison.
Ms Misra, whose case was among those to feature in ITV’s acclaimed drama series Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, was later among the legions of branch staff who had their convictions quashed after errors with the Horizon accounting software, on which prosecutions were based, were exposed.
The scandal saw more than 700 subpostmasters prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting between 1999 and 2015.
The Horizon public inquiry yesterday heard how Mr Smith, Post Office managing director for seven months in 2010, congratulated colleagues for the legal team’s work prosecuting Ms Misra, emailing them to say: ‘Brilliant news. Well done. Please pass on my thanks to the team.’
In his witness statement to the inquiry, Mr Smith said he ‘understands the anger and upset caused’ by his comments.
Mr Smith said: ‘Knowing what I do now, it is evident that my email would have caused Seema Misra and her family substantial distress to read. My comment of “brilliant news” was in relation to me thinking that it was brilliant news that, in my mind, Horizon had been proved to be robust following the testing of the expert evidence in the trial.
‘Even if this had been a correct conviction, 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.
‘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.’
He added he wanted to say sorry to Ms Misra and her family ‘ for the way this has been perceived and portrayed’.
But Ms Misra told Sky News: ‘It is outrageous, the witnesses need to see they are playing with people’s lives. Yes, they are apologising now but they missed so many chances before.’
Mr Smith also rejected claims that an investigation commissioned into Horizon’s integrity was a cover-up.
The inquiry continues.
‘Playing with people’s lives’