Investigators unleashed on postmasters had three weeks’ training
POST OFFICE investigators were given just three weeks training before being unleashed on sub-postmasters, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
A former policing minister said it was “bonkers” that the Post Office was able to bring private prosecutions that wrecked the lives of hundreds of sub-postmasters using fraud investigators with such little training. Alan Bates, who inspired the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office that has sparked national outrage, said he was “surprised” the training was as long as that.
The lack of training emerged in a witness statement given to the public inquiry by Gary Thomas, one of the Post Office’s senior investigators, who said he was recruited to the security team after a stint as a branch manager in Southampton in 2000.
After applying for the role of Post Office security manager, he said he had a “fairly complex set of interviews” before being offered the job.
Mr Thomas said in a witness statement supplied to the inquiry at the end of last year: “This subsequently resulted in a residential training course lasting around three weeks as I recall and to be trained in various competencies.”
Those included being trained in codes of practice in the use of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 as well as “interviewing under caution, voluntary searching of home, person and vehicles along with completion of notebook entries and the retention and storing of exhibits to name but a few I can remember, some 23 plus years ago”.
He said his “role was to interview individuals who were Post Office employees, either direct Crown Office Staff or via their Sub-postmaster Contract, who were suspected or who had admitted to committing a criminal offence or to ascertain the facts surrounding an enquiry”.
Mr Thomas – as previously reported by The Telegraph – subsequently told the Post Office Horizon Inquiry, which is examining hundreds of wrongful prosecutions and convictions, that investigators were given “bonus objectives” each year based on the numbers of successful prosecutions and money recovered.
It has since emerged that the Horizon IT system, developed by Fujitsu, contained bugs that introduced accounting errors and discrepancies that led to the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. Sub-postmasters were investigated and then prosecuted by the Post Office when there was no evidence of theft or fraud and instead relying on a faulty IT system.
In contrast to the three weeks’ training required by the Post Office – which was able to bring hundreds of private prosecutions – police detectives normally have at least two years on the force before they can even begin on-the-job training.
Mr Bates, the sub-postmaster who has led the campaign for justice, said: “Was it as much as three weeks? I am very surprised to hear it was that much time. How can you give bonuses when staff have had that little training?”
Sir Mike Penning, MP, a former police and justice minister, said: “Why did people think such limited training allowed them to bring these prosecutions? And why did the Crown Prosecution Service not stop these private prosecutions?
“You would not allow a police officer with three weeks’ training to be out on the streets with a warrant arresting people. But the Post Office thought that was acceptable. It seems immoral and frankly bonkers.”
The Post Office said it could not comment on inquiry witness statements or individual cases. A spokesman said: “We share fully the aims of the public inquiry to get to the truth of what went wrong in the past and establish accountability. It’s for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions after consideration of all the evidence on the issues that it is examining.”
‘Was it as much as three weeks? I am very surprised to hear it was that much time’
‘The Post Office thought it was acceptable. It seems immoral and frankly bonkers’