‘I was just doing my job’ postal investigator tells widow
AN INVESTIGATOR whose inquiry resulted in an innocent Post Office victim dying a convicted man insisted “I was just doing my job” when questioned at the Horizon IT inquiry.
Robert Daily admitted yesterday that he was not “comfortable” when he carried out searches on Peter Holmes's family home and car, but failed to apologise to his widow, Marion, who sat only a few feet away.
It came as Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, said the Government could impose a deadline for Post Office workers wrongly convicted of theft to have their convictions overturned.
Former police officer Mr Holmes had been manager of a Newcastle Post Office branch for 13 years when he was accused of stealing £46,000. The father of three pleaded guilty to four counts of false accounting in 2010 and was acquitted by direction of a judge.
He died of a brain tumour six years before Mrs Holmes successfully cleared his name in April 2021.
An inquiry is now examining the scandal which involved more than 900 Post Office workers being wrongfully prosecuted over faulty Horizon software reporting fictional shortfalls.
Yesterday, the inquiry heard how Mr Holmes raised concerns about the software in his interview with Mr Daily.
However, in his witness statement Mr Daily said he did not believe he “would have been aware of the significance of this” because he “didn't recall being aware of any issues with Horizon” at this point.
Yet Christopher Jacobs, representing Mrs Holmes and others affected by the scandal, said she and several of his other clients “simply don't believe that”, adding: “We can't accept that you had no idea that other sub-postmasters or assistants had problems with the Horizon system and were raising those in interviews.”
Mr Jacobs went on to cite the case of the former sub-postmistress Suzanne Palmer, who had been acquitted the year before Mr Holmes was interviewed, after raising issues with Horizon as part of her defence.
Yet Mr Daily told the inquiry he was “not aware” of the case and any others at the time. Addressing the search of Mr Holmes's family home, Mr Jacobs asked: “Was it normal to go into people's homes, go into their bedrooms and their drawers and take out statements from banks before a postmaster or assistant had even been interviewed?” he asked.
“If you're asking if I was comfortable doing that, no, I wasn't comfortable. But it was part of the job and it was done voluntarily.” When asked what he would say to Peter Holmes today, Mr Daily said that from what he heard from previous evidence he would have been “pleased” that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Yet he declined to accept any personal responsibility for what happened to Mr Holmes when asked, saying: “No, I was only doing my job.”
Mrs Holmes, who grimaced at the hearing as Mr Daily spoke these words, said afterwards: “It's astonishing to be honest. All the evidence there and he still doesn't accept that he had any part in it. He just sat there.” The inquiry also heard a resume Mr Daily submitted to the Post Office in 2008 listed his wife's academic achievements rather than his own when he was reapplying for a role with the firm as part of a restructuring process.
Emma Price, counsel to the inquiry, asked: “Did you realise this and correct this at the time?" “No,” Mr Daily said. “So it's something that's only come to light during [this investigation]?” she added, with Mr Daily responding: “Yes.”
The Post Office raised investigators' targets for cash recovered by 25 percentage points, documents shown to the inquiry revealed.
A document originally produced for Mr Daily's own review read: “I have achieved an 86 per cent recovery, £68,733 in my cases.”
When asked why he thought the target had increased, Mr Daily said: “I can only think it was because of the amount of losses the Post Office was suffering.”
The inquiry heard how Mr Daily started his career at the organisation as a counter clerk in 1979 and became a security and investigation manager in 2011. The inquiry continues.
‘All the evidence was there and he still doesn't accept that he had any part in it – he just sat there'