Keir Starmer was warned about Put up Workplace prosecution practices as director of public prosecutions
Keir Starmer was requested to “take a better look” on the Put up Workplace’s prosecution practices in 2011 in his function as director of public prosecutions (DPP), however his workplace instructed the particular person firing the warning to direct issues to the federal government.
Prime minister Starmer, who was DPP from 2013 to 2018, was questioned about his data of Put up Workplace prosecutions following ITV’s dramatisation of the Put up Workplace scandal in January 2024.
The then chief of the opposition instructed the BBC: “I didn’t see these explicit instances. I don’t even know but what they had been about, whether or not they come inside the cohort that’s of concern.”
The identical month, then shadow well being secretary Wes Streeting mentioned: “No case of a prosecution of a postmaster got here throughout Keir Starmer’s desk as director of public prosecutions.”
The 2011 warning letter to Keir Starmer
However Pc Weekly can reveal that in April 2011, Starmer, serving as DPP on the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), was despatched a letter by the accomplice of a subpostmaster, bringing the Put up Workplace’s controversial prosecutions to his consideration.
In his letter to Starmer, which was responded to, Ray Clarance, whose long-term accomplice Sarah Burgess-Boyde ran a Put up Workplace department in Newcastle, wrote: “For those who really consider in transparency and accountability, as I feel you do, you could want to take a better have a look at the actions of the Put up Workplace of their remedy of subpostmasters, whom, it will seem, are turning to criminality in growing numbers.
“Staff of [the Post Office] didn’t act in a approach that retains the arrogance of these with whom they’ve dealings. Particularly, fiduciary obligations are ignored.”
Clarance’s reference to it showing that subpostmasters had been “turning to criminality in growing numbers” was in relation to the bounce in convictions after the Horizon laptop system was launched in branches. Convictions of subpostmasters by the Put up Workplace went from a mean of round 5 a yr earlier than Horizon to a mean of about 50 a yr after the software program was launched.
A member of the CPS correspondence unit responded to Clarance’s letter inside per week. “The Crown Prosecution Service is answerable for reviewing and, the place acceptable, prosecuting most felony instances in England and Wales following an investigation by police,” learn the reply.
“I notice that your issues relate to the actions of the Royal Mail Group Restricted. As these issues fall inside the remit of the Division for Enterprise Innovation and Expertise, it’s best to direct your issues to them,” it continued.
Pc Weekly tried to contact Starmer although the Quantity 10 press workplace, however had acquired no remark earlier than this text was revealed.
Affect of prosecutions on subpostmasters
What Clarance didn’t inform Starmer in his letter was that his accomplice, Burgess-Boyde, was on the time being prosecuted by the Put up Workplace for an unexplained shortfall of over £30,000. The Put up Workplace later dropped the case because of a scarcity of proof. Burgess-Boyde’s case is certainly one of many situations the place a subpostmaster was prosecuted however not convicted, ensuing within the lack of companies and reputations, severe well being points and extreme monetary hardship.
Throughout the prosecution, Burgess-Boyde was instructed by her lawyer that she would most likely be provided a deal to plead responsible to false accounting and could be extra more likely to keep away from a custodial sentence if she accepted. This observe was utilized by Put up Workplace investigators once they had no proof. She refused, and the prosecution for theft was ultimately dropped by the Put up Workplace.
Burgess-Boyde instructed Pc Weekly that the prosecution, which went on for 2 years, made her suicidal. “I couldn’t exit of the home, and we confronted monetary obliteration. I had nothing. I didn’t have a penny to my title, and I used to be not entitled to any advantages.”
The Put up Workplace carried out non-public prosecutions of subpostmasters, impartial of the CPS, however a small quantity primarily based on Put up Workplace proof had been carried out by the CPS, three of which befell throughout Starmer’s tenure.
Clarance wrote to Starmer in April 2011, by which period the Put up Workplace had already prosecuted a whole bunch of subpostmasters and their workers at an elevated price following the introduction of the Horizon system. In 2011, 48 subpostmasters had been convicted following prosecutions by the Put up Workplace, with an additional 78 subpostmasters convicted as much as 2015, when the Put up Workplace ceased prosecutions. An unknown variety of prosecutions didn’t result in convictions.
Burgess-Boyde mentioned: “For those who significantly suppose an acquittal makes a distinction, it doesn’t. You don’t get locked up, however that’s the solely distinction. You’re a prisoner of your personal thoughts. I can not put into phrases what it’s like.”
Missed alternatives for intervention
Clarance’s letter is one other instance of a missed alternative for somebody in energy to step in.
Referring to civil servants, Sir Alan Bates, the previous subpostmaster who led the battle for justice, mentioned: “They don’t wish to know, till it turns into an actual hearth.”
He added: “I knew for years that you just needed to get the judiciary concerned. It’s only a matter of the way you get there.”
Though the Legal Circumstances Assessment Fee (CCRC) had been taking a look at Put up Workplace prosecutions since 2015, it wasn’t till after a Excessive Court docket group litigation order (GLO) in 2018/19 that issues began shifting at tempo.
Throughout the GLO, subpostmasters led by Bates proved that the Horizon system they utilized in branches was responsible for account shortfalls.
Bates mentioned Decide Peter Fraser, now Justice Fraser, who managed the GLO, “put the burden into the entire thing”.
However it was nonetheless gradual going, with the primary six subpostmaster convictions overturned in late 2020, adopted by a bigger group of 39 in April 2021. Convictions continued to be overturned slowly, however it was the general public’s response to the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Put up Workplace, in January 2024, that pressured the federal government to deal with the convictions. By Might of that yr, laws had been launched to overturn over 700 convictions en masse.
A authorities spokesperson mentioned: “We mustn’t ever lose sight of the Horizon scandal’s human affect on postmasters and their households. The quantity we’ve paid out has elevated greater than sixfold as a part of our ongoing dedication to ship justice to victims as swiftly as attainable.”
Starmer isn’t the one present main political occasion chief to have handed up a possibility to no less than have been extra curious.
In 2010, when the postal affairs minister, Liberal Democrat chief Ed Davey, responded to a request for a gathering with Bates, who was on the time campaigning for justice, he wrote that he didn’t “consider a gathering would serve any helpful objective”. Davey did meet Bates, however was closely criticised in January 2024 after ITV’s scandal dramatisation made the broader public conscious of the plight of the subpostmasters.
Pc Weekly first uncovered the scandal in 2009, revealing the tales of seven subpostmasters and the issues they suffered on account of the Horizon system.
