The role of the Legal System in Failures - The UK Post Office Scandal (Part 3)

09/27/22 • 29 min

An exercise in highly paid lawyers dancing on the head of a pin. We deep dive into the roles the law, the lawyers and the courts played in this scandal.

This wasn’t a case of a few bad apples, the whole system was stacked against the Subpostmasters. The system silenced, suppressed and hid information and nothing like justice was achieved.

At some point the overriding duty to the court owed by lawyers got lost in a fog of protecting the client at all costs. The barrister acting for the Sub-postmasters, after reading internal Post Office legal advice from 2014, said “In my almost 30 years’ experience at the bar I have never come across information that has been so electrifying. It almost caused my teeth to fall out when I read it.”

It took 20 years and a class action for Tracy Felstead to recover a mere £17,000 pounds for her wrongful conviction in 2001.

And this story is far from over yet. The Solicitors Regulatory Authority is a core participant in the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry which is probing the in house and external lawyers for potential wrongdoing.

Source Material

Nick Wallis, ‘The Great Post Office Scandal’, 2021, Bath Publishing.

Paul Marshall, ‘Failed Justice - how commercial interest displaced the interests of justice in the Post Office case’, 30 March 2022, Queen’s University Belfast, Institute of Legal Studies

Disclaimer This podcast is for reference purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. You should always obtain legal advice about your specific circumstances. The views expressed in these podcasts are the speakers' own. They should not be taken as recommendations of the Society of Construction Law Australia

An exercise in highly paid lawyers dancing on the head of a pin. We deep dive into the roles the law, the lawyers and the courts played in this scandal.

This wasn’t a case of a few bad apples, the whole system was stacked against the Subpostmasters. The system silenced, suppressed and hid information and nothing like justice was achieved.

It took 20 years and a class action for Tracy Felstead to recover a mere £17,000 pounds for her wrongful conviction in 2001.

Source Material

Nick Wallis, ‘The Great Post Office Scandal’, 2021, Bath Publishing.

Paul Marshall, ‘Failed Justice - how commercial interest displaced the interests of justice in the Post Office case’, 30 March 2022, Queen’s University Belfast, Institute of Legal Studies

Previous Episode

Learning from IT Failures: Horizon, Bugs, and Chinooks - The UK Post Office Scandal (Part 2)

In the opening I introduced that the Horizon software was the main deliverable of a billion pound PFI project let by the Post Office. The contract was awarded in May 1996 to Fujitsu who won the job because of their winning offer to bear the software development costs in exchange for 8 years guaranteed transaction fee every time a customer of the Department of Social Service used their new swipe card in a Post Office.

It doesn’t take long for the deal and the software to go off the rails.

How on earth did this come about and why is it such a hard lesson for us to learn that it can be the technology at fault, not user error.

Source Material

Nick Wallis, ‘The Great Post Office Scandal’, 2021, Bath Publishing.

Paul Marshall, ‘Failed Justice - how commercial interest displaced the interests of justice in the Post Office case’, 30 March 2022, Queen’s University Belfast, Institute of Legal Studies

Disclaimer

This podcast is for reference purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. You should always obtain legal advice about your specific circumstances. The views expressed in these podcasts are the speakers' own. They should not be taken as recommendations of the Society of Construction Law Australia.

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Sean Kelly, Special Counsel https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-kelly-450296a4/

Sean is a commercial lawyer specialising in the construction and infrastructure sectors. He acts for local and international clients regarding claims and dispute resolution on complex construction and infrastructure projects.

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Yazmin Judd, Lawyer https://www.linkedin.com/in/yazmin-judd-b3b049149/

Clayton Utz https://www.claytonutz.com/

Clayton Utz is a leading Australian law firm with a confident and engaging approach, and a genuine commitment to client service.