Summary of the day …
Adam Crozier and Alan Cook, who both held senior roles while the events of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal unfolded, have both claimed to the inquiry that they were not fully aware of the prosecutorial function of the business. Crozier claimed he did not realise it was the Royal Mail legal team that was enacting prosecutions on behalf of the Post Office. Cook said it was only near the end of his tenure he realised that he was the managing director of an organisation that could prosecute people. In his evidence, Crozier described Cook’s statement on that as “surprising”. A counsel acting for subpostmasters described part of Cook’s written testimony as a “straight out lie”.
Cook also told the inquiry that Paula Vennells “likely” signed off on a trial bill of more than £300,000 after a subpostmaster was accused of having a £25,000 shortfall at his branch. Lee Castleton’s prosecution in 2006 was the subject of the 2009 Computer Weekly article that began to draw wider attention to the complaints about the Horizon system. Cook said the article “shocked” him. Vennells is scheduled to appear at the inquiry in May.
Keir Starmer has said he is “fully confident that Angela Rayner has not broken the rules” after Greater Manchester police said it had reopened a probe into claims Labour’s deputy leader may have broken electoral law over information she gave about her living situation a decade ago.
The latest GDP figures show that the UK economy grew slightly by 0.1% in February, which coupled with the “technical recession” of the final two quarters of 2023 show the economy has been flat-lining for months. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the figures were “a welcome sign that the economy is turning a corner”. Year-on-year the economy is 0.2% smaller than it was in February 2023.
Rishi Sunak’s government has discussed the possibility of using a UK-based airline to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, industry sources have confirmed.
Starmer visited Barrow-in-Furness today where nuclear submarines are being built, and said “the only way to have a safer world is to have an effective nuclear deterrent.”
Energy and net zero minister Graham Stuart has said he is stepping down from Sunak’s cabinet to concentrate on his constituency.
The Bank of England’s recent record of forecasting inflation and the path of interest rates was undermined by out-of-date methods and a failure to communicate clearly with the public, according to an independent assessment.
Thank you for reading and all your kind words and comments this week – and for helping me out and flagging when I’ve made typos. I will no doubt see you somewhere else soon on the Guardian website. Take care, have a good weekend.
Here is a little bit more from Adam Crozier’s testimony today at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, via PA Media, which has pulled out these bits of transcription, where Crozier said he “doesn’t know” if the money paid by subpostmasters for accounting shortfalls was recorded as profit.
Sam Stein KC, who is acting at the inquiry on the behalf of a large group of subpostmaster and has been notably tenacious in his questioning of witnesses, said: “Subpostmasters and mistresses were being told to pay up. It’s your contractual duty, they were told, to pay up. And many of them did pay up for shortfalls that were certainly not their fault. They got that money from their own pockets.
“They got that money sometimes borrowing from friends. Some, you may recall, got the money from their kids’ piggy banks. Others got money from loan sharks at extortionate interest rates, tipping them into financial chaos and bankruptcy. Help us please understand what happened to that money when it was paid in? Was it properly accounted for?”
Crozier, who headed Royal Mail when it owned the Post Office between 2003 and 2010 responded: “I assume it was through the financial team.”
When asked if it was accounted for as profit, he said: “I don’t know.”
Stein then asked: “It would be wholly wrong, would you agree, to account for a payment as shortfall as profit?”
Crozier responded: “I’m not an accounting expert. I wouldn’t know exactly how you account for different payments.”
