Keir Starmer was asked to “take a closer look” at the Post Office’s prosecution practices in 2011 in his role as director of public prosecutions (DPP), but his office told the person firing the warning to direct concerns to the government.
Prime minister Starmer, who was DPP from 2013 to 2018, was questioned about his knowledge of Post Office prosecutions following ITV’s dramatisation of the Post Office scandal in January 2024.
The then leader of the opposition told the BBC: “I didn’t see these particular cases. I don’t even know yet what they were about, whether they come within the cohort that is of concern.”
The same month, then shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “No case of a prosecution of a postmaster came across Keir Starmer’s desk as director of public prosecutions.”
The 2011 warning letter to Keir Starmer
But Computer Weekly can reveal that in April 2011, Starmer, serving as DPP at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), was sent a letter by the partner of a subpostmaster, bringing the Post Office’s controversial prosecutions to his attention.
In his letter to Starmer, which was responded to, Ray Clarance, whose long-term partner Sarah Burgess-Boyde ran a Post Office branch in Newcastle, wrote: “If you truly believe in transparency and accountability, as I think you do, you may wish to take a closer look at the actions of the Post Office in their treatment of subpostmasters, whom, it would appear, are turning to criminality in increasing numbers.
“Employees of [the Post Office] did not act in a way that retains the confidence of those with whom they have dealings. In particular, fiduciary obligations are ignored.”
Clarance’s reference to it appearing that subpostmasters were “turning to criminality in increasing numbers” was in relation to the jump in convictions after the Horizon computer system was introduced in branches. Convictions of subpostmasters by the Post Office went from an average of around five a year before Horizon to an average of about 50 a year after the software was introduced.
A member of the CPS correspondence unit responded to Clarance’s letter within a week. “The Crown Prosecution Service is responsible for reviewing and, where appropriate, prosecuting most criminal cases in England and Wales following an investigation by police,” read the reply.
“I note that your concerns relate to the actions of the Royal Mail Group Limited. As these matters fall within the remit of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, you should direct your concerns to them,” it continued.
Computer Weekly attempted to contact Starmer though the Number 10 press office, but had received no comment before this article was published.
Impact of prosecutions on subpostmasters
What Clarance did not tell Starmer in his letter was that his partner, Burgess-Boyde, was at the time being prosecuted by the Post Office for an unexplained shortfall of over £30,000. The Post Office later dropped the case due to a lack of evidence. Burgess-Boyde’s case is one of many instances where a subpostmaster was prosecuted but not convicted, resulting in the loss of businesses and reputations, serious health issues and severe financial hardship.
During the prosecution, Burgess-Boyde was told by her lawyer that she would probably be offered a deal to plead guilty to false accounting and would be more likely to avoid a custodial sentence if she accepted. This practice was used by Post Office investigators when they had no evidence. She refused, and the prosecution for theft was eventually dropped by the Post Office.
Burgess-Boyde told Computer Weekly that the prosecution, which went on for two years, made her suicidal. “I couldn’t go out of the house, and we faced financial obliteration. I had nothing. I did not have a penny to my name, and I was not entitled to any benefits.”
The Post Office carried out private prosecutions of subpostmasters, independent of the CPS, but a small number based on Post Office evidence were carried out by the CPS, three of which took place during Starmer’s tenure.
Clarance wrote to Starmer in April 2011, by which time the Post Office had already prosecuted hundreds of subpostmasters and their staff at an increased rate following the introduction of the Horizon system. In 2011, 48 subpostmasters were convicted following prosecutions by the Post Office, with a further 78 subpostmasters convicted up to 2015, when the Post Office ceased prosecutions. An unknown number of prosecutions did not lead to convictions.
Burgess-Boyde said: “If you seriously think an acquittal makes a difference, it doesn’t. You don’t get locked up, but that is the only difference. You’re a prisoner of your own mind. I cannot put into words what it’s like.”
Missed opportunities for intervention
Clarance’s letter is another example of a missed opportunity for someone in power to step in.
Referring to civil servants, Sir Alan Bates, the former subpostmaster who led the fight for justice, said: “They don’t want to know, until it becomes a real fire.”
He added: “I knew for years that you had to get the judiciary involved. It’s just a matter of how you get there.”
Although the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) had been looking at Post Office prosecutions since 2015, it wasn’t until after a High Court group litigation order (GLO) in 2018/19 that things started moving at pace.
During the GLO, subpostmasters led by Bates proved that the Horizon system they used in branches was to blame for account shortfalls.
Bates said Judge Peter Fraser, now Justice Fraser, who managed the GLO, “put the weight into the whole thing”.
But it was still slow going, with the first six subpostmaster convictions overturned in late 2020, followed by a larger group of 39 in April 2021. Convictions continued to be overturned slowly, but it was the public’s reaction to the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, in January 2024, that forced the government to address the convictions. By May of that year, legislation had been introduced to overturn over 700 convictions en masse.
A government spokesperson said: “We must never lose sight of the Horizon scandal’s human impact on postmasters and their families. The amount we’ve paid out has increased more than sixfold as part of our ongoing commitment to deliver justice to victims as swiftly as possible.”
Starmer is not the only current major political party leader to have passed up an opportunity to at least have been more curious.
In 2010, when the postal affairs minister, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, responded to a request for a meeting with Bates, who was at the time campaigning for justice, he wrote that he did not “believe a meeting would serve any useful purpose”. Davey did meet Bates, but was heavily criticised in January 2024 after ITV’s scandal dramatisation made the wider public aware of the plight of the subpostmasters.
Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered as a result of the Horizon system.