Category: Transparency

Why the Post Office case will not go away – and the wider implications of the case

26th April 2021

Few appeal cases keep on being news a few days after the judgment has been handed down.

The parties, of course, will keep an interest as they decide what, if anything, to do next; lawyers will consider any legal or procedural point of wide import; specialists and experts will take due notice of any significant development.

But general news value of an appeal decision diminishes rapidly, and soon it will be as old news as a football result.

But the Post Office appeal case has been different.

If anything, many people – this blogger included – are taking more of an interest in what happened.

In part this is because of the detailed judgments – and so some relentless investigative journalism.

The more one looks at the case the more worrying the case becomes.

All sorts of professionals – not just the senior managers – appear to have been caught up in the attempt to oppose the exposure of what happened.

And as the eminent blogger on law and legal ethics Richard Moorhead asks over at his blog: where were the lawyers?

Reading carefully this detailed Private Eye piece on the scandal, there are many moments where anyone with an interest in litigation will gasp. 

The easy way of addressing the question of what were the lawyers doing is to aver that lawyers are not decision-makers, they only advise and so on.

But that old stand-by of an excuse does not quite work with issues, such as disclosure of documents and duties to the court, where the decision-making is done by lawyers rather than clients.

Something very wrong happened, and for a long period, and because of the decisions made of many people.

And the wider question becomes: where else are such commercial-legal scandals and cover-ups where there has not been a success in bringing it to light?

Perhaps not ones where there have been a mass of prosecutions, but where there has been co-ordinated attempts to prevent transparency, scrutiny and accountability.

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How proper funding and resourcing means fewer miscarriages of justice

25th April 2021

After every miscarriage of justice there is the question of how the wrong was possibly allowed to happen.

And often the miscarriage comes down to the evidence before the court.

In essence: the court is presented with evidence that [x] is the case, and unless that evidence can be undermined then the court will be satisfied that there is guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The evidence can come from police officers. or from an ’eminent’ expert witness, or (as with the Horizon scandal) an IT system.

(See my Horizon posts here and here.)

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In a criminal case a court is presented with substantive (-looking) evidence on one side of the scale and nothing – other than perhaps bare denials – on the other side.

And so the scales tip to one side.

To dislodge such (on the face of it) compelling evidence is a difficult task.

To an extent the situation is alleviated by the obligation of the prosecution to disclose relevant evidence, and not just the evidence on which they are relying on.

To an extent the situation is also alleviated by a prosecutor assessing the soundness of the evidence before bringing any prosecution.

To an extent proper preparation for trial from everyone involved – judge, prosecution, defence – should be a safeguard.

And the main safeguard, of course, is (or should be) the forensic process itself.

Evidence – especially evidence which comes from supposedly authoritative sources – should be relentlessly tested for its cogency.

There should not be mere nodding-along in deference – whether to a police officer, a ‘respected paediatrician’ or a ‘robust’ computer system.

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But.

Disclosure exercises are sometimes not easy – or cheap.

A properly resourced prosecution authority is not cheap.

Proper case preparation is not cheap.

And skilled in-court lawyering and cross-examination is not easy – or cheap.

For justice to be served, however, requires all of this is done well – which requires funding and other resources.

Else the court will be prone to placing the wrong weight on evidence before it.

Or as techies put it: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

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Further thoughts on the Post Office Horizon case

24th April 2021

Following yesterday’s important and immense criminal appeal judgment on the Post Office Horizon case (post here), I have had a look at the preceding civil judgments.

(The civil cases were when those affected sued the Post Office – the criminal appeals were challenges to the criminal conviction in prosecutions brought by the Post Office – the distinction explains why there have been two channels of litigation in this scandal.)

The first – favourable – impression is that the judge who dealt with the civil cases did a magnificent job of judging, both in terms of case management and of the substance of the case.

The key 2019 judgment is here – and it some 155 pages and 1024 paragraphs.

It is an outstanding and forensic piece of work, by a (rare) judge at ease with both technology and the law.

Paragraph 929 is a judicial classic.

The judge is a credit to the judiciary.

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But.

That civil judgment is from late 2019.

The criminal convictions were quashed yesterday.

And the wrongful convictions date back to 2003.

This means there has been a wait of, in some case, nearly twenty years for justice.

However commendable the 2019 civil judgment and the 2021 criminal appeal judgment, there is little or no room for legal self-congratulation at these delays.

Part of the delay can be explained, of course, by the Post Office seeking to contest the cases as long as possible, defending their ‘robust’ system.

Another part of the delay can be explained by the internal Post Office decisions to, in effect, cover up or ignore what happened.

But whatever fingers can be pointed elsewhere, this is a stark example of the failure of the criminal justice system – and it is a systemic failure given how many were falsely convicted.

And so a close look is needed at what, if anything, could be done to stop such injustices again – especially (as is one of my bugbears) the right and power of certain self-interested entities to bring private prosecutions.

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One or two people have complained about the the legal fees in this case.

It would appear that the lawyers for those unfairly accused and convicted had an immense legal job in taking taking on and defeating a well-resourced Post Office insisting that their system was ‘robust’.

To dismantle such a case so that one could even have the material and evidence before the court that would enable Mr Justice Fraser to be able to make his judgment was an extraordinary task.

That the lawyers who did this successfully were remunerated should not be controversial.

And had the Post Office not contested the cases – and, as the court averred, insisted that the world was flat – then the costs would have been substantially less.

Sometimes lawyers can be fairly blamed for costs – but not, it would seem, in this case.

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There should also be a shout out to the investigative journalist Nick Wallis, who has both covered and uncovered a good deal of the scandal – and you can support his work and buy his book here.

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It is time for lobbying to return to the lobby – why transparency is more important than more rules

18th April 2021

Consider the following two statements :-

‘There should be a law against it.’

‘It has not broken any laws.’

Both of these statements are common utterances in political conversation, and they are both possibly said by any of us on depending on circumstance.

Both statements seem to be different.

Yet both these statements are about the same situation: (a) a wrong has happened and (b) no law has been broken.

The difference between the statements is the attitude of the person making the statements, whether ‘something should be done’ or ‘there is nothing to see here’.

No principle or substance separates the two statements, only political expediency.

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The prompt for the observations above is, of course, the unfolding lobbying scandal in the United Kingdom.

The former prime minister David Cameron and certain former officials have been shown to be doing things which, in the view of the many if not the few, they should not have been doing.

But, as this blog and others have averred, the individuals concerned have not broken any rules because (it would seem) there are no rules to break.

A cynic would say that a this is the reason why the current prime minister has ordered an investigation, as it will be inevitable that the individuals will be ‘cleared’ of any rule-breaking.

But being ‘cleared’ of any rule-breaking is not the same as being exonerated of any wrong-doing.

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The alternative response to the current situation is to call for more rules.

This in part stems from the view – almost a surviving form of magical thinking – that a thing will not happen because there is a rule against it.

Laws as spells.

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But what seems to be needed here is not so much more prohibitions, and more codes to (creatively) comply with, but more transparency.

There will always be lobbying – and there is nothing inherently wrong in a democracy with any person seeking to influence those with power.

The important thing is that it is not hidden from view.

That the public can see, if it wishes, the influences being exerted on public policy.

That there are public processes in place for those approaches and exchanges to take place.

In a word: a lobby.

Think about the word, which the internet tells us is defined as:

‘a room providing a space out of which one or more other rooms or corridors lead, typically one near the entrance of a public building’.

And this is the source of the word ‘lobbying’.

Lobbying took place in a lobby: a public or at least quasi-public space.

The time has perhaps come for the practice of lobbying to go back to its root – and for there to be a formal (and, if need be, virtual) lobby where there these exchanges happen and can be seen to happen.

It is perhaps time for the return of the lobby.

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Access to decision and policy-making is a right but not a privilege: David Cameron, lobbying, and regulation

13th April 2021

Let us start with one proposition, so as to see if it is sound or not.

The proposition is: that in a liberal democracy there should be no closed class of those who can seek to influence public policy.

Just as – in theory – any person can go to the lobby of the house of commons or write a letter to a member of parliament, any person can also attempt to speak to a minister or protest outside a ministerial office.

If this proposition is sound, then there is nothing, in principle, wrong with any person seeking to lobby any parliamentarian or minister.

And if that is a correct statement of principle, then it follows that the principle can be asserted by persons one disagrees with or disapproves of – including finance companies and former prime ministers.

Framed in this way there is a certain superficial plausibility to the contention that the former prime minister did nothing wrong in seeking to influence ministers about a company in which he had a personal interest.

Any wrongdoing would, it can be contended, be at the ‘supply-side’ of ministers and officials who wrongly were influenced by such lobbying, not the ‘demand side’ of the person seeking to obtain influence.

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Let us now look at rules.

As the estimable Dr Hannah White explains in this informative and helpful article, it would appear that the issue of Cameron’s lobbying is not about whether rules have been broken but that there appear to be no rules to be broken.

And so we have a gap.

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1381610539147726853

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But.

There is something wrong.

It may be that there are no rules that have been engaged, still less broken.

And it may well be that one can (just about) aver that the general principle of openness means that any person from you to Cameron can seek to lobby a minister.

But it still seems wrong.

Yet a general sense of wrongness is not the same as effective regulation.

What can be done, if anything can be done?

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Part of the problem is indeed with the ‘supply side’ – any approaches by any person, former prime ministers or otherwise, should be reported and logged, and those approaches must be spurned unless there is absolute transparency.

It is not enough that we have the ‘good chaps’ theory that, of course, no minister or official would be (wrongly) influenced.

The general principle that any person in a liberal democracy should be able to seek to influence a minister does not mean such approaches should be cloaked – the quality of openness that attends the former carries over to the latter.

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Switching to the ‘demand side’ of seeking political or policy influence, the general principle that any person in a liberal democracy should be able to seek to influence a minister does not mean that there has to be an ‘anything goes’ approach.

Just as everyone has the ‘right’ to dine at the Ritz – but it an empty right when one cannot afford it – a right to lobby those with power is an empty right if one does not have connections or the know-how about making such access effective.

Unless lobbying is regulated then there will be a natural tendency for those with money – such as a finance company – and those with the best connections – such as a former prime minister – to have far more effective access and influence than others.

This then undermines if not negates the rights of others, as influencing decision-making, rule-making and policy-making becomes the preserve of those with better connections.

It is the right of the privileged, but one masquerading as a a general right of openness.

Any company should have the right to make representations to the government – but only on the same terms as as any other company.

This would mean that it is the merits of the representation that makes a difference, rather than the extent of the access.

And any lobbyist – of whatever background –  should not have a greater right of access than any other lobbyist.

This means by implication that there are certain individuals – such as former ministers and former senior officials – who if they are to be permitted to approach their former colleagues, should only do so under the full glare provided by absolute openness and transparency, and in accordance with published procedures.

And if such absolute openness and transparency and procedural certainty is not feasible, then they should not be able to directly approach ministers and officials at all – even if it is in respect of their personal interest (as opposed to on behalf of a paying client, which is a gap Cameron was able to exploit).

They can write a letter to a member of parliament, or wave a placard on Whitehall, like anyone else.

***

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Beware the excuse of ‘the king’s evil counsellors’

2nd April 2021

Every so often with Boris Johnson as prime minister there will be, in effect, the excuse of ‘the king’s evil counsellors’.

This useful excuse means that the prime minister is not really culpable for his decisions, but somebody else on whom he relied.

For example: it may be in the form of ‘Boris takes control‘ news report – which, of course, suggests that those who hitherto had responsibility did so without the prime minister’s support or direction.

Or: it may be in the form of the Prime Minister ‘distancing himself’ from a report or a decision issued by Downing Street. 

In any case it is a form of plausible deniability – that is is one of the prime minister’s advisors or ministers to blame, and not the prime minister.

Johnson is especially adept at this evasion.

It means that somebody else is always to blame – and he can shake his head and affect to be innocent – he was merely advised badly.

That his ‘evil counsellors’ were at fault, but not him.

Beware.

 

 

 

 

 

Government communications – another departure from the notion of serving the public?

1st April 2021

There is controversy in the news today about central government communications

In particular, there is – correct – criticism that government press offices are generally unhelpful to those from the outside making the enquiries and too motivated by serving the political interests of the ministers of the day.

This, sadly, is nothing new – though it does appear to be getting worse.

This is, of course, a subjective and personal perspective – other commentators and journalists may have less frustrating – indeed happier – experiences.

But if the current criticisms – as affirmed by my own experience – are valid then the most likely explanation is akin to the view adopted by that police officer the other day.

You will recall the officer who insisted that the police were crown servants as distinct from public servants.

Press offices, ditto.

(Also freedom of information offices – but that is for another post.)

Government press officers seem to see their role as actively not providing information to the public and the press, but instead seeking to withhold information and misdirect media attention.

Unless a journalist has an already good relationship with a press officer, there is little or no point asking for anything useful from a press office.

This is why, for example, I prefer to work with public domain and open source information – and to spot connections and identify discrepancies.

Harder, slower work – but worthwhile.

This means I usually only go to government press offices in two situations.

First, if there is genuinely no other way I can obtain the information from public domain or open source material.

Second, if I need some specific thing verified (or rebutted) before publication – where I have worked that thing out by other means.

This approach means that there is little scope for a government press office to shape my writing and commentary – only to influence it, if at all, at the margins.

My approach here is not unique – and it is because government press offices are so adept at being (ahem) gatekeepers that they sometimes pay the price by not being involved in reports and commentary, other than perhaps to provide a statement or not.

Tight media management can only achieve so much.

This is not the only way government press officers are being avoided – as ministers and ministerial special advisers build up their own direct trusted relationships with political journalists.

And so government press offices – although they seem to be expanding in size – are also being squeezed in substance.

Employing more and more people to say less and less.

Government comms disappearing into a hole of its own creation.

And in the meantime, the notion of a government press office being there to serve and inform the public becomes a smaller and smaller speck in the law and policy sky.

***

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Why Ministers are less practically accountable than Judges – and how the accountability gap is the most fundamental problem in United Kingdom government and politics

29th March 2021

Many will have Very Strong Opinions about the basic ills in the United Kingdom political system.

Some will point to individual politicians (Thatcher, Blair, Johnson, Corbyn, Farage etc) or political parties (Tories!).

Others will point to political ideas (Brexit, Remain, Centrism, neo-liberalism, ‘woke’-ism).

A minority will aver that there are structural failures – unelected head of state or upper chamber, the lack of proportional representation, and so on.

Perhaps these views are correct, but the more I write about the law and policy of the United Kingdom, the more there seems one particular fault in the conduct of public public affairs.

Accountability.

It is almost impossible – in practical terms – to hold many with executive power to account.

Of course, there is constitutional theory – such as the supposition that ministers are accountable to parliament.

But even typing or saying that  feels artificial if not ridiculous.

Ministers routinely avoid saying things to parliament and, if they do, they are adept at saying untrue, or misleading, or incomplete things.

And there is no real sanction if a minister does mislead or disregard parliament.

That ministers are accountable to parliament is not so much a constitutional principle, but a lack of a principle.

It is a rhetorical cloak that hides the lack of any real accountability.

Contrast with, say, judges.

A judge has to give reasons for their decision – and those decisions must explain why they took that decision and not any other decision; the decisions of judges can be appealed or reviewed by other courts; and the law applied by a judge can be changed.

You may sneer at judges in their (daft) robes and wigs, but they are practically day-to-day accountable in at least three ways.

Ministers, in contrast, do not need to have reasons that add up for most of their decisions; they are free from having those decisions properly scrutinised by their political peers; and there is no real limit to what they can legislate if they are so minded.

And apart from the remote possibility of a legal challenge, or an eventual general election, they are safe from actual accountability.

There are various causes of this:

– the elective dictatorship of parliament, where the government also has control of the elected part of the legislature, is a primary cause;

– the lack (with a few notable exceptions) of a press that is geared to holding ministers to account rather than being a means of transmission of information from/about the government to the public;

– the hold that political parties continue to have in the recruitment and promotion of candidates;

– our tribal and increasingly hyper-partisan political culture;

– the increasing lack of care of voters about being lied to by ministers – for, as this blog has previously averred, there is no practical point exposing the lies of ministers if people do not mind being lied to; and

– the absence – despite the Very Strong Opinions of constitutional hobbyists – of a consensus for what alternative constitutional arrangements would be an improvement.

(‘We demand a written constitution’ say those who rarely then explain how a written constitution would not just be an opportunity by the executive to entrench its own power.)

An index of how weak our constitution is in respect of accountability is how, when things go wrong, it is customary to demand a public inquiry.

For if our constitutional worked well in respect of accountability then there would be proper scrutiny at the time – and public inquiries would be an exceptional event.

Mere exposure of problems is not enough – indeed, few of those who think anything about our public affairs will be unaware of many of the problems.

It is instead an everyday failure to get ministers to engage with those problems, to explain what went wrong and to say how the problems can be addressed – the very stuff of accountability.

So many things in our political system now point away from this lack of accountability being fixed quickly.

And so the accountability gap widens and widens.

Brace, brace.

***

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Why the Deloitte clause for drafting ministerial answers is a further assault on civil service norms

25th March 2021

One of the marvels of modern story telling is, of course, Bagpuss.

And one of the most instructive stories of Bagpuss is The Mouse Mill, where the mice devise and construct a mill for the provision of chocolate biscuits.

[Spoiler warning for episode eight of Bagpuss.]

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbD_notXRVQ

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The mice, however, are not making the chocolate biscuits out of butterbeans and breadcrumbs as they aver.

They are instead simply recycling chocolate biscuits, thereby controlling both ends of a supply chain.

Until now, the mice’s chocolate biscuit factory was perhaps the most ingenious method yet conceived of having it both ways in the provision of a good or a service.

But now we have the Deloitte contract for track-and-trace, where they appear to be able to answer parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests about their very own services.

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Over at the Huffington Post, the experienced and well-regarded political journalist Paul Waugh has disclosed that Deloitte are drafting the answers to parliamentary questions in respect of matters for which Deloitte are providing the government with services.

I have not seen the contracts, but on the safe assumption that Waugh is a reliable news source, we can trust the following report (emphasis added):

‘Four different contracts show that Test and Trace has been using Deloitte for “general management consultancy services” ranging from building testing capacity to stockpiling and logistics oversight.

‘But buried within the contracts are details of help provided with PR and communications, with a requirement to “draft and respond to parliamentary questions, Freedom of Information requests, media queries and other reactive requests” and to “support lines to take and Q&A’s in anticipation of queries”.’

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You do not need to have suffered years of experience with government contracts to know that legalese here quoted by Waugh rings true.

It is certainly not the sort of wording anyone would invent – and so it is no doubt the case that this is an actual contractual provision.

And the legalese is precise – crucially the contractual wording is not about simply providing the information that would allow the civil servants to draft and respond to parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests.

Had that been the purpose and intention of that contractual provision, then that is what the provision would have said.

Instead the parties chose to use wording where the external provider is obliged to draft and respond – and not the civil servants.

As you will see, this detail matters when we come to the government’s rejoinder.

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As Gemma Abbott, legal director of the Good Law Project, is quoted as saying:

‘We have a government so addicted to outsourcing that it has even outsourced being held to account.

‘If a member of the public submits an FOI request, or an MP asks a parliamentary question about the government spending millions on contracts with Deloitte, it seems that it’s Deloitte at the other end marking its own homework – it is beyond parody.’

Her point is well made.

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‘…the mice put breadcrumbs and butterbeans in the top, and they work the mill, and out come the chocolate biscuits…’

– Bagpuss

‘Impossible, impossible, it isn’t true. I am going round the back to what is happening’

– Professor Yaffle

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There is, of course, nothing wrong with any consultancy firm providing services to the government – and, indeed, there is an advantage to certain tasks being allocated to external professional advisers and service providers.

But there are certain tasks which should not be contracted-out and outsourced.

The problem here is not with Deloitte offering to provide the service of providing answers to parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests – for they are a provider of services – but the agreement of the government that this job be undertaken by external providers.

The real culpability lies with the government.

The effect of the transaction is that a service provider will be responsible for providing “draft[s] and respon[ses] to parliamentary questions, Freedom of Information requests, media queries and other reactive requests” about their very own services.

This cannot be right in principle.

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At the end of the Huffington Post story there is a rejoinder from the government:

‘The government employs contractors in the same vein that private businesses do and responsibility for answering parliamentary questions, freedom of information requests and media enquiries rests firmly with a team of civil service communications professionals within the Department of Health and Social Care. Every single response is subject to the highest levels of scrutiny to ensure they are both factual and detailed.’

If this was the case, then it is difficult (if not impossible) to explain the legalese quoted in the news report.

Either the contractual wording sets out the true intention of the government or that press statement does – both cannot be (equally) true.

And if the government’s rejoinder is true, then the legal drafting quoted in the news report would (and could) have been different.

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Why does this matter?

The constitutional significance of this is set out well in a thread by Alex Thomas of the Institute of Government:

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So the contractual provisions – and presumably the services performed thereunder – are an assault on the norms of the civil service.

Another assault, to go with all the others.

This one, however, does not seem especially directed or deliberate – just a shrug and a signing of some contracts.

We do not even get the glamour of a chocolate factory, or the elusive near-satisfaction of chocolate biscuits being procured only to then be taken away.

The government should not sign any further contracts with the wording of this clause.

There should, of course, be a contractual obligation on service providers to assist the government in respect of freedom of information requests and parliamentary questions and to provide necessary information.

But contracting to provide the service of ‘drafting and responding’ is a significant step too far.

Having control of both ends of the line of accountability is inappropriate – a service provider to the government should not be ‘drafting and responding’ to queries about that service.

One should not be able to both have a chocolate biscuit and to eat it. 

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Declaration: I was a central government lawyer 2003-2005 dealing with freedom of information requests on central government commercial matters.

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Whoopsie: the government did not get the commission report on judicial review that it was hoping for

 19th March 2021

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‘Toulouse’s suggestion was not what Audrey wanted to hear.’

– Moulin Rouge

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Sometimes – just sometimes – in the world of law and policy there are moments when welcome things do happen.

Back in August 2020 this blog covered the government’s announcement of an ‘independent panel to look at judicial review’.

It did not seem a promising move: just an attempt by the government to find cover for an assault on judicial review by means of a hand-picked commission.

But.

It is sometimes strange how things turn out.

The commission has now reported – and just a skim of the report shows that the government did not get the report it was hoping for.

In large part, the report appears to be an affirmation of the current position of judicial review – with minor changes that it is hard to feel strongly about.

(A close read of the report may dislodge this happy impression – but that is this blog’s preliminary view.)

The concluding observations of the report could have even be a post on this very blog:

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In receipt of the report, the Ministry of Justice decided that it would try harder to find people to tell them what they wanted to hear.

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‘We want to keep this conversation going.’

We can bet they do.

Like a frustrated news show producer who cannot find any talking-head expert to say the desired things, the Ministry of Justice is now resorting to a Vox Pox.

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At bottom, the problem here is a mismatch, a dislocation – such as those recently discussed on this blog.

The discrepancy is between the heady rhetoric of ‘activist judges’ – a rhetoric that has a life of its own – and the mundane reality of what actually happens in courts.

The commission, to their credit, looked hard and reported on what they saw.

Yet those Ministry of Justice, to their discredit, want to keep on until they are told what they want to hear.

Perhaps the Ministry of Justice will get what they want – and then move to limit judicial review.

One can never be optimistic about law and policy for very long, and the illiberals and authoritarians are relentless.

But this report is a welcome break from the push towards populist authoritarianism in our political and legal affairs.

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For a more detailed account of the just-published report, see Paul Daly’s blogpost here.

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