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“Rogues’ gallery” is advocacy language, not an official finding of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Phase Four examined actions against sub-postmasters and others, including investigations, prosecutions and disclosure failures; a person’s appearance in a witness list or case description establishes their role, not wrongdoing.
What did Phase Four examine?
The Inquiry defined Phase Four as examining “Action against Sub-postmasters and others: policy making, audits and investigations, civil and criminal proceedings, knowledge of and responsibility for failures in investigation and disclosure.” Its scope therefore included how decisions and investigations were made, what happened in civil and criminal proceedings, and who knew about or was responsible for failures in investigation and disclosure. The Inquiry’s Phase Four hearing page sets out that remit.
The Inquiry reported that Sir Wyn Williams heard oral evidence from more than 60 witnesses and that it studied 26 criminal or civil proceedings as case studies, hearing from lawyers, investigators and security team members involved in those matters. When Phase Four concluded on 2 February 2024, the Inquiry also announced publication of 37 additional witness statements from Post Office, Fujitsu and former sub-postmaster witnesses. These are figures reported by the Inquiry in its 2024 announcement, not counts of people found responsible for wrongdoing. Read the announcement.
Who called it a “rogues’ gallery”?
The phrase appears in an excerpt from a Phase Four closing submission by Hodge Jones & Allen, a legal representative making submissions to the Inquiry. A closing submission is an advocate’s argument; it is not a finding by Sir Wyn Williams or the Inquiry. The phrase should therefore be understood as the submission’s characterization, not an official verdict. The submission is listed by the Inquiry as SUBS0000027.
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Does a witness list show who was guilty?
No. Official hearing pages and schedules identify witnesses and describe their reported roles in investigations or proceedings. For example, the Inquiry’s 30 November 2023 hearing page describes Jarnail Singh as a former Post Office lawyer involved in the prosecution of Seema Misra and other sub-postmasters. That establishes a described connection to those proceedings; it does not, by itself, establish misconduct or culpability. See the hearing page and the Phase Four hearing schedule.
To assess any claim about an individual, distinguish what a witness said, what a party argued in a submission, what the Inquiry formally found, and what official pages merely say about a person’s role. Those categories are not interchangeable.
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Why the phrase should not be treated as a complete list
The Inquiry’s official pages establish Phase Four’s remit, scale and witness roles, but they do not establish a definitive list of people criticized under the “rogues’ gallery” label. Nor does an excerpt of a party submission, without its fuller context, support reconstructing the submission’s complete selection or asserting that every person mentioned in witness descriptions was accused of wrongdoing. The responsible answer is that the phrase is an advocate’s characterization; it is not an Inquiry-approved roster of guilty people.
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- Blink Publishing Why Are You Here, Mrs Hamilton? The Post Office Scandal and My Extraordinary Fight for Justice.
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- BLINK Publishing.
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