Subpostmistresses who fell victim to the faulty Horizon IT system have accused a Post Office investigator of intimidation and ill treatment, an inquiry heard.
A former branch manager in Newcastle said she was called “a bitch” while a wheelchair-dependent subpostmistress from Liverpool recalled how she was put into a “tiny parcel lift” to reach an interview room, the Post Office public inquiry was told.
The investigator in question, Stephen Bradshaw, gave evidence to the inquiry in central London on Thursday and denied acting in any way but professionally throughout the probes he conducted.
Shazia Saddiq, who worked in Newcastle, said in a statement partially read out at Aldwych House that she received “intimidating” phone calls from Mr Bradshaw in which he failed to identify himself.
Recalling a date in November 2016, the 40-year-old said: “Stephen Bradshaw called me and I refused to speak to him because I did not know who he was or who he worked for.
“In that telephone call … he called me a bitch which I found extremely distressing.”
Mr Bradshaw called it “completely untrue”, denied “hounding” her and insisted he would always say who he was on a phone call.
Rita Threlfall, a wheelchair-dependent Merseyside subpostmistress, said in a statement read out at the inquiry that she went to be interviewed under caution by Mr Bradshaw in August 2010.
She explained: “Upon arrival, they left my husband and me in a hallway. We asked for a chair and never received one. I ended up having to sit down on the stairs.
“The interview room was up the stairs. I told them there was no way I could make it up the stairs.
“In order to make it to the interview room, I was placed in a tiny parcel lift.”
Mr Bradshaw repeatedly denied that it was a small parcel lift and said it was “wheelchair accessible”.
Subpostmistress Jacqueline McDonald accused Mr Bradshaw of being a “liar” by leading her to believe that she was the “only one in this position” when he investigated her, in a statement read out at the inquiry.
Mr Bradshaw denied ever saying that.
Katie Noblet, who worked at a Post Office branch that was being probed and interacted with Mr Bradshaw as a result, labelled his behaviour “unprofessional” and “disgusting” in a letter of complaint read out during the inquiry.
The Post Office investigator said on Thursday he stood by his assertion that he acted professionally throughout investigations, adding that Ms Noblet’s words were “taken out of context”.
Mrs Saddiq and another subpostmistress investigated by Mr Bradshaw, Janet Skinner, told the PA news agency how they were targeted and shunned by their communities after being accused of wrongdoing.
Mrs Saddiq said she fled her home with her children “in the night like refugees” after members of the community who thought her a thief lobbed eggs and flour at them.
She had multiple post office branches in Newcastle between 2009 and 2016 – when she was terminated – but one of them suffered a cyber attack in 2014 after which more than £30,000 seemingly went missing.
It was later found in a suspense account but she told PA: “They held me responsible.”
When the branch was shut down, she and her two children had foodstuffs thrown at them as they tried to enter their home directly above the premises.
“We had been assaulted with eggs and flour in Newcastle because they thought I was a thief,” she told PA.
She said: “In the night like refugees my children and I left. They got their teddies, that’s what they took with them.”
She moved in with her now husband in Banbury, Oxfordshire – where they currently both work as pest controllers – but she said investigations against her continued, which she described as “tormenting”.
Mrs Saddiq was never convicted. She refused to sign accounts off that would have meant she agreed with figures from the faulty Horizon IT system.
But Ms Skinner, 53, was sentenced to nine months in prison in 2007 for false accounting.
She was 35 at the time and had to leave her two children behind.
Also in attendance at the inquiry on Thursday, Ms Skinner told PA that going to prison was the hardest part of what she had been through.
“Leaving my kids behind,” she said. “Not seeing them for the time I was in prison. Losing everything that we had – a whole family home.”
She said she spent 15 years of her life, between being released from prison and having her conviction quashed, worried that people would recognise her on the street.
But she described the recognition of her innocence in 2021 as a “massive turning point”.
“I feel more empowered now than I have ever done because I’m fighting for what’s right,” Ms Skinner continued, “if this is helping people come forward who have been hiding away and shunned by their communities, disgraced, in the same way we were.”
She is hoping for accountability and highlighted public pressure as key to justice being done.
“The drama is the tip of the iceberg,” she told PA. “The story is so much bigger.
“The Government have been aware of this ongoing fight that we have had for years and years.
“It’s because the public are so behind each and every one of us that they have decided to step up.”