Pat McFadden and Ed Davey probed at Post Office Inquiry

At what point does a minister decide they are being lied to? That was the question Pat McFadden and Ed Davey had to consider as they gave evidence to the Post Office Inquiry. Both were confronted with evidence of Post Office figures assuring them nothing was wrong when subpostmasters and their MPs were raising concerns – and of their own officials repeating those assertions as fact, rather than checking for themselves.

At one stage, one of the lawyers asking questions took Davey to a document written by the Post Office, and then asked him to compare it to a briefing then prepared by his officials:

The entirety of the information in the sections that I’ve read to you appears to be a cut and paste from the Post Office briefing. They’ve right clicked, swiped, cut and paste or copied and paste. Is that what would would expect to have happened by your officials when they were briefing you and not attributed it to Post Office?

Davey replied: ‘It is not what I’d have expected.