Regard yourselves as regulators, Post Office victim tells lawyers

A prominent victim of the Post Office Horizon scandal has made an impassioned plea to lawyers not to stand by and do nothing if colleagues are acting unethically.

Lee Castleton told a room of lawyers, regulators and academics today that his experience of being a litigant in person fighting the Post Office was a ‘fast learning curve’ that he would never want to repeat.

The former sub-postmaster in Bridlington was pursued through the courts by the organisation over around £25,000 apparently missing from the branch accounts. The case culminated in the Royal Courts of Justice, with Castleton unable to prove he did not cause the shortage and being ordered to repay the money as well as cover the Post Office’s £300,000 costs.

He was made bankrupt and forced to leave his home following the case, and his story was one of those highlighted in the ITV drama Mr Bates v The Post Office.

Castleton, speaking at the Legal Services Board conference in London today, told lawyers in the room they should all regard themselves as regulators. ‘Every one of you can call someone out,’ he said. ‘If someone is doing something in your practice that they shouldn’t be then it shouldn’t need a regulator to tell you what is right and wrong.’

He said he was now self-regulated in his new profession and asked why lawyers could not set themselves higher ethical standards. ‘It is really important to me I go home every night and I am able to sleep,’ he added. ‘I would question whether any of the lawyers in my case in particular should have slept.’

Castleton recalled that during his own case he was frustrated at not understanding the processes and language being used. The burden of proof in his case had been reversed, he said, so that he also needed to prove the Horizon IT system was wrong rather than the Post Office proving he was responsible for shortages.

‘From the day I was suspended I had no further access to the [Horizon] system,’ he recalled. ‘I was completely reliant on disclosure, and we all know from the inquiry this is not one of the Post Office’s strong points.

‘I had run out of money and I do believe money is a door to justice, certainly in civil litigation and especially when you are on the receiving end of limitless power. They could dip into deep pockets to make a precedent of anything and anyone.’

Even now, he added, the compensation process has been another series of hoops to jump through as victims of miscarriages are made to fill in lengthy forms and produce evidence they have no hope of finding.

‘It beggars belief that Post Office were ever involved [in the compensation process],’ he said. 'We are nearly three years past the original compensation schemes [and] they are asking in my case for records from 20 years ago. It is a very difficult combative situation to be in and very difficult to deal with someone who is the perpetrator.'

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