“In what you may in due course conclude is the worst miscarriage of justice in recent British legal history…”
These were the words of Jason Beer KC, lead counsel to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, on day one of the human impact hearings on 14 February 2022.
Variations of this now-famous sentence have since been repeated in major news outlets across the country to describe the scandal, which saw hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of false accounting, many more lose their life savings, and some take their own lives.
“I did have several people contact me and ask me what measure I was using,” Beer tells The Lawyer. “One of them said, ‘What about the burning of the witches in the Middle Ages? I think that might have been a bigger miscarriage of justice.'”
But Beer explains he wanted to give an idea of scale: “I didn’t think anyone had picked up on the scale of it. I’m not sure people saw it as a miscarriage of justice. People have considered the ‘Birmingham Six’, the ‘Guildford Four’, and other cases as miscarriages.
“Whereas here, because it was so extraordinary that the focus was on the computer being at fault, there hadn’t been as much attention on the legal system going wrong.”
Beer adds that the other big part of his opening was to say the scandal was about people, not computers: “We wanted to be clear from the beginning that this isn’t about a dry IT system. Ultimately, it wasn’t the computer that put people in prison – it was people.”
Beer heads 5 Essex Chambers and is instructed in six other inquiries, commonly acting for the state. He acts for NHS England in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry and in the Thirlwall Inquiry, which will look at Lucy Letby’s murder of seven babies in an NHS hospital. He is instructed by the Greater Manchester Police in the Malkinson Inquiry, for Counter Terrorism Policing South East in the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, and for a group of undercover police officers in the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
Beer will again take on the role of lead counsel to the inquiry in the Jalal Uddin Inquiry, which will examine whether intelligence failures contributed to the death of a murdered imam, with open hearings commencing in September.
Beer explains: “I’ve tended to be on for the bad guys. When you’re counsel to the inquiry, it feels like the public is your client – you’re back on the side of the angels.
“Being on the state side gives you an understanding of what it’s like being the state, though. So, when they don’t get disclosure on time, when it takes too long to do things, when they can’t find the right person, you don’t automatically assume it’s because they’re mendacious, lying, cheating, Dr. Evils. It could be because the system means they have to give disclosure slowly, or they can’t find the right document.
“Equally, though, it gives you quite a good key into the tricks and wheezes they try and get up to.”
Celebrity status
Beer took home the coveted Barrister of the Year trophy at The Lawyer Awards last month, receiving the loudest round of applause of the night, and he is fast gaining celebrity-level status for his role in the inquiry. Outside of traditional social media, in which many describe Beer’s performance as “masterful”, he receives around 20 emails daily, letters in the post, and you can even find a Mumsnet thread about him.
When asked about how he felt about becoming an unlikely hero in this story, Beer says: “I’ve taken a long view on this. It’s good because it’s helped to show people what barristers do day in and day out. It’s methodical. We go through evidence with people and ask them questions about it. I’ve been doing this for 32 years, and no differently. There just happens to be a camera there now.”
Every session is live-streamed on the inquiry’s YouTube channel and pulls in thousands of daily watchers, depending on the profile of the witness being questioned. That’s not counting the views on other media outlets re-streaming the inquiry live.
Beer’s path to working on some of the most significant inquiries of the day is mainly down to the chambers he accepted pupillage in and spent his career at. Beer attended a grammar school in Kent, and while he was offered a place at the University of Oxford to study history, he was not offered a place to study law.
Called to the Bar in 1992, he explains: “I stupidly thought that if you want to be in law, you need to have a law degree and get into it as quickly as possible. I went to my local grammar school, which wasn’t brilliant at giving advice back in the day on that kind of thing, not like schools would do nowadays.”
So, Beer instead went on to have “three great years” studying law at Warwick University; he says: “It wasn’t a black letter law course, and it still isn’t today. They teach you law in context and have a big focus on research skills. They don’t try to teach you content because, by the time you learn something, the law has changed.”
Looking back, Beer explains that he would have preferred to study longer before joining the Bar: “Once you get into law, particularly the Bar, there isn’t much opportunity to get off the hamster wheel. Certainly, in my stead, unless you’ve got a double first you don’t get in nowadays.
“Applying today’s standards, I wouldn’t have even got an interview, nor would a lot of people at the top end of chambers. But in chambers, we find that the better candidates are quite often non-lawyers, so they’ve done something else first. They’re a bit more balanced and rounded.”
While Beer had the option to go to a commercial set, in the end, he went with what people were saying about the place. “Back then, there was a book, which was a bit like a small telephone directory, and that’s all there was to read. Chambers would put their adverts in it and say what they wanted to say about themselves. So, the only way you could find out what a set was really like was by asking people.
“Every set says nowadays that they’re really collegiate and friendly. But back in the day, people were more honest and would tell you if a set was strict or hierarchical. When I asked about 5 Essex, people said they’re super friendly and nice people, and that really attracted me.”
When Beer was doing his pupillage, 5 Essex was a general common law set, with members doing a mixture of work such as crime, employment, civil, and various other areas. In the early 2000s, however, 17 criminal practitioners, one of whom was the ex-Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Max Hill, left the set in a starburst. This enabled 5 Essex to become more specialised in government panel work (the A, B and C tiered system of which was introduced in the 2000s) and police law work. To this day, police law and panel work still make up about two-thirds of 5 Essex’s instructions.
I’ve been doing this for 32 years, and no differently. There just happens to be a camera there now.”
The very first inquiry Beer worked on was the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, where he was led by then-head of 5 Essex, Jeremy Gompertz QC. They got the gig due to their police law work, and Beer was tasked with redacting sensitive information from documents. The process, of course, is now done on a computer. Back then, however, Beer spent three months at Scotland Yard with a box of marker pens. Beer says: “That was the start of the public inquiry work and where it all began for me. I’ve done 25 since then.”
One of the most memorable inquiries for Beer was the Hutton Inquiry, in which he was instructed by the family of Dr David Kelly, a government weapons scientist who committed suicide. Kelly had been outed by the Government as the source of a BBC story which claimed a Downing Street dossier on Iraq’s weapons capability had been “sexed up” to justify military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Beer explains: “It was unusual for me to be acting for the family, as I’m normally acting for the state. They were a shy family who lived in an Oxfordshire village. They got done by the paparazzi, about 30 of the world’s media turned up. They had to run away and drive down to the West Country. Acting for them when they were thrust into the public spotlight was an eye-opener.
“We used to hold our conferences, Jeremy Gompertz and I, at their house. We wouldn’t ask them to come to London. They’d cook a Sunday lunch, and we would do those conferences at their house.”
Advocating for the profession
Beer’s vast experience in inquiries has meant he’s developed a particular way of doing things. When putting together counsel teams, Beer chooses counsel from other sets, not just 5 Essex. This is a rarer move, as many barristers fill the benches with people from their own sets.
Beer says: “My senior clerk hates this – but I’m a big believer in going to other sets for talent. In a public inquiry, you’ve got to pick horses for the courses. I pick people I think will do a similar job or the same job as me.
“So, in the case of the Post Office Inquiry, I thought it needed serious people. Not flowery advocates. Not shouters and screamers who want to beat the witnesses up. I wanted hard-working, serious practitioners. I find people by watching them and experiencing what they’re like myself. So, for example, my main junior, Julian Blake [of 11KBW], I had worked with him before, and I knew what I was getting.”
Those who have been regularly watching the Post Office Inquiry will have also noticed that Beer’s whole counsel team (comprising seven barristers from 5 Essex, 11KBW, 2 Temple Gardens and 6KBW) questions witnesses, not just himself and Blake. This is also more unusual in inquiries, where silks tend to keep the questioning for themselves.
“It’s no good for the barristers, and it does their career no good if they’re just a document sifter and are always behind the scenes,” says Beer. “When they apply to be a recorder or to go up a panel, or become a silk, it’s no good saying ‘I spent three years in a back-office sifting documents,’ they’ve got to have some advocacy experience.”
“This is particularly the case for women,” continues Beer. “I’ve seen inquiries where they fill the back room with female barristers because they can fit it in with other commitments they might have and don’t give them the advocacy roles.”
He adds: “Another reason is that I wouldn’t be able to do it all the time. I’d be working 24 hours a day, questioning back-to-back witnesses for two and a half years.”
Much like Toby Jones, the actor who played Alan Bates in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Beer didn’t know anything about the scandal before he was instructed as lead counsel to the inquiry. While the inquiry began as non-statutory, it was later put on a statutory footing in 2021.
“We wanted to be clear that this isn’t about a dry IT system. Ultimately, it wasn’t the computer that put people in prison – it was people.”
Beer did a good read-in first for an overview before diving into the original documents. He read some parliamentary inquiries into the scandal and the book by the journalist Nick Wallis, The Great Post Office Scandal.
Beer says: “My first thoughts were literally, ‘oh my god’. Then I got a bit sweaty about the size of the thing. It’s an IT project that’s been running since 2000. It does billions of transactions a week, and there are 1000s of sub-postmasters involved. Just the scale of the thing is to do with computers that generate lots of data. It was concerning in terms of how to run that as a manageable public inquiry so that we weren’t there for decades and that it wouldn’t be another Bloody Sunday Inquiry.”
Beer’s team decided to modularise it and do it in seven phases, and then within those sections, look at a reflective and fair range of evidence or people rather than everything: “For example, when we looked at the prosecutions, we picked 25 prosecutions to look at, rather than hundreds and hundreds.”
Of that 25, the team then chose a diverse mix of people, including diverse by situation: some who were convicted early, some who were convicted late, some who pleaded guilty and others who were convicted by a jury.
The team also devoted time at the beginning of the inquiry for two months of human impact hearings to put those affected at the front and centre. Beer says: “We went to London, Belfast, Glasgow, Cardiff, and Leeds to hear people’s stories in a non-threatening way. Just me or one of the others asking questions to get their accounts out right at the beginning of the inquiry, not so it was some ‘bolt-on’ to hear about them later.”
The secretariat to the inquiry also ran something called “In Your Own Words“, which allows people to share their experiences through online questionnaires or submitting written contributions at the hearing venue, and has also held engagement sessions and focus groups. The idea was to keep it away from the cameras and the formal core processes to get people’s accounts of what happened into the inquiry.
There’s no doubt that trust in the legal industry has diminished as more and more information comes to light every day about the treatment of sub-postmasters at the hands of lawyers over decades. It has been dubbed one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent British legal history, after all.
But Beer hopes that the inquiry itself may have helped to restore some faith in the justice system: “The process of exploring the issues, through careful and methodical examination of witnesses in public – and by reference to thousands of publicly disclosed documents, has hopefully reminded people that not all lawyers are bad.”
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