Sir Ed Davey Apologises At Post Office Inquiry For ‘Poorly Judged’ Decision Not To Meet With Alan Bates

Transcript

00:00You say, on reflection and with the benefit of hindsight,

00:04I'm really sorry that I followed the advice and did not question it.

00:08And I can also see why Sir Alan took offence at the phrase,

00:11I do not believe a meeting would serve any useful purpose.

00:14It was poorly judged, and I apologise to Sir Alan for signing it off.

00:18I should have accepted Sir Alan's request for a meeting when he first made it.

00:22However, I remain unconvinced that an earlier meeting would have changed the course of events.

00:26I expect that I would have put the same questions to my officials and post office

00:30and received the same categorical assurances about the integrity of Verizon

00:35that I did later that year.

00:38The hindsight that you're bringing into account there,

00:40is that essentially, and I'm summarising greatly here,

00:43that the substance of the matters that Sir Alan was complaining about was correct?

00:50That has clearly turned out to be the case.

00:52Yes, so that's what the hindsight is referring to here?

00:55Yes, the hindsight that we now have because we now know many, many things that I did not know back then.

01:01Your reflection, with the benefit of hindsight, shows, would you agree,

01:07that there wasn't an inflexible rule, less still an inflexible rule of law,

01:14that prevented you from becoming involved, was there?

01:17No, there wasn't, because as we are now about to go,

01:21when I had the second letter from Mr Bates,

01:24I didn't have any advice on that, but I decided I was going to see him,

01:28so I exercised that flexibility then.

01:33More than that, there wasn't an inflexible rule of law that prevented you as the Minister

01:38from becoming involved in operational matters, was there?

01:44That is true, it wasn't completely inflexible, as clearly was the case,

01:49because I asked to see Sir Alan in July,

01:54but the advice I was given was that it was not a matter for a Minister,

02:01because it was an operational matter.

02:03In asking to see Sir Alan, I was effectively going over the advice.