Cross-examining does not mean examining crossly, barristers are taught at the start of their careers. And those of us watching Jason Beer KC questioning the former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells at the Horizon public inquiry yesterday enjoyed a masterclass in the demolition of a witness.
His technique was deceptively simple. Look at this extract from your 775-page witness statement — or the 23-page supplementary statement — on the screen in front of you. What did you mean by that? Now read this text message or the email you sent a colleague. How do you explain the contradiction?
Beer never raised his voice. He waited patiently when Vennells broke down, encouraging her to compose herself before she continued answering his questions. He allowed her all the time she needed. And then occasionally, just occasionally, he pounced.
How could you have not known? How could you have thought that? How could you have believed that to be true?
And then he moved on. No raised eyebrows. No scornful repetition of the witness’s answers. Just a slow, steady chipping away at the ground Vennells was standing on until she had nowhere left to turn.
Before long, artificial intelligence will monitor a witness’s answers in real time and present counsel with the killer document. But Beer’s questioning showed real intelligence and many hours of work. It’s a process that relies on meticulous preparation and a total command of the evidence.
A public inquiry is not a court and there is no jury to win over. Once Beer had extracted the answers he was looking for, he could move on — confident that he had the evidence that would be needed for the inquiry’s eventual report.
But Vennells was well aware that she was being judged by the former postmasters who filled the large hearing room. They listened to her largely in silence, stifling their reactions when Beer’s questions hit home. Their restraint drew praise from Sir Wyn Williams, the inquiry chair.
As counsel to the inquiry, Beer asks questions on the chair’s behalf. In one sense, the KC was not cross-examining at all — merely eliciting information for Williams to consider. The real cross-examination comes on Friday, when Vennells will be questioned by counsel for the postmasters and other core participants in the inquiry. There may be little left for them to ask.
After that, Vennells’s own counsel, Samantha Leek KC, will have the opportunity to question her in a process lawyers will recognise as re-examination. Whether Leek will do so — and what difference this may make — remains to be seen.
Less than an hour after yesterday’s session ended, Rishi Sunak announced the general election. Postmasters realised that this would push the evidence they had just watched off last night’s news and this morning’s front pages.
Some of them may have wondered what would happen to the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill, which will automatically quash an unknown and unknowable number of convictions as soon as it is passed.
The bill has been approved by the Commons and had its second reading in the Lords at the beginning of last week. “It may be that this bill can be improved by amendment,” said the former lord chief justice Lord Burnett of Maldon, “but its flaws are fundamental.” Lord Etherton, a former master of the rolls, told peers the bill “infringes one of the most fundamental and critical tenets of our constitution: the independence of the judiciary”.
Even so, cross-party support for the legislation suggests that it may be rushed through parliament by the time Vennells finishes giving evidence tomorrow. As she herself might observe, the law moves in a mysterious way.
Update 26 May: Vennells finished giving evidence just before 3pm on 24 May. The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024 became law at 8.32pm that evening.
The government then published an open letter to postmasters explaining what would happen next.
You are quite right that effective cross examination requires meticulous preparation. As a rule of thumb I used to reckon 3 hours preparation for 1 hour's cross examination. Your examples are good ones of short, clear, and effective questions, but, had Jason Beer not been counsel to the Inquiry and duty bound to take a neutral and more inquisitorial line, they would not have been open questions. You are correct to say that he is laying the evidential basis for the Report at the end of the Inquiry - but his role is inquisitorial not adversarial. We may hear more of the latter in the third day of Ms Vennel's evidence.
Somebody, somewhere, will complain about this poor woman being bullied by a man.
You read it here first.