Post Office inquiry live: Former litigation lawyer Rodric Williams gives evidence

More on the suspension of sub-postmasters now. Despite prosecutions stopping in 2014, sub-postmasters continued to be suspended.

When asked about his role in this, Williams says he was asked for “advice” and “support” on the cases, but the team that handled these was contract advisors, not his team.

Beer, counsel to the inquiry, asks him to clarify if this advice was about whether there was grounds to suspend.

“I think yes is the answer,” Williams says. He goes on to say he would not describe himself as a criminal lawyer, but that he did not make this clear to people in the PO when he was asked to give them advice.

He says when he joined, he “had been hired to tend to civil matters, and certainly to most of my colleagues it would be well known that I wasn’t a criminal lawyer.”

But he is pushed on this by Beer who asks if the lawyer made the disclaimer to colleagues and in-house clients that he was not a criminal lawyer.

“I don’t recall expressly putting that disclaimer on things,” Williams says.