[2024] UKUT 240 (AAC)

We did not find either Mr Stafford or Mr Bowers to be convincing witnesses and preferred written evidence where it existed and where it did not, were hesitant to accept their version(s) of events. There were inconsistencies and illogicalities in what we were being told which made it difficult to accept substantial parts of their evidence.

In Mr Bowers’ case, it is not a question of having “misinterpreted” anything. He wrote it himself and what he wrote was inconsistent with his evidence to us. In Mr Stafford’s case, we do not see any reason why Mr Noon should, as claimed, have had access to Mr Stafford’s login user ID when Mr Noon had one of his own. This is especially so given that Mr Stafford had informed the OTC that “I am very safety conscious online and don’t give passwords to anyone else not even Mr Noon as with my OCD I can’t do that”. Nor do we accept that Mr Stafford was unwilling to use his email address, given that Mr Bowers, who knew his circumstances very well, was emailing using that address for Mr Stafford in April and May 2023. His claimed inability to engage with the VOL system following the alleged hacking, which he knew about by at latest early March, is inconsistent with the occasions on which someone with his User ID had accessed the system on 16 March and 19 May and with his readiness to email the address used by the VOL system itself on 20 March.

We want to make clear that we are not intending to suggest that either is wilfully dishonest but that they may have a tendency to construct a narrative which fits in with how they would like things to be. We consider that both have a rather inconsequential approach to matters of administration and perhaps something of a tendency to panic. As well as in the inconsistencies detailed above, powerful evidence of this is provided by the operator’s failure to apply for a stay, first to the OTC and then if need be to the Upper Tribunal, despite this route having been clearly signposted to them by Mr Blaza on 31 July and again by Steve Mitton of the OTC on 12 and 14 September, and instead pursuing inconsequential correspondence. The approach we have described may in the case of Mr Stafford have its source in the matters at para.13, but whatever the cause may be, an operator does need to have a capacity for adequately cogent administration.