Flora Page KC – 23ES Chambers, London

Flora Page KC is a Londoner through and through.  She grew up in Angel Islington, which when she was young was rather more down-to-earth than the trendy place it has become over the past few decades.  Flora attended a tough inner city London Comprehensive school, Islington Green – the students sang on the famous Pink Floyd song “Another Brick In The Wall” in 1980 (a few years before Flora started at the school). Flora’s mum had a career in politics and urban planning, and her dad was a journalist.  Flora studied History at University College, London (UCL).  Her pathway to the Bar was not “a straight career course,” says Flora.

After working at the King’s Head Theatre, Flora took the law conversion course and then trained to be a solicitor. She initially worked for City law firm Clifford Chance on a solicitor training contract and following qualification remained there for a year.  She says it gave her a great grounding in the vital importance of precision in dealing with legal cases: The rubric was that nothing less than perfect leaves the building. However, Flora wanted to do more advocacy, so she moved to criminal work in 1999.  In parallel, Flora continued her keen interest in academia and policy-making, which she inherited from her parents.  She joined the Law Commission where her team produced the Fraud Report (Law Com No. 276) and the appended Fraud Bill, which later (“with a few minor tweaks”) became the Fraud Act 2006.   It was an extremely exciting time, says Flora.

Flora next worked to achieve her Higher Rights of Audience (in 2002) and joined what was hoped to be a trail-blazing chambers of self-employed HRA qualified solicitors, which gave Flora a great foundation in advocacy.  The Chambers training gave her the confidence to appear on her feet in the Crown Courts as an equal to her barrister colleagues.  In 2004, Flora gave birth to her first daughter, so thereafter she combined parenting with her work as an advocate and also some teaching (on the Bar Professional Training Course).  Flora then set up a small criminal defence firm, in which she was the advocate, and her partner was the litigator.  However, the demands of running the firm became too much when Flora’s second daughter came along.  She realised that she would be better off transferring to the Bar, which she did 2013.

She joined 23ES where she has remained since, adding prosecution work to her portfolio, and she now prosecutes and defends in equal amounts.  Flora took a secondment to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), followed by one to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The latter provided her with excellent experience of complex financial investigations. This return to the corporate world set the pattern for Flora’s career in the following years, indeed up to the present day, dealing (inter alia) with financial and corporate misconduct. This career trajectory seemed almost organically to lead Flora to her major role in representing some of the sub-postmasters who were subject to the most serious miscarriage of justice in British legal history, including wrongful imprisonment.

Due to the scandal’s notoriety (as depicted the ITV television drama ‘Mr Bates versus The Post Office’) the case is extremely well-known.  But, in brief, more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for financial crime because of incorrect branch accounting information from a deeply flawed computer system (‘Horizon’). The Post Office took many cases to court, prosecuting 700 people between 1999 and 2015. Another 283 cases were brought by other prosecuting bodies, including the CPS.  Many sub-postmasters went to prison for false accounting and theft, and many more were financially ruined.  In 2017, a group of 555 sub-postmasters took legal action against the Post Office. In 2019, the Post Office agreed to pay them £58m in compensation, but much of the money went on reimbursing the litigation funders and paying legal fees.  A key document which showed that the Post office knew that the prosecutions were flawed in 2013 was suppressed by the Post Office, until Flora and her leader had a pivotal role in revealing it in 2020. The total cost to the Post Office in the legal action was £100m of public money.  More importantly, the lives of innocent British men and women were deeply and negatively impacted with long term effects on mental and physical health as well as dire financial impacts.

Flora volunteered to represent some of the sub-post masters who were appealing their convictions.  She brought her considerable criminal experience to the cases, combined with her expertise in investigating corporate misconduct. Her work on the appeals began during one of the Covid pandemic lockdowns in 2020, so her initial meetings with her clients necessarily had to be virtual ones, which added to the demands on her and her clients.  Flora and her leader, acting for three appellants, pursued a second limb of the case (not originally pursued by any other of the appellants), to the effect that the prosecutions were an affront to the public conscience.  At Flora’s instigation, these three appellants argued that the respondents had effectively reversed the burden of proof – and this was the successful argument, cited as the reason why the prosecutions were an affront to the public conscience.  The 2013 document which the Post Office had suppressed was disclosed, at the instigation of Flora’s leader, and they appended it to a Skeleton Argument ahead of a Directions Hearing. This led to an unfounded and non-pursued suggestion of contempt of court by the other side, which meant that Flora and her leader had to stand down before the substantive hearing. Even so, when the Court of Appeal delivered their ruling, which agreed with Flora’s argument on the burden of proof, for Flora it was “as good as it gets”.

There followed the two-year Inquiry into the scandal in which Flora continued to work for her clients, also bringing more clients into the fold.  The appeals followed by the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry were an extraordinary and a once in a life time experience – and one that gave Flora the spur to apply successfully for silk in 2024.  The Inquiry had, unusually, allowed for a good deal of advocacy on behalf of the parties (to ask the questions the clients wanted asking) thanks to the unique and brilliant chairmanship of Sir Wyn Williams.  This aided Flora in her application for KC.  During her work on the Inquiry, Flora also took on other cases to build up and broaden her case portfolio for the silk application. These cases included some high-profile murders and a ‘Just Stop Oil’ protest case.

Flora emphasises that whilst the Post office work gave the spur to her silk application, she had over many years developed a very broad and diverse range of experiences and interests which spanned the legal, corporate and academic worlds.  These all fed directly into the skills which she acquired to make a solid case to convince the King’s Counsel Appointments Panel of her readiness for the step up.   Besides her diverse practice involving corporate and financial misconduct Flora has particular expertise in other highly serious conspiracies and crimes including those involving drugs supply, serious violence and sexual offending. She is on the Serious Fraud Office’s panel list of King’s Counsel, and the Government Legal Department’s list of King’s Counsel.  Alongside the advocacy focus, Flora is a Board Member and a “critical friend” to major businesses, working on investigations and advising when concerns are raised by whistleblowers, non-executives, advisors or others.

Unsurprisingly, following her spectacular role in the Post Office appeals and the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, Flora is sought out by whistleblowers and those who want to respond to them in the right way. Flora has spoken at many conferences on diverse subjects and was asked to deliver the prestigious Heilbron Lecture in November 2024.  She is also a part-time PhD Candidate at UCL, researching a new approach to corporate integrity. In addition, Flora is a Board Member of the Legal Services Board and is soon to become the Chair of the Institute of Business Ethics .

It is too soon to tell what difference it will make being in silk, says Flora.  But she is already aware of the confidence this exceptional marque of excellence gives to her clients, and the kudos this bestows in the courtroom. It shows that you are engaging not only a truly excellent advocate but an individual of the highest professional and ethical standards. She thoroughly enjoyed the KC Ceremony, accompanied as she was by her mum (her dad has sadly passed) and three daughters.