Not with a bang but a wrangle
I have decided to send the secret email out tonight before writing a report of today’s Court of Appeal hearing, because whilst the proceedings were exceptionally important for the three appellants concerned, it solely focused on their individual cases.
The court was being asked to allow the appeals in the face of fierce resistance from the Post Office. The arguments over what the appellants may or may have not done (and/or admitted to doing) in their post office branches raged all day.
If you’re desperate to get stuck in, I have posted the transcript here and all my tweets on a single web page here.
At the end of proceedings Lord Justice Holroyde confirmed that the court was not going to make any orders in advance of its judgment, which it has indicated it will hand down at 10am on 23 April. LJH (as I’ve been calling him on twitter for the last four days) said that a summary of the judgment would be read out in court on that day.
Given the historic importance of these proceedings, I would be surprised if the short hearing on the 23rd is not streamed live on youtube. Either way, there will be a huge amount of media interest, both inside and outside court.
On behalf of my media colleagues, could I request that as many appellants as possible come down? Even if you don’t get into court there will be cameras and journalists outside desperate to interview and photograph as many people as possible. A powerful image can go round the world far more quickly than a 100,000 word judgment.
Speaking of hundreds of thousands of words
If you want to relive any of the other days in court this week (or just want to check what someone actually said), you’ll be pleased to know I have posted all the other transcripts up online as well.
I am grateful to the parties for allowing me to receive the transcripts and particularly to Nick at Peters and Peters and Mel at the Post Office for co-ordinating the response to my request in this regard.
Inquiry in the firing line
Whilst I was acting as a human speech-to-text converter in court today, Karl Flinders from Computer Weekly was busy cooking up another exclusive.
The Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance have come out all guns blazing on the Wyn Williams inquiry – seeking to stop it in its tracks with a judicial review application.
Alan Bates from the JFSA wants the “whitewash inquiry … replaced with a Statutory Inquiry with redefined Terms of Reference”
This is a big play from the JFSA. It has also been timed to perfection – the sense of public outrage over what has happened to Subpostmasters is growing, thanks to what was exposed in court this week.
It also seems as if there is a parliamentary head of steam building. Kate Osborne had a go at the BEIS minister Paul Scully on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Lucy Allan lobbed a perfect volley at Boris Johnson during Prime Minister’s Questions. As I reported yesterday, Mr Johnson told her he wanted people held accountable.
I believe it is a perfectly reasonable request that:
a) the people responsible for this scandal answer for their actions,
b) those who suffered as a result should get full redress.
With his judicial review application and parliamentary ombudsman complaint Alan Bates is now fighting both those flanks.
Other members of the press are available
Thanks to everyone who has sent me links to other media activity this week. I have done 14 to 18 hour days just getting my own material out and so have not had much chance to pay attention to what my colleagues have been doing. I am slowly catching up. In the interests of sharing:
Here’s a great piece by the Times picking up on the Post Office’s loss-making year trying to fight the JFSA. Times articles ares usually behind a paywall, but this seems to be free at the moment. Get it while you can.
Tom Witherow wrote up the shredding documents scandal for the Daily Mail here.
The only other journalist allowed in court this week was Sam Tobin, one of the Press Association’s more youthful court reporters. He is immensely entertaining company and an absolute mine of useful (and quite a lot of useless) knowledge. He knows his way around the RCJ and he is on first name terms with ushers, clerks, lawyers and even some of the judges. This helps when you are trying to get information out of people.
Luckily Sam is generous with his time and I learned a lot from him, which assisted me in getting better quality reporting to you. Here is one of Sam’s press association pieces posted in the Evening Standard on Monday.
Finally, look out for a piece from Richard Brooks in Private Eye next week.
Inquiry finally posts up second focus group
Sir Wyn Williams’ inquiry (which may or may not have much of a future) finally posted up its second focus group session today. This took place on 25 Feb, a full month ago. I have no idea why it took so long to make publicly available. I haven’t watched the video yet, but I’ve been told by those who watched it live, some of the testimony is powerful. The session was 2hrs 45mins long and the whole thing is here on youtube. If you want to skim through what was said, the transcript is here.
Thanks to everyone who keeps sending me emails and messages and documentary materis – it is all extremely valuable. At times like this I’m getting so many messages it’s difficult to respond to every one. I promise I do read them all and I really do appreciate them.
Tomorrow I am going to start going through all the documents the court process has thrown up (and those that may not have been given to me, but which are referred to in the transcript) and then start to see where we are with everything.
I believe, thanks to the concentrated efforts of an awful lot of people, we are several steps closer to knowing who at which level knew what when. The words “cover-up” were used more than once by learned QCs in court. If the judges agree then things could really start getting blown open.
I’ll send another secret email tomorrow when today’s court report is up.
Until then, mes amis.
Nick