2021 finally gets going…

Hello everyone

A special welcome to all the new secret emailers who have joined as a result of the current crowdfunding campaign.

I am deeply indebted to everyone who has donated and you’ll be pleased to know I am finding the process of writing 100,000 words on the Post Office Horizon scandal like pulling teeth.

I’m going to be in a state of profound dudgeon until everything falls into place, which I’m sure it will. Eventually. Anyway – that’s my problem, not yours.

Chirag’s judicial review

The first thing to tell you is that there is a hearing at the High Court to discuss Chirag Sidhpura’s judicial review application over the Post Office’s Historical Shortfall Scheme.

Chirag was sacked for a £57,000 discrepancy which occurred well after the deadline for joining the Bates v Post Office litigation closed.

The Historical Shortfall Scheme was set up last year by the Post Office for Postmasters or Post Office counter staff who think they may have handed cash over to the Post Office to make good discrepancies which weren’t their fault.

Chirag thought the HSS was constructed unfairly (ie towards the Post Office’s interest, rather than its victims) and he wants a judge to review it. He sought help in crowdfunding the Judicial Review application and thanks to the generosity of a number of people – many of them secret emailers, Chirag was pledged enough money to get the application off the ground.

The arguments for and against a Review will be ventilated in a virtual High Court hearing on Thursday and I hope to be live tweeting it.

Incidentally Chirag has reall had a terrible time of it, and is one of the nicest people I have ever met. Read his story here.

Transcript of 17 Dec up online

We already know the outcome of the 17 Dec Court of Appeal hearing – Subpostmasters who want to will be allowed argue their prosecution was an “affront to the public conscience” when it comes to the Court of Appeal hearing starting later this month.

I have, however, only just received the transcript of the hearing, which is worth reading as the issues at stake weighty matters of public interest which go beyond the immediate matter and into the administration justice. The Attorney General has now got involved.

I’ve summarised the transcript on the Post Office Trial website here, and the transcript itself is appended to that online piece.

One thing that can’t be discerned from the transcript is the moment when Lord Justice Holroyde announced he had only found out that six Subpostmasters had already had their convictions quashed at Southwark Crown Court by reading about it on twitter. At which point Mr Justice Picken looked over at me and grinned.

Sadly, there did not seem to be a wider appreciation of open justice as both my request for the parties’ skeleton arguments and the Daily Mail’s attempts to view the Clarke Advice were turned down. It is a side issue, albeit a worrying one. The main point is that the Subpostmasters won a key victory in attempting to get the detail of this scandal out into the open and ruled upon.

Btw I am grateful to the Post Office for supplying me the 17 Dec transcript at no cost. They have agreed to do this as the appeals make their way through the courts, which frees up funds to do more work on this story.

Post Office annual report

In its 2017/8 annual report, the Post Office noted High Court proceedings had been launched against it by a group of former Subpostmasters. Other than rather sniffily suggesting the action “lacks merit”, the Post Office reported that preparing to defend the action had already cost £3m in legal fees.

The Post Office’s 2018/9 annual report was published in September 2019. By this stage the Post Office had lost the first trial of the Bates v Post Office group litigation, but was still engaged in trying to appeal it (having already tried and failed to stop the second trial by blowing the judge out of the water).

The report acknowledged that the way things were going it might be facing civil compensation claims in the future, and that the total expenditure on the litigation in that financial year had risen to £20m.

The 2019/20 annual report has not yet appeared. The Post Office says this is because:

“we are seeking to agree a new funding settlement for the Post Office. Explaining a new funding settlement is an important part of our Annual Report & Accounts and as a result we tend to publish our accounts later in funding years.

“We have the three months Coronavirus extension, so we do not have to file accounts for 2019-20 until the end of March 2021“

I have asked the Post Office if it has a publication date for the 2019/20 accounts, given the end of March is fast approaching. It doesn’t. I am fascinated to know what it will say. It’ll likely show expenditure on the litigation stretching past the £100m mark – but it’s what the Post Office chooses to say about the litigation and its fallout which will be of most interest. Given the government is insisting the Post Office pays for the litigation out of its operating costs, I wouldn’t be surprised if the organisation is in some significant financial difficulty. And yet still, no one is held to account. Bizarre.

Housekeeping

Thanks again for being signed up to this newsletter. Please feel free to email me any comment, document or information you think might be of interest to me or others about this story – even if it is already in the public domain! There is a lot I miss, and I am reliant on many of this newsletter’s readers to send me information.

I am essentially going to be working on the Post Office story full time for most of the next three months, so I will have the opportunity (literary epic creation notwithstanding) to go down a few journalistic rabbit holes. If you have something of interest or just want to say hello – hit reply to this newsletter or email nick@nickwallis.com

Please also feel free to forward this email to whoever you like. I’m trying to spread the word about the crowdfunder and the book. I suppose this renders the “secret” element to this email somewhat redundant, but I assure you you are members of a select and exclusive club and I very much appreciate you being here.

Many thanks

Nick