“Full and final settlement…”

Hello again, secret email friends,

After yesterday’s epic, I’ll try to keep it brief. I took a break from writing this morning to watch a short parliamentary debate which picked up on some of the continuing fallout from the Bates v Post Office litigation, specifically the hopeless failure of the courts to deal with proving anything that comes out of a computer is true.

Darren Jones MP, the Labour chair of the BEIS select committee, and Matt Warman, a junior minister at the DCMS were the only people to speak. I wrote it up afterwards.

I won’t rehash my piece here, but I will make an observation.

Things are happening as a result of Bates v Post Office, but only as a result of that, and only very slowly:

– The government has recognised there is a specific issue with private prosecutions.

– Mr Jones believes there is a serious issue with the courts’ treatment of computer evidence.

– The Post Office has recognised it has to change.

– Many people who were criminalised by their business partner/employer will get their good names restored,

… but there’s still something which sticks in the craw, because the people responsible for all of this seem likely to get away with it, and the victims have so far received nothing like the redress they deserve.

Back to the High Court

That might change:

– Alan Bates is pursuing his Parliamentary Ombudsman complaint on behalf of the 555 claimants in Bates v Post Office to try to get the government to cover the claimants legal fees,

– there is the possibility or even likelihood of malicious prosecution claims against the Post Office, which would be bolstered by a general finding that the prosecutions of the cases shortly to come before the Court of Appeal were an “affront to the public conscience”,

– there is the prospect of someone either suing Fujitsu and/or the government for their part in the scandal

– someone might think about prosecuting some of the people on the Post Office board, and

– there is tomorrow’s application to stage a judicial review of the Post Office’s Historical Shortfall Scheme.

This scheme is for those who weren’t part of the litigation, but who feel that they have been forced to pay money to the Post Office they didn’t owe. Possibly some of the cash that the Post Office had sloshing around in its suspense accounts before pouring into its profits.

Incidentally, I was reading some of the Horizon trial judgment earlier today and it’s jaw-dropping to read that in its Generic Defence the Post Office denied knowing what a suspense account was. (“Post Office does not have a clear understanding of what the Claimants mean by the term “suspense account” or by the phrase “unattributed surpluses including those generated from branch accounts”).

That’s weapons-grade mendacity, in my view.

Anyway, I’ve finally got permission to dial into tomorrow’s hearing. I’ll be live-tweeting it from 10.15am and will put up a report on the website as soon as I can afterwards. And then I’ll write you a secret email to tell you about it. All part of the service, ma’am.

National Lack of Women Day

Speaking of ma’ams, the names of the chosen six candidates competing for the two Subpostmaster Non-Exec Director positions on the Post Office board were made public today, and the entire shortlist is male.

I realise men do have some vague use to society, but this sort of positive discrimination is ridiculous.

Someone calling themselves a “Postmaster and Egalitarian” emailed to say:

“So… the day after International Women’s Day POL announce an all-male short list of six candidates for us to elect two Non Executive Directors?! Oh the irony.“

I’ve asked the usually responsive Post Office what steps, if any, the Post Office took to encourage or assist applications from female candidates, but I have yet to receive a reply.

Having done some quick googling of the candidates’ names, I can tell you that one is a Labour activist, another is a Lib Dem activist and one has an OBE. But the main thing they have in common is that they’ve all got a… *

Jeff Bezos is coming

The Post Office has finally got into bed with Amazon. Is Amazon mad enough to let its business go anywhere near Horizon? No, siree. What is the likely upshot? More work for Subpostmasters. Click here for a write up – not by me – it’s on a website called Tamebay, which I’ve never come across before (or “Lamebay” as one of the commenters calls it). It’s a fascinating insight into the business of being a Subpostmaster.

Thanks to those who have flagged up interesting developments in Post Office World over the last 24 hours. This newsletter would be much shorter without your contributions.

Have a good evening and I’ll be back tomorrow.

Kind regards

NIck

* post office. They’ve all got a post office. Some more than one, actually.