It’s the question on everyone’s lips

Possibly a slight overstatement. But…

Assuming there will be some sort of “independent” investigation into the Post Office, how will the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s investigation affect it?

Earlier this month Chi Onwurah, the shadow business minister, asked that very question of the government. Specifically whether:

“evidence received by Parliamentary Ombudsman on the Government’s handling of the Horizon issue can be considered by the Independent review into the Post Office Ltd Horizon IT system.”

The government has now replied:

“The Parliamentary Ombudsman operates independently from Government. Should it decide to open its own inquiry into Post Office Ltd. and the Horizon operating system, it will be a matter for the Parliamentary Ombudsman to decide whether it can, and if so should, share evidence it receives with the Independent Review.”

This suggests the government is at least open to the idea of information-sharing, and one wonders how and if the Ombudsmand (and the JFSA) can see a sensible way of doing so.

Thrilling, huh? Sorry – that’s the best I can do at the moment. These are the dry days of summer and not much is going on. I just hadn’t written a secret email for a bit, is all.

I have been receiving a lot of Post Office correspondence over the last month (including news of an extraordinary COVID-related move by the Post Office which has infuriated many existing Subpostmasters) and I will attempt to deal with it all over the next month or two.

Necessary Johnny Depp-related admin

If you took an interest in my coverage of Depp v NGN and donated the equivalent of £20 or more, you might be wondering why on earth you are receiving this email.

The reason is you might have been donating £20 or more because of my coverage of the Post Office story. It’s unlikely, I admit, given I’ve spent most of the last four weeks working on Depp v NGN, but it’s possible.

The reason for the confusion is that I failed to work out a way of creating two separate tip jars in time to avoid this problem (in retrospect, a rather simple thing to do), so I have had to add everyone who donated £20 or more to this mailing list on the off chance they were passing through www.PostOfficeTrial.com and decided to get involved.

So – if you were a Depp v NGN contributor (and I thank you for your generosity), welcome. The Post Office secret emailers are a lovely bunch and very welcoming, and if you do have an interest in both the UK Post Office and Johnny Depp then that really is a stroke of luck.

However if you came for the Depp info and you’re now mystified as to why you’re being sent emails about nuanced developments in a long-running British story, please feel free to unsubscribe. There’s a regular unsubscribe link at the bottom of each newsletter or you can just hit reply and put “unsubscribe” in the title or body of your email and I’ll do it manually.

If you’re in the UK, I hope you’re “enjoying” the heatwave and I promise to start cranking up the www.PostOfficeTrial.com website soon. There are some interesting stories out there and I will try to push them out in August before the parliamentary battle royale re-starts in September.

Best

Nick