Panorama postponed and more…
Hello secret emailers
I was meant to be spending today touring the BBC’s broadcast studios, telling the nation about tonight’s Panorama. Sadly “Scandal at the Post Office” has lost its slot. Coronavirus is in.
We are postponed, not cancelled. The best guess is that we might get a window some time in the next six weeks. We might not.
Paula Vennells unracked
One thing which has been cancelled and not postponed (again due to coronavirus) is tomorrow’s second oral evidence session of the BEIS select committee’s latest inquiry into the Post Office. The Revd. Paula Vennells (former Post Offie CEO) was due to attend. This was possibly the last opportunity for MPs to hold her to account. Oh well.
Incidentally, Paula Vennells has been biffed from her position at the Cabinet Office. She maintains she resigned (though she doesn’t say why). The Cabinet Office says she stepped down as part of a wider refresh of the board.
I have been told on good authority the moment the new BEIS minister at the House of Lords, Lord Callanan, found out Ms Vennells had a government position, he took immediate steps to have her removed. Who knows what the truth really is…?
This is the Daily Mail’s take on it (p31 Friday 20 March):
You can read the article in full online here.
Independent review, not inquiry
In response to the full-throated cries which have been echoing around parliament over the past two months, the government, which initially said it was trying to “look at how we can keep the Post Office on its toes in future” has now said it will announce an “independent review” into what has been going wrong.
I’ve written it up here on the Post Office Trial blog, and then I thought it would be helpful to put all the recent debates and parliamentary interactions into one blog post so that you can find out who said what and when.
Please have a look at both the above blog posts. The latter is a fully-indexed, easy to digest menu of recent parliamentary activity around the Post Office scandal, including top quotes, a/v and transcripts. Putting it together was a horrendous slog. I hope it is useful to someone.
Private Eye
The Private Eye Post Office Special has now been put to bed and will be in shops and on doormats next week. Coronavirus news has eaten into our pagination but at least it hasn’t been pulled. If you want to guarantee your copy AND remain in glorious self-isolation, why not subscribe? It’s an incredibly good magazine which often gets to serious miscarriages of justice way before other organs and it can be very funny too. And an annual subscription costs less than a pound a week.
One for m’learned friends…
Attention legal eagles – please may I draw your attention to a sizzling new scholarly article entitled “The Law Commission presumption concerning the dependability of computer evidence” written by no less than four people for the Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review.
The barrister Stephen Mason edits the review for the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, and he has long railed against this Law Commission legal presumption which has done for so many Subpostmasters in the past.
As you might expect there are numerous reference in the article to Fraser J’s Horizon Issues trial judgment. Stephen has asked if I can “kindly alert everyone you can to it, including lawyers, judges and legal academics.”
Given there are a number of eminent and legally-qualified secret emailers among us, Stephen, it would be my pleasure.
Finally – I realise things might be tough for many people at the moment. I hope you are all keeping well and refusing to let the strange situation we are in from getting on top of you. I’ll try to keep up the communication to secret emailers in the coming days and post the odd blog post as and when there is a need to.
Look out for yourselves and look out for each other (at a distance). It’ll all be over by Christmas. Maybe.
Yours
Nick