plus: the story behind Vennells CBE

You didn’t see me, right?

I’m not meant to be writing this newsletter. I’m meant to be having a relaxing weekend with the family. We went out for dinner tonight. Any talk of the Post Office was banned (not by me – by the rest of the family, who just wanted a normal evening).

I stuck to the agreement, then I got home and opened my laptop to see all the Sunday newspaper stories. They’ve all gone to bed, so I’m sending you an actual secret email. Don’t tell Mrs Walls.

Richard Taylor suspended

The first person in authority to find themselves up before HR as a result of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal is Richard Taylor, the serving (until yesterday) Post Office Director of Communications. Taylor was recorded on two separate occasions suggesting that campaigning Subpostmasters were probably thieves, that there was no evidence Horizon had caused discrepancies in branch accounts, and complaining the quashed convictions of Subpostmasters was getting disproportionate media coverage.

Here is the story of his suspension. Courtesy of the Daily Mail.

This is the show (dated 11 Jan) which revealed the tapes. I am grateful to the TalkTV team for their help in getting this investigation over the line.

I am also grateful to the brave source who came forward to help me get these tapes into the public domain. They finally demonstrate the Post Office’s true feelings about the campaigning Subpostmasters. It’s something I have heard off the record many times: that the Subpostmasters got lucky – the case came before a judge trying to make a name for himself – that there was clear evidence Alan Bates et al were trying to deflect from their own personal failings etc.

Now Mr Taylor has been recorded saying what he said, we at least have evidence of the Post Office’s true position.

The Post Office’s unlawful tax arrangements

You will have read many times in this newsletter about Dan Neidle’s incredible work investigating the Post Office’s either inept or deliberate attempts to minimise the amount of compensation reaching Subpostmasters.

Dan made it very clear the Post Office’s failure to consider the tax implications for claimants to the Historical Shortfall Scheme was borderline negligent.

Today he published an article (also front page of the FT, BBC Online and followed up by a number of other outlets) noting the Post Office was potentially unlawfully counting its compensation payouts against its tax liabilities, and somehow also discounting them in order to maximise executive bonuses.

Dan is a formidable individual. I am so grateful he has decided to focus his attention on the Post Office scandal over the last 13 months. I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do on this story next.

Other stuff

– A great story in the Sunday Times about Paula Vennells’ CBE and how she got it.

– a genuine honour to be interviewed alongside Lee Castleton for National Public Radio in the US by Scott Simon. Lee delivers one of the most emotional interviews I have heard him give (poor man must be exhausted given how much work he has done over the last two weeks), and it was a genuine honour to be interviewed by one of the American greats.

– Andrew Rawnsley picks up on a point I’ve made a few times in broadcast interviews – there is a parallel between the Post Office scandal and Hillsborough, summed up by the Bishop of Liverpool in his report on the appalling failures in that case: “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power“.

Rawnsley does it better than me, because he’s a better writer – it’s a piece worth reading. I’m grateful to Stuart Higgins, former editor of The Sun, for getting in touch to alert me to it. I know. It’s a strange old world.

Whilst I’m name-dropping, I went to Broadcasting House yesterday to meet some people and do Newswatch. i thought this would be an ideal opportunity to go back to the studio I did the Adrian Chiles interview in on Thursday, so I could pick up the BBC pass I thought I’d left there.

After lots of wandering around, I eventually found the studio. Who should be there but Adrian Chiles. He had finished his Friday show and was sitting on his own, clearly just trying to get some peace and quiet.

“Like one of those buses, you are,” he said in that wonderful deadpan manner of his, when I knocked on the studio door for the second time in two days.

I asked him if he’d seen my pass. He helped me look for it. We swapped numbers and this morning he sent me a great substack piece about the failures of the criminal justice system regarding this scandal.

Van den Bogerd

The Daily Telegraph has a profile of Angela van den Bogerd and a line (from her) suggesting she has been misrepresented in the ITV drama.

One thing I am surprised the article does not mention is that, in 2019, van den Bogerd was found to have attempted to mislead a High Court judge.

For those interested in behind-the-scenes stuff:

– an interview I did on Newswatch about the failures of journalism on this scandal.

– an article in The Observer about the successes of the media with regard to this scandal (more than a bit self-regarding but hey-ho).

– the BBC’s take on how Mr Bates… “shook up Britain”

– final and profound thanks to Graham Tapley, who publishes community magazines in Surrey and Kent, who has taken the time to write a column on the Post Office scandal in his magazine. I am deeply grateful, Graham.

I really ought to go now

It’s 1.30am, my daughter needs to be at a football match tomorrow morning, and we have to leave early so I can stop and do a BBC London radio interview on the way. Which she is obviously absolutely thrilled about.

Keep well, and thanks for being a secret emailer. I hope these newsletters are useful to you. Please tell me if there’s anything I could do more or less of, or better.

Yours

Nick