Staunton Spills

Hi

A huge scoop in the Sunday Times today for Oliver Shah, who secured an interview with the sacked Post Office chairman Henry Staunton.

Staunton – if he’s telling the truth – confirms much of what we already know (but from a senior, insider’s position) and he reveals some shocking details. Not least that Nick Read, the Post Office CEO calls the Post Office investigation team “untouchables” – apparently suggesting they are too powerful to be sacked.

Guilty as charged

Staunton, who was sacked at the end of last month, reveals that Read wrote to the Business Department, apparently at the behest of officials at UKGI, in an attempt to dissuade the government from legislating to quash all Post Office convictions, suggesting that a good chunk of those convictions were not unsafe and 300 or so were “guilty as charged”.

Stanton confirms that the loathing of serving Subpostmasters at the Post Office hasn’t dissipated, claiming executives believe many Subpostmasters spend their days “digging into the [till] drawers”.

Staunton also tells Shah the Post Office is “deliberately trying to make it difficult” to claim compensation.

The Post Office and govt have responded. One unnamed Business Department “insider” told Shah “This blame-passing was a feature of Mr Staunton’s time in the Post Office and emblematic of his lack of control over the organisation… As well as his poor judgment, Staunton was dismissed for blocking an investigation into his conduct.”

On the record, both the Post Office and the government say they “refute” Staunton’s claims. Refute means disprove with evidence, and they haven’t done that. They’ve simply denied his claims.*

I urge you to either go and buy the Sunday Times today, or take out a subscription and read the article here.

Courts “confront” Govt over conviction quashing

There was a really interesting substack post by Joshua Rozenberg last week which suggests the government’s plans to blanket quash all Subpostmaster convictions “might have run into difficulty with the judiciary”.

Rozenberg cites a Guardian report, which states “the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, and business minister, Kevin Hollinrake, held discussions about an alternative put forward by the judiciary, under which the courts would overturn wrongful convictions, a process likely to take much longer.”

Rozenberg says he thought “the courts would faithfully respect whatever legislation parliament might pass. Apparently not.”

It seems the new Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr (pictured), is of the view that the courts are the place to overturn convictions.

Rozenberg got a question asked at a recent press conference requesting clarification on the matter. Baroness Carr replied: “The rule of law is clearly engaged and it is for the courts to make judicial decisions. These are court-ordered convictions and if there comes a point in time when the rule of law has to be confronted in this context then I will confront it.”

Meaning…?

“I certainly don’t want to confront anyone in particular. But what I will do is defend the rule of law. I see that as being my job.”

Right. I expect there are some significant backroom conversations between the govt and judiciary happening as I write, but as Rozenberg notes, since the Ministry of Justice announced on 10 January that it would legislate to get all convictions quashed, “we have heard nothing more. No bill has been published – there has been no draft, no consultation paper.”

If you have the bandwidth, and you’re not already signed up, I would ensure you are subscribed to Joshua’s substack newsletter “A Lawyer Writes“. There is a free and paid tier. Both contain huge volumes of fascinating content. I actually don’t know how he manages to write as much as he does – and it’s all top quality stuff.

A secret emailer writes…

I have said many times I think the Post Office compensation schemes are mess. The anecdotal evidence I am picking up from several Subpostmasters continues to suggest that is the case. In my last newsletter I repeated various criticisms of the schemes. I was rewarded with a response from Kevin Hollinrake (pictured below), who told me:

“We’ve clearly had our problems getting things right, not least due to the significant number of moving parts but I think it’s important for commentators to recognise that there is also much good work going on. GLO scheme is working better now; 58 claims received, 52 offers made, 41 accepted (none of which have requested a referral to the independent panel), which tends to indicate offers are generally considered fair by claimants. Of course there are cases that will be unhappy with offers but that’s certainly a small minority thus far and we’re keen to let the independent process take its course where necessary.”

On the government announcing its intention to quash all Post Office convictions, he said: “can I put on record that we had been working on the blanket overturning of convictions for some months prior to the ITV series.”

There is more (and plenty of evidence from Subpostmasters which challenges some of the above), but I’m hoping to turn this into a blog post, just as I’m still hoping to get something together on the closing statements to Phase 4 of the Inquiry, which are receding into the distance in time, if not importance.

One example of things still going very badly wrong with the HSS scheme could be seen on BBC1 at 8.15am on Saturday. Ace reporter Emma Simpson raised the case of Tony Downey, taking him back to the Post Office he used to run in the Lake District.

Tony’s life and career have been completely ruined by the Post Office, who said he is due £10,000 in damages for the years he has suffered. Lawyer Neil Hudgell says Downey has been “been incredibly short-changed”.

Straight after Emma’s piece I sat on the BBC sofa in Salford with Wendy Buffrey to talk about Wendy’s case and the upcoming Post Office Scandal: The Inside Story tour. Wendy is kindly joining me at three venues on the tour, and we have nearly finalised guests for all of the dates. I am delighted to say that Tony Downey will be joining me at Bishop’s Stortford on the 27 April.

Tickets are now selling well, and I don’t think we’re going to add any more venues, so if you’re considering coming along but haven’t done anything about it, please do have a browse of all the dates, and click through to the theatre websites if there is an event which suits you.

Further reading

Professor Richard Moorhead has made his speech about the Post Office scandal to the Westminster Legal Policy Forum available on his substack. It’s a good read, as ever. Another substack worth subscribing to!

There was a great profile of Ian Henderson – Second Sight investigator extraordinaire – in the Times on Saturday. For those not too familiar with this story, Second Sight were the independent investigators who were brought into the Post Office to find out if/what there was anything wrong with the Horizon system and the Post Office’s business processes/treatment of Subpostmasters. They found an awful lot, and the rest is now history.

The Post Office has published an independent report into how it came to be classifying its Subpostmasters as “Negroid” and defining British people as “white” until relatively recently. The conclusion seems to boil down to a mixture of poor governance, incompetence and racism, none of which are very surprising.

Until next time

Thanks as every to everyone who has sent me information, links and suggestions over the past few days, plus of course all the new secret emailers who have signed up.

Now I’ve got my TV presenting out of the way for a bit, I’ll be focusing solely on investigative stuff and hoping to ramp up the frequency of these newsletters and blog posts. Sometimes it seems there aren’t enough hours in the day.

Take care

Nick

*Further research on this important subject has suggested that whilst, forty years ago, refute did mean disprove, it now apparently can mean deny too, much in the same way that literally can now mean either literally, or figuratively.