Archives :
Lord Arbuthnot
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Proposed amendment to legal presumption about the reliability of computers
I am grateful to the journalist Tom Webb, who specialises in data protection, for alerting me to an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, currently going through the House of Lords. It concerns the legal presumption that “mechanical instruments” (which seems to be taken to include computer networks) are working properly if they…
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Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act becomes law
Congratulations to those Subpostmasters who no longer have convictions blighting their lives. A huge cohort of people now have access to a minimum of £600k each by way of compensation. Two important groups are currently excluded. 1) Scottish Subpostmasters. Thanks to foot-dragging by the Scottish authorities, Scottish Subpostmasters are not (yet) having their convictions quashed.…
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Govt offers “eligible” Postmasters £600,000 take-it-or-leave-it compensation
The government has tried to break the compensation impasse for “eligible” Subpostmasters whose convictions have been quashed. The deal on the table is £600,000 to walk away. This is the transcript of the announcement and subsequent debate in parliament. The maximum number of people who qualify for the deal are the 86 Subpostmasters whose convictions…
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Lord Arbuthnot: “I feel we are heading in the right direction”
Last week the Sunday Times asked me to write a piece about the Post Office scandal. The result can be read here. In the course of researching the article I picked up a lot of interesting material which, for reasons of space, didn’t make the final cut. Rather than let some good stuff go to…