On 26 Jan the BBC’s excellent economics correspondent Andy Verity published a story. Andy had eyes on two confidential Post Office documents which had previously only been published under FOI in heavily-redacted form.

They were Project Sparrow board sub-committee meeting minutes from 9 and 30 April 2014. Project Sparrow was the codename given by the Post Office to its interactions with the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, MPs and Second Sight (independent investigators) between 2013 and 2015.

During the 2018 group litigation Bates v Post Office at the High Court, the Post Office tried to claim the name “Project Sparrow” was legally privileged. True fact.

The heavily redacted versions of the two Project Sparrow meeting minutes were sent to me in 2021 after I made the request which led to their release. I published them. Shortly afterwards I received them in unredacted form. I failed to publish them. I am grateful to the BBC story (a well-deserved scoop) for prompting me to look through my own document archive. I am now pleased to be able to upload the unredacted minutes for your reading pleasure:

Unredacted Project Sparrow board meeting minutes 9 April 2014:

Unredacted Project Sparrow board meeting minutes 30 April 2014:

For more information on Project Sparrow, do read Andy’s report alongside my piece from 2021.

---

The journalism on this blog is crowdfunded. If you would like to join the “secret email” newsletter, please consider making a one-off donation. The money is used to keep the contents of this website free. You will receive irregular, but informative email updates about the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.

---