Lord Arbuthnot and the Private Eye podcast

Hello again. I know I only wrote yesterday but I have a couple more things to tell you.

First of all, secret emailer James (now Lord) Arbuthnot asked a very pertinent question in the House of Lords yesterday.

I remembered he had done so about two minutes after I pressed send on yesterday’s secret email, so apologies for not mentioning it then.

The question was about the Post Office’s continuing ability to prosecute its own Subpostmasters. This sparked a useful ten minute debate about the Post Office scandal before a full-ish House with a number of peers asking good questions and making good points.

If you would like to watch the debate, click here – you will be swept into the red-seated chamber seconds before Lord Arbuthnot stands up.

If you would like to download the debate for your future viewing pleasure, click here. You only have until 4.51pm tomorrow before the link expires – like a message from Mission Impossible.

It’s quite exciting having a secret emailer in the House of Lords. It would be nice if we had a few in the House of Commons. If you are going to see your MP in the next few weeks, do ask them if they’d like to subscribe and I’ll sign them up. Make sure you get an email address from them.

Private Eye podcast

I have made my first appearance on the Private Eye podcast. Given I only really know about one story, it is also probably my last, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was interviewed alongside Richard Brooks, a private eye staffer who I have been working with for nine years now.

The interview covers the Post Office Horizon scandal in its entirety and brings you right up to date. Richard is great on the history of the Post Office, the botched procurement of Horizon and the way the Post Office top brass and the government have got away with everything. One tweeter said last night:

“Even as someone vaguely familiar with the Horizon/sub Postmasters story, the detailing of the ongoing hell for victims in this ⁦@PrivateEyeNews⁩ podcast is jaw dropping.”

It’s certainly comprehensive. If you can spare half an hour to give it a listen, please do. My thanks to Richard and Ian Hislop – I’ve subscribed to his scurrilous scandal-rag for more than 20 years, so it is quite a thrill to be even vaguely associated with it.

Yesterday’s blog post

Another plug for yesterday’s blog post – now updated with a quote from Gill Furniss MP. Find out what has to happen before any criminalised Subpostmaster gets a chance to clear their name in my handy cut-out-n-keep guide to the CCRC/Court of Appeal process. Assuming everything goes in their favour (and that is a mighty big assumption) I reckon it’ll be at least a year before anyone gets their name cleared and possibly another year after that before they’ll know if they’ve got a case for malicious prosecution, possibly longer.

As Jo Hamilton, rather poignantly, said yesterday:

“Hopefully, unlike some, I’ll still be alive to see the day I get my conviction overturned.”

An appeal

Finally, as well as the Inside Out broadcast, the Private Eye podcast and the forthcoming File on 4 investigation (BBC Radio 4, Tue 11 Feb, 8pm), there are other, bigger things in the pipeline.

As I said in a previous secret email, I think 2020 will be a year of reckoning in the Post Office story and the real truth of what was going on inside that organisation will start to come out.

I very much doubt anyone with a troubled conscience over what they witnessed or saw will get into too much trouble for coming forward. There is a recognition that Very Bad Things happened over the last two decades and that the culture of the Post Office needs to change.

If you have a tip, or know someone from inside Fujitsu, the Post Office or the NFSP who might be willing to be interviewed, please just reply to this email. It goes straight to my phone. All correspondence will be treated in the very strictest of confidence. If you’ve been forwarded this email – my address is nick@nickwallis.com

I am very much hoping that some of the ministers, civil servants and execs who orchestrated the Post Office activities over the last 20 years will be held to account, and soon. But this will not happen without people who worked for them coming forward. If you could spread the word, I would be very grateful.

Cheers

Nick