Archives :
Nick Wallis
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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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Will Post Office execs continue to be given bonuses for their Inquiry work?
Earlier this week I spotted a job advert for a Senior Legal Counsel at the Post Office, reporting to the Post Office’s Head of Legal specifically responsible for matters relating to the statutory Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. The Post Office has recently been hauled over the coals by politicians for rewarding its Chief Executive…
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Racist ID codes. When did they leave the Met?
On 2 June 2023 I sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force. I asked: “Could you tell me when the police stopped using the word “negroid” in its racial identification codes? Please can you supply me with documentation supporting this?” To give the Met’s FOI department some context,…
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Ed Henry KC: “You couldn’t contrive a more ridiculous state of affairs”
In the course of preparing for a recent Sunday Times piece into the latest on the Post Office disaster, I spoke to a number of people. For reasons of space, many of their contributions were edited down to a couple of short quotes, or they simply didn’t make it into the piece at all. Nonetheless,…
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Prof Moorhead: “Crass does not come close”
Following a Q&A with one member of the independent Horizon Compensation Advisory Board (Lord Arbuthnot) earlier this week, I am delighted to bring you another. Richard Moorhead is Professor of Legal Ethics at Exeter University and a respected industry blogger. He has taken a close professional interest in the legal failings which contributed to the…
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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…
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Nick Read: The First Interview
On 20 June I was waiting outside Committee Room 6 at the Houses of Parliament, waiting to hear Post Office CEO Nick Read and his fellow execs grilled by Darren Jones MP and various members of the Business Select Committee. I was in the process of putting together Episode 12 of The Great Post Office…
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Inquiry to consider yet more delays
UPDATE: The inquiry’s hearings have now been postponed at least until 25 July, possibly until after summer. ORIGINAL COPY: The statutory public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal is looking very wobbly. Last month’s hearings were postponed as the Chair, Sir Wyn Williams, was ill. Last night we heard Sir Wyn is considering…
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The Burton Report
When it transpired the Post Office had chosen to award itself bonuses for co-operating with the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, it caused something of a storm. The somewhat crass idea that the Post Office should reward itself for co-operating with the inquiry was bad enough. Even worse was the fact the bonus…
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The Post Office Race Equality duty in the application of its prosecutorial powers
Dr Minh Alexander is back. Dr Alexander contacted me a few years ago when she was alarmed to hear that The Reverend Paula Vennells had sailed into a job running an NHS Trust. Dr Alexander felt The Revd Vennells’ active attempts to play down and possibly suppress the Post Office scandal whilst CEO of the…