This is your 24 hour countdown to BBC Panorama - Scandal at the Post Office which airs tomorrow night at 19:30. It was put together by Nick Wallis who has followed this story for a decade. Without the support of Nick and many others over the years this would never has received the publicity that it has. So don't forget to tune in and watch the misery the Post Office has dealt to potentially thousands of innocent Sub Postmasters over the last 20 years. Since Horizon was installed in 1999 there was a rise in prosecutions by the Post Office of over 800%. This should have told its own story as well as all the cries for help from Postmasters and politicians over the years. If you miss the episode live then catch up on BBC iPlayer here :-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gpbv
The BBC Radio 4 series 'The Great Post Office Trial' has just concluded on Sunday and Mark Baker CWU Postmasters Union Rep has posted on twitter that it has reached as far as Rio de Janeiro so Nick Wallis really has taken this to an International level. It contained the first ever release of an interview between a Postmistress and their contracts advisor, the sound of Sarah breaking down in tears is heart wrenching and I know that many others if not everyone went through something similar. If you haven't already had a chance to listen then it is worthy of a listen, each episode is 15 minutes long so you can easily spread it out over a cup of tea each day. Alternatively there are two omnibus episodes which contain episodes 1 to 5 and the other 6 to 10 if you prefer to listen in longer sections. The link below is where you can listen :-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jf7j/episodes/player
Finally I mentioned about the Crowd Justice page that has been created by Justice for Sub Postmasters founder Alan Bates. It has been recommended to us by a specialist QC that the best course of action is to make an official complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman regarding BEIS (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) handling of this over the many years. There is definitely grounds of maladministration in this department and by ministers and the ombudsman has similar powers to a High Court judge to bring witnesses and special reports before parliament that the government will be unable to shy away from. There can be no excuse for them not looking into this scandal years ago as it had been brought to their attention by hundreds of Postmasters and Politicians year after year. Instead they turned a blind eye and let the cover-up and bullying continue until High Court Judges Justice Fraser and Justice Coulson put an end to it. The problem is there has been no accountability, no major changes in the Post Office and board members are still present. Post Office continue to deny how they dealt with the mediation scheme in 2013 and Second Sight Investigators Ron Warmington and Ian Henderson during their internal investigation saying that they co-operated the entire time. If you haven't already I highly suggest you read the written evidence put forward by Second Sight in the recent BEIS Select Committee inquiry into Post Office . You can also read the hard hitting letters sent to Paula Vennells (Ex Post Office CEO), Nick Read (Current Post Office CEO) and Fujitsu UK (Horizon Developers and maintenance contractors).
Here is a link to Second Sights recent evidence :-
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/917/html/
Here you can read those hard hitting letters to the individuals and companies named above :-
https://committees.parliament.uk/work/97/post-office-and-horizon/publications/3/correspondence/
The cost of making and submitting this complaint by our specialist QC to the Parliamentary Ombudsman using MP Kevan Jones of North West Durham is £98,000 inc VAT. This is where your support is needed. We have so far had over £26,000 pledged with 24 days remaining. If the total is not reached then no one will be charged for whatever pledge they make. We have ONE chance to make this complaint work which is why the specialist legal QC is needed. If everyone who has signed this petition were to pledge an average of £10 then that would be now worth over £66,000 and bring our total to over £91,000 and only just short of our final goal. I cannot thank enough the pledges made so far. I have seen pledges range from £10 all the way upto £500 and one extremely generous pledge of £1,000. If you then go on to talk about this with friends, family and colleagues the total is easily achievable. Again please do not feel you have to pledge and only what you can afford. It is all greatly appreciated no matter how big or small.
The link to donate on the Crowd Justice page is below :-
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/post-office-victims/
I think after listening to BBC Radio 4 Series and watching BBC Panorama tomorrow you will understand what people have been through and why we must use this channel to submit our complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman.