Back in 2006 I was the UK's youngest Sub Postmaster. I had many good and happy years as the Postmaster at West Boldon branch, a small village in the North East of England. However in 2014/2015 all that came crashing down after being involved in what is now called the UK's biggest Scandal and miscarriage of justice in legal history. It has also been described by Julian Lewis MP of New Forest East as 'One of the worst disasters in public life since the contaminated blood scandal'
You can catch up with that debate from the House of Commons here:-
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/a7468777-1570-483c-b245-b72c85e08bb7?in=12:43:27&out=13:49:05
Post Office has also now said that it will no longer be prosecuting Postmasters going forward, we can only assume they will now be referring any future disagreements over discrepancies to the Police and via the CPS. As per the recent High Court litigation judge Justice Fraser made it clear that Sub Postmasters cannot be held liable for unexplained shortfalls unless the Post Office can prove it is not Horizon and it is down to user error, assistant error or misuse of funds, rather than the Post Office interpretation that the Postmaster had to prove why the shortfall had occurred or that it was the Horizon system.
You can see the recent debate held in the House of Lords here :-
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/2e2da932-3667-40f9-b3e8-bd3e83a55e68?in=18:16:24&out=18:27:23
We also have had 2 fundraising campaigns on the go. One to raise legal funds on behalf of victims that have been prosecuted by Post Office and Hudgells Solicitors are preparing those cases ready for the Court of Appeal hearings after the CCRC referred the largest ever number of cases (currently 47 and 8 others under review). That is without the 500+ more cases the Post Office says it has now uncovered since the year 2000 and is investigating whether these may also be unsafe. It is almost impossible to get your head around the scale of this scandal, yet ministers want to fob us off with a review. That campaign had an adjusted target of £10,000 and it has been reached earlier this morning.
The other fundraiser is to take our complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman to pursue a 'maladministration' complaint against BEIS (Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy). We need to raise £98,000 before July 1st 2020 6:00pm in order to do this. Currently we stand at £51,667. This is after so many very generous donations over the past few days. We cannot thank those enough who have contributed to our cause. The last update I wrote 1 week ago we had just under 8,000 signatures, that has risen by more than 800 to take us to 8,813. So in order to reach our goal we are currently £46,333 away from £98,000. That means as an example if all 8,813 petition signatories were able to PLEDGE just £5 that would raise a further £44,065 and mean we are pretty much there. We also need you to SHARE, SHARE & SHARE some more the link to the Crowd Justice page below. Use social media channels, emails, word of mouth and Facebook groups you maybe part of to help spread the word, or maybe you know a local business owner and/or company CEO who would be willing to be part of this fight for justice. Far too many lives have been devastated by this scandal including those who are sadly no longer with us today.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT TODAY USING THE LINK BELOW :-
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/post-office-victims/
The EDM (Early Day Motion) launched by Kevan Jones MP of North West Durham has now gained over 54 signatures. We urge you to get in contact with your local MP and request that they sign and support this motion if they haven't already done so. Please also ask that they support the calls for a 'Judge Led Inquiry' as the current review is not an inquiry under the 'Inquiries Act 2005'. You can check the latest signatures on the EDM from this link below :-
https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/57102/judgeled-public-inquiry-into-the-horizon-scandal
If you are not sure who your local MP is then use this link to find out, they can be contacted via email or letter :-
https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP
I had another article in the local papers just last weekend saying that the Justice for Sub Postmasters Alliance, Sub Postmasters including myself and also independent investigators Second Sight will be boycotting the review. It simply does not have the necessary powers to compel witnesses from Post Office, Fujitsu and Government to give oral evidence under oath. It also does not have the powers to force full disclosure of internal documents and emails. We already know how the Post Office handled disclosure in the recent litigation, it simply refused to hand over documents unless it was forced by judge Justice Fraser. Even then it disclosed documents after the trials had already started which didn't allow time to scrutinize them. They have also only very recently, long AFTER the litigation ended handed over other documents that they had been requested to provide. If this is how they treat the Judicial system, then how will they treat a Government review? You can read the recent local newspaper article here :-
There was also another article in the Daily Mail showing the directors and CEO's past and present at the Post Office who oversaw the UK's largest ever miscarriage of justice. Read the article here :-
Thank you again for reading and all your support over the past 5 months.