I didn't expect to be writing this update before the one due on Friday for the Court of Appeal.  In the last update I mentioned the letters I had sent to a number of Ministers and Post Office CEO Nick Read back in mid March.

Today I received the first response from Nick Read, CEO of Post Office Ltd.  He thanked me for the thoughtful letter dated 21st March 2021.  He went on to reply point by point to everything I drew his attention to in the letter.  Whilst at the moment it is not in his gift to address the compensation of the group of 555 claimants he will continue to lobby government and the department responsible for Post Office to do more.  He also agreed to setup a meeting between himself and me in the near future to allow us to discuss the ideas and suggestions I had put forward.  

I will press him hard on two points of his response.  Yes the Court of Appeal acknowledged the Post Office had been thorough in its disclosure this time around however that cannot be said of the civil litigation where Judge Fraser was extremely critical of the way Post Office either refused point blank to disclose certain documents, left disclosure of thousands of documents to the last minute or handing them over after the deadline on the day of the actual hearings, completely hampering any chance the claimants solicitors would have of dissecting the relevant documents to aid our fight.  This is something that may throw up an avenue of how safe and watertight the settlement agreement actually is and according to JFSA founder Alan Bates the settlement could only involve the 2 points we had actually won and exposed in the first two trials.  There were a further 8 points to contest in future trials that we never got round to because of the funding running low and entering into the settlement under duress.  Those now joining the Historical Shortfall Scheme will get to contest and be compensated on all 10 points whereas the group of 555 have only been compensated on the 2.  This is grossly unfair and unjust when the only reason the Shortfall Scheme exists is because under the terms of the settlement in mediation this was something the claimants side put in as a red line for agreeing to settle.  Without us it would never have been reality and nor would they have the evidence and the hefty judgement from Judge Fraser.  The second point is that it may not be in Nick Read's gift but he does have the ability to stress to government that his business will settle the groups additional 8 points of claim from their future profits as I mentioned yesterday.  The government ultimately profits from annual interest payments on the loan and the uplift in the reputation of the Post Office and Nick Read himself to the wider public cannot be underestimated. 

Lets think of this logically, if the Post Office were to repeat this years profit (before exceptional items of the litigation) of £80 million in future years and they had to repay £20 million of that to government (25% repayment - this is just a guide) then over 20 years they would have repaid £400 million and 30 years £600 million.  This is surely not a far fetched idea, it is both inventive and realistic leaving the Post Office with £60 million in profits to play with, considering they have hardly turned any profit whatsoever for many years, this is a huge turnaround.  Like I have said before these numbers can be adjusted, lower and higher parameters used if profits were lower or higher to ensure the business is successful for current and future Postmasters and the loan re-negotiated at anytime.  This also suggests to me the Post Office could actually attempt to finance ALL compensation claims.......malicious prosecutions claims that will come soon after the Court of Appeal, the Historical Shortfall Claims (2400+), the groups 555 claim and whatever comes of the 900 prosecutions currently being reviewed.  I mean lets face it as things currently stand the government is financing the Historical Shortfall Scheme and we all know they will have to finance the Malicious Prosecution claims as well as the future 900 when we hear their outcome.  So the government is on the line for hundreds of millions anyway.  Even if the Post Office setup this loan arrangement and in 10 years it failed because the business was no longer profitable it still would have repaid a substantial sum of money that before my suggestion government would never have recouped.   

So can this idea get off the ground, well as I mentioned on social media earlier today having the ear and attention of the one man that could make this work is a very good starting point.  I will give more details when I can and once the meeting is arranged and going ahead.  I want to stress to all those in the group I cannot guarantee this will work but the line in the sand is that whatever monies people have repaid to Post Office incorrectly (that is still in their profit and loss accounts) must be returned in full plus any interest that would have accrued over the years as well as claims for reputation damage and as close as possible the consequential losses of the individuals.  

Nick Wallis also wrote a new post on his site today, covering my response from Nick Read, you can read it here :- 

https://www.postofficetrial.com/2021/04/settlement-disagreement.html

Watch this space...and don't forget on Thursday 22nd April BBC main news at 6pm and 10pm will do early coverage of the Court of Appeal decisions for Friday and expect mass coverage on the majority of news outlets on the day itself, Friday 23rd April 2021 - UK's biggest miscarriage of justice will be revealed for all to see !!