User:Jacksoncowes/sandbox

Good reference when critique of judges role “Fault lines” exposed in the Criminal Justice System - The Post Office Horizon Scandal"

Dr Karen Nokes and Dr Rebecca Helm say: There are lessons to be learned on the nature of human and professional relationships that encourage lawyers to absorb and reflect back their client's view without sufficient independence and critical detachment. The Review demonstrated a tendency to treat with cynicism the appellants and to disregard entirely the human costs of the Post Office's conduct. This blindness to the humanity of others is sometimes reified in practice (and the Bar's Code of Conduct) as fearless advocacy. The Review stands as a monument to that approach, showing how the decision-making of the lawyers can be limited or corrupted by excessive zeal. "There are lessons to be learned on the nature of human and professional relationships that encourage lawyers to absorb and reflect back their client's view without sufficient independence and critical detachment.

The Review demonstrated a tendency to treat with cynicism the appellants and to disregard entirely the human costs of the Post Office's conduct. This blindness to the humanity of others is sometimes reified in practice (and the Bar's Code of Conduct) as fearless advocacy. The Review stands as a monument to that approach, showing how the decision-making of the lawyers can be limited or corrupted by excessive zeal."

Key personnel who presided over the Post Office while these events unfolded include Adam Crozier who headed Royal Mail when it owned the Post Office between 2003 and 2010; and Paula Vennells who became chief executive officer of Post Office Limited from 2012 to 2019. Commenting in January 2024, on the governance arrangements and the scandal, the Institute for Government said

MD John Roberts,1987. MDRichard Dykes, September 1993. , MD Stuart Sweetman May 1996 - 2001, w

After the Post Office statutory corporation was changed to a public company, Royal Mail Group, in 2001, In 2002 2005, David Mills CE a newly created role. MD Alan Cook, January 2006.

In 2010, David Smith succeeded Alan Cook as managing director.

1. Ministers are accountable – but what can that really mean?

2. Civil servants should not outsource their personal judgement to fallible oversight structures

3. Complex governance arrangements can make it hard to pin accountability on individuals

4. Government is learning about large scale procurement - but mistakes are hard to unwind

5. Technology cannot be presumed to work as intended

6. The public inquiry's governance module should trawl this case for lessons learned

2020 United Kingdom school exam grading controversy

Private prosecution

On 1 April 2012, Post Office Limited became independent of Royal Mail Group, and was reorganised to become a subsidiary of Royal Mail Holdings, with a separate management and board of directors. A 10-year inter-business agreement was signed between the two companies to allow Post Offices to continue issuing stamps and handling letters and parcels for Royal Mail. The act also contained the option for Post Office Ltd to become a mutual organisation in the future.

In July 2013, Cable announced that Royal Mail was to be floated on the London Stock Exchange, and confirmed that postal staff would be entitled to free shares. Cable explained his position before the House of Commons:

2. Civil servants should

 * Legal – legislative failure.
 * Change in computer law
 * company law re government ars length entity
 * Threshold of requirements to prosecute to low
 * Appeal process too diff
 * Legal – court/judicial failure.
 * Courts not ensuring that
 * Post Office mendacity/opportunism.
 * Failure in Post Office corporate governance.

The ruling in Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd that the Horizon software contained "bugs, errors, and defects" that could cause shortfalls paved the way for subpostmasters to have their convictions overturned. In March 2020, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) announced that it was referring thirty-nine cases for appeal on the grounds that their prosecutions were an abuse of process. Of those thirty-nine, three were successfully opposed by the Post Office and remain convicted. In thirty-one cases the Post Office conceded only that the convictions were unsafe, unsucessfully opposed the CCRC's referral and those were exonerated. Five had their convictions overturned unopposed in the Crown Court. More referrals followed and in May 2021 the Law Society Gazette reported that the organisation was 'not adequately resourced' if 200 cases were to be brought forward for review.

The appeals of Wendy Cousins, Stanley Fell and Neelam Hussain

The appeals of Josephine Hamilton, Hughie Thomas, Allison Henderson, Alison Hall, Gail Ward, Julian Wilson (deceased), Jacqueline McDonald, Tracy Felstead, Janet Skinner, Scott Darlington, Seema Misra, Della Robinson, Khayyam Ishaq, David Hedges, Peter Holmes (deceased), Rubina Shaheen, Damien Owen, Mohammed Rasul, Wendy Buffrey, Kashmir Gill, Barry Capon, Vijay Parekh, Lynette Hutchings, Dawn O'Connell (deceased), Carl Page, Lisa Brennan, William Graham, Siobhan Sayer, Tim Burgess, Pauline Thomson, Nicholas Clark, Margery Williams, Tahir Mahmood, Ian Warren, David Yates, Harjinder Butoy, Gillian Howard, David Blakey and Pamela Lock

 Ashraf, Kamran  – Theft – 28/1/04 – South Western Mags’ Court

 Barang, Jasvinder  – Fraud 3/8/12 – Luton Mags’ Court

1 Brennan, Lisa – Theft – 4/9/03 – Liverpool Crown Court

2 Buffrey, Wendy – False accounting – 17/10/10 – Gloucester Crown Court

3 Burgess, Tim – False accounting – 12/8/11 – Teesside Crown Court

4 Capon, Barry – Theft and false accounting – 9/10/09 – Ipswich Crown Court

5 Clark, Nicolas – False accounting – 23/2/10 – Doncaster Crown Court

Cousins, Wendy – Theft – 5/5/09 – St Albans Crown Court

6Darlington, Scott – False accounting – 22/2/10 – Chester Crown Court

Fell, Stanley – False accounting – 27/7/07 – Leicester Crown Court

7Felstead, Tracy – Theft + false accounting – 2001 – Kingston-Upon-Thames CC

8 Gill, Kashmir – False accounting – June 2010 Oxford Crown Court

9 Graham, William – False accounting – 14/1/11 – Maidstone Crown Court

10 Hall, Alison – False accounting – 30/6/11 – Leeds Crown Court

11 Hamilton, Jo – False accounting – 2008 – Winchester Crown Court

12 Hedges, David – Theft and false accounting – 7/1/11 – Lincoln Crown Court

13 Henderson, Allison – False accounting – 15/12/10 – Norwich Crown Court

14 Holmes, Peter – False accounting – 22/12/09 -Newcastle-Upon-Tyne CC

Hussain, Neelam – Theft – 20/6/11 – Wolverhampton Crown Court

15 Hutchings, Lynette – False accounting – 30/7/12 – Portsmouth Crown Court

16Ishaq, Khayyam – Theft – 7/3/13 – Bradford Crown Court

17 McDonald, Jacqueline – Theft and false accounting – 2011 – Preston CC

18 Misra, Seema – Theft and false accounting – 21/10/10 – Guildford CC

19 O’Connell, Dawn -False accounting – 12/9/08 – Harrow Crown Court

20 Owen, Damien – Theft – 7/12/11 – Mold Crown Court

21 Page, Carl, Theft – 1/1/07 – Stafford Crown Court

22 Parekh, Vijay – Theft – 8/11/1 – Harrow Crown Court

 Patel, Vipinchandra  – Fraud – 3/6/11 – Oxford Mags’ Court

23 Rasul, Mohammed – Theft – 20/6/07 Manchester (Minshull) Crown Court

24 Robinson, Della – False accounting – 30/11/12 – Manchester Crown Court

Rudkin, Susan – False accounting – 23/3/09 – Burton-upon-Trent Mags’ Court

25 Sayer, Siobhan – False accounting – 15/2/10 Norwich Crown Court

26 Shaheen, Rubbina- False accounting – 22/11/10 – Shrewsbury Crown Court

27 Skinner, Janet – False accounting – 5/1/07 – Kingston Upon Hull Crown Court

28 Thomas, Hughie – False accounting – June 2006 – Caernarfon Crown Court

29 Thomson, Pauline – False accounting – 1/2/10 – Maidstone Crown Court

 Trousdale, Christopher –  False accounting – 8/3/04 Scarborough Mags’ Court

30 Ward, Gail – False accounting -15/10/07 – Bristol Crown Court

31 Wilson, Julian – False accounting – 15/6/09 – Worcester Crown Court

The British Post Office scandal, sometimes called the Horizon IT scandal, saw the Post Office persecute and prosecute thousands of innocent subpostmasters for shortfalls in their accounts, which had been caused not by dishonesty but by faults in the Post Office software, provided by Fujitsu and known as Horizon.

The British Post Office scandal, sometimes called the Horizon IT scandal, is that the Post Office management did, and was able for decades to keep secret its knowledge of its faulty Fujuisu computer system whilst its solicitors and agents persecuted and prosecuted thousands of innocent subpostmasters for computer generated shortfalls in their accounts,

The word “exacerbated” means “made worse”. So the sentence “It was exacerbated by Post Office management who, for years, ignored concerns expressed by hundreds of subpostmasters, instead threatening and pursuing them with legal action over the shortfalls” implies that there was already a scandal, and it was just made worse by persecuting/prosecuting the subpostmasters. In fact, the scandal itself was the persecution/prosecution of subpostmasters. Southdevonian (talk) 11:39, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

The British Post Office scandal, sometimes called the Horizon IT scandal, began with faulty software, provided by Fujitsu and known as Horizon, creating false shortfalls in the accounts of thousands of subpostmasters.

Yes. The syntax was not acceptable and you are quite right. Your current edit come much closer to a succinct definition of the scandal. You correctly go for the prosecutions as the scandal. The concept of management mendacity, which is what I think          wanted to get into that opening paragraph, is not yet in   What, I suggest, is not yet there is that 1) management decided to keep its knowledge secret, 2) that government and legel systems enabled it to do, 3) that it continued for such an extended period of time, and 4} is is not over.

You are right, the figure should be 39, not as I said 38. The Post Office opposed aspects of all 42 cases and lost on all aspects that it opposed in 39. It opposed applications that the court grant leave for the cases in which iIt opposed ground 2 to make submissions concerning ground 2. When it lost that that submission it opposed those submissions that were made in respect of all 42 cases. It opposed disclosure of the Clarke advice and lost. The Post Office most definitely fought the case vigorously and this is well referenced in the article. I won't argue about 'unsuccessfully', I accept that it depends what one means by unsuccessfilly.

But the concept that         sentence implied is important. There were management decisions that elevated a problem to a scandal. Faulty software is a problem but it is not a scandal. It was a problem for the PO from the day they bought it (!993?) It became a problem for the subpostmasters; they reported the problems to the PO help desk. The problem might have been ameliorated for the PO when they ignored the SPMs, but exacerbated for the SPMS., It became a scandal when The Post Office prosecuted. The Scandal is that the Post Office decided to prosecute and to keep secret what it knew. That is the concept that needs to be in at the start

Post Office prosecutions
Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office and the statutory authorities of the UK, including the CPS, the PPSNI, and the COPFS, prosecuted  hundreds of subpostmasters in criminal prosecutions in magistrates' courts and the Crown Court when the Horizon accounting system showed money was missing from their post offices. Subpostmasters were also pursued through civil actions. In all, between 1999 and 2015, over 900 subpostmasters were prosecuted and 236 went to prison. The Post Office itself prosecuted 700 people. Once the Post Office had secured a criminal conviction, it would attempt to secure a Proceeds of Crime Act order against convicted subpostmasters, allowing it to seize their assets. In addition to those convicted, there were subpostmasters who were prosecuted but not convicted, and many more who, without being prosecuted, had their contracts terminated and lost money as they were forced to pay the Post Office for Horizon shortfalls. In evidence submitted to the Parliamentary Justice Committee on private prosecution safeguards in July 2020, barrister Paul Marshall, who represented several subpostmasters, wrote: "The Post Office knew that its evidence was unsatisfactory but, because it failed to comply with its duty to disclose documents, the fact that its evidence was flawed and unreliable was known to neither the defendant SPMs nor to the court, and thus constituted no impediment to it securing convictions against its (thereby) disadvantaged SPMs. The unsatisfactory nature of the Post Office evidence was only exposed in the Bates v Post Office 'Horizon Issues' trial in March 2019 (judgment 16 December 2019)."At the time of the prosecutions, the Post Office had no different standing in law from that of any other private prosecutor in the British legal system. It acted as a private prosecutor in England and Wales. In Scotland, it reported allegations of crime to a procurator fiscal, and in Northern Ireland to the Public Prosecution Service. The Post Office's unique position, with a history as a prosecutor going back to 1683, gave the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) the greatest cause for concern upon its referral to the Court of Appeal; historically, Royal Mail had been a public authority. The actions of the Post Office caused the loss of jobs, bankruptcy, family breakdown, criminal convictions, prison sentences and at least four suicides. Prosecutions involving Horizon date from 1999, but in January 2024 it emerged that there had been earlier prosecutions involving a pilot scheme. Alex Hern wrote in the The Guardian in January 2024: "A 1984 act of parliament ruled that computer evidence was only admissible if it could be shown that the computer was used and operating properly. But that act was repealed in 1999, just months before the first trials of the Horizon system began. When post office operators were accused of having stolen money, the hallucinatory evidence of the Horizon system was deemed sufficient proof. Without any evidence to the contrary, the defendants could not force the system to be tested in court and their loss was all but guaranteed."The Parliamentary Justice Select Committee on private prosecution safeguards noted that Marshall had argued that the private nature of the prosecutions was not a significant cause of the Horizon scandal. The committee said in October 2020: "The Post Office is not a typical private prosecutor....The Private Prosecutors’ Association question whether the Post Office was conducting private prosecutions at all and was in fact a 'publicly-owned entity and a public prosecutor' during the relevant period.... One of the CCRC’s principal concerns is whether any organisation with the Post Office’s combined status, as victim, investigator and prosecutor, would be able to take decisions on investigations and disclosure 'appropriately free from conflict of interest and conscious or unconscious bias'"In all, over 4,000 subpostmasters had been identified as eligible for compensation by February 2024. In Scotland 73 potential victims were identified in 2020. By March 2024, 19 of those 73 have applied for their convictions to be reviewed. The BBC said "It is possible there are hundreds of people across Scotland who were accused of stealing money from their post office branches who were not convicted." A potential 53 victims in Northern Ireland have been identified. Those prosecuted in Scotland or Northern Ireland are not eligible for exoneration under the proposed Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024.

R v Roderick Dundee Cambridge Magistrates' Court 2005
Roderick Dundee pleaded guilty to false accounting at Cambridge magistrates' court in 2005 and was given a community punishment order of 240 hours and he was forced to cover losses of over £12,000. He applied to the CCRC in 2020 but died the following year. His daughter has pursued the application on his behalf. The application to the Crown Court has been made in the absence of specific legislation for such circumstances. No other means exist for this case to be quashed. Solicitors for the late Mr Dundee said "Now, the Post Office will have to consider whether they wish to challenge the appeals or concede them."

R v Noel Thomas Caernarfon Crown Court 2006
Noel Thomas, who had worked for the Royal Mail for 42 years, ran the village post office in Gaerwen on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales. He was convicted of false accounting in 2006, when a Horizon error showed a shortfall of £48,000 in his accounts. He spent 13 weeks in prison and was disqualified as a local councillor. His conviction was overturned in 2021, and he was honoured by Anglesey County Council in 2022.

Post Office Ltd v Castleton – January 2006
In this civil case the Post Office sued Lee Castleton, who was a subpostmaster in Bridlington, for £25,859 after he refused to pay a shortfall that had been caused by Horizon. The case was heard before judge Richard Havery in December 2006 and January 2007. Castleton represented himself and counterclaimed damages in the sum of £11,250 on the ground that the Post Office wrongfully determined his contract as a subpostmaster following his suspension. The judge found for the Post Office on both the claim and the counterclaim. He found the deficiencies were real, the business was not properly managed and that Castleton was therefore in breach of his contract with the Post Office. "Moreover, the losses must have been caused by his own error or that of his assistants". Unable to afford the losses and the £321,000 in legal costs, Castleton declared himself bankrupt.

In September 2023, solicitor Stephen Dilley, who represented the Post Office in the case, told the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry that the Post Office had known Castleton would not be able to pay if he lost, but wanted to send "a message that they were willing to defend the Fujitsu Horizon". Dilley defended his decision not to disclose to Castleton information about technical problems with the Horizon system raised by other subpostmasters, and also defended the tactics used by the Post Office during the trial. Richard Morgan KC, who had designed the strategy of the Post Office case against Castleton and represented the Post Office at trial denied that he had been given instruction to establish a legal point. He said "he would have told Post Office he would not do it if those instructions had been given." The strategy was repeatedly referred to as a “nice legal point,” by counsel to the Horizon Inquiry Jason Beer KC  Richard Moohead maitnains "The same strategy formed a central part of the Post Office’s thinking in subsequent cases and provided a legal rationale for insulating Horizon from legal challenges without proper evidence of its robustness." The Castleton case has been analysed and assessed in Evidenced Based Justice Lab - University of Exeter WP7, The First Flat Earther: How ‘clever’ strategy might drive professional error.

R v Josephine Hamilton Winchester Crown Court 2007
Jo Hamilton, who ran the village post office in South Warnborough, Hampshire, first noticed problems with the Horizon system in 2005 and in 2006 was prosecuted for a Horizon shortfall of £36,000; she pleaded guilty to false accounting in order to avoid going to prison on a theft charge. She was told by the Post Office that she was the only one having problems with Horizon and had to pay them for the Horizon shortfall. The conviction was overturned in 2021; her appeal was one of the four cases from the initial tranche of forty-two, labeled group A, in which the Post Office conceded that her conviction was unsafe and furthermore was unlawful. At the time of sentence the Post Office did not to proceed with the charge of theft, which was ordered to lie on the file.The alleged shortage of £36,644.89 was to be paid by the time of sentence. On 4 February 2008, Hamilton received a community sentence order for 12 months with a 12-month supervision requirement. The Court of Appeal was 'alarmed' to learn that the Post Office had threatened to proceed with the theft charge unless she agreed not to criticise Horizon, in spite of its investigator reporting no evidence of theft. Hamilton, alongside Monica Dolan who played her in the ITV drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, presented one of the awards at the Brit Awards 2024. She thanked the public for their support and said: "despite what the government says, they're not paying the postmasters".

R v Wendy Cousins St Albans Crown Court 2009
Wendy Cousins was sentenced to a nine-month suspended prison sentence for theft. She joined the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, and became one of the 555 convicted subpostermasters. At the Hamilton and others appeal her case was one of three in group C claiming she was not responsible for the money going missing from her branch - instead blaming the Post Office’s faulty Horizon IT accounting system.

R v Rubina Shaheen Shrewsbury Crown Court 2010
Rubbina Shaheen, who ran Greenfields post office in Shrewsbury, was jailed for 12 months in 2010 due to an error caused by Horizon. She and her husband lost their home and had to sleep in a van, before being helped by a local charity. Her conviction was overturned in 2021 and she was able to make a donation out of her interim compensation payment to the charity that had helped them. Shaheen was also a member of group 2 with Jo Hamilton (above) in the Hamilton and Others appeal

=== R v Peter Huxham Torquay Magistrates’ Court 2010 === Peter Huxham pleaded guilty to fraud by misrepresentation in 2010 at Torquay magistrates' court. He was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment. He died in 2020 and his son applied to have his case reviewed by the CCRC in 2021. As for the late Mr Dundee above, application to the Crown Court has been made in the absence of specific legislation for such circumstances. No other means exist for this case to be quashed. Solicitors for the late Mr Huxham said "Now, the Post Office will have to consider whether they wish to challenge the appeals or concede them."

R v Seema Misra Guildford Crown Court 2010
Seema Misra was prosecuted at Guildford Crown Court and sent to prison. In written evidence to Parliament's Justice Committee in 2020, a member of Misra's legal team at the Court of Appeal told the committee that three separate attempts had been made at trial to complain about inadequate disclosure by the post Office concerning the reliability of the computer system. Each of the three applications were rejected by three judges. The submissions at Guildford Crown Court were dismissed and Misra was charged with one count of theft, to which she pleaded not guilty, and six of false accounting to which she pleaded guilty. In an unsuccessful application that the trial be stopped, K. Hadrill, for Misra, said of the prosecution's expert witness Gareth Jenkins: "He operates under a restriction because he is an employee of Fujitsu who are under contract to the Post Office and he can only comply with his contractual terms as best he can and there is no suggestion his integrity is anywhere at fault as to what he is permitted to do, bearing in mind this is a Post Office prosecution. I don't go behind that but it is not an independent prosecution at arm's reach from the loser company and Mr Jenkins, so we have to have concerns as to the quality of his evidence and the best he has done in regard to the restrictions he operates under."Misra, recalling the moment when she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself." .

The conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal among the first tranche of forty-two cases. This case was one of thirty-five cases labeled group 2. in which the Post Office conceded that their convictions were unsafe, an abuse of process under category 1, but opposed their appeals on category 2 abuse, "an affront to the public conscience for the appellant to face criminal proceedings." Misra was one of three appellants that had insisted on submitting to the court that their prosecutions had been unlawful and that the court should hear their submissions in respect of category 2 abuse. The Post Office opposed those applications During the process that followed the court became aware of the Clarke Advice and of other documents that had not been available to the judge in the Bates group litigation. The Court of Appeal became aware of the extent of the inadequacy of Post Office disclosure at Misra's trial.and conviction. After argument, the court ruled that it would grant leave for category 2 applications to be made. The other thirty-two cases in group 2 then applied for and were granted leave. The thirty-five group 2 appellants prevailed and, together with group 1 all had their convictions quashed on the grounds of category 1 & 2 abuse.

R v Sarah Burgess Boyd Newcastle 2011
Sarah Burgess Boyd, a former subpostmaster from Newcastle-upon-Tyne lost her life savings in paying the Post Office for a phantom shortfall created by Horizon. She was prosecuted for theft, but acquitted at her trial in 2011 when the Post Office offered no evidence.

Post Office Ltd v Jacquie El Kasaby and Rose Stewart Glasgow 2014
Sisters Jacquie El Kasaby and Rose Stewart ran a post office in the Gorbals in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2014 a Glasgow prosecutor rejected a case against the sisters because of faults with the Horizon computer system. The Post Office terminated the sisters' contract and continued to claim £34,000 from them, without telling them why the prosecution had failed. The sisters agreed to pay the Post Office £10,000 even though they had not taken any money.

Helen Rose Report, a 2013 report by the Post Office's security fraud analyst, which touched on Horizon integrity issues

Secondly, the Second Sight Interim Report, a 2013 report by forensic accountants, which, on an initial review, did not identify systemic issues with Horizon, but which identified bugs and was critical of the Post Office's handling of its investigation

Thirdly, the Clarke Advices, namely advice from Simon Clarke, a barrister at the Post Office's solicitors, Cartwright King, again in 2013. A first significant advice addressed to the reliance on Gareth Jenkins as an expert witness in Post Office prosecutions will be considered and a second advice concerning the need to record and retain information.

Fourth, the Second Sight Report itself, which was finally completed on 9 April 2015, and which, amongst other things, was critical of the access that was provided by the Post Office to documents that were considered necessary for the purposes of that investigation.

Fifth, various advices from Brian Altman King's Counsel in the period 2013 to 2015, which addressed the review being carried out by Cartwright King, which addressed advice in relation to mediation, advice on the Post Office's prosecution role and advice on the charging of theft and false accounting.

Sixth, advice from Jonathan Swift, now Sir Jonathan Swift, and Christopher Knight in 2016, that formed a review on behalf of the then chairman of Post Office, Tim Parker, concerning the steps taken in response to complaints by subpostmasters.

Seventh, various advice given by Mr Altman in the period from 2016 onwards, which followed the Swift review, addressing Post Office's criminal prosecutions and advice on the judgments of Mr Justice Fraser and their implications for the safety of convictions

Then eighth, advice from various legal professionals in respect of the Group Litigation.

Of course, the story of wide scale and executive level knowledge can be traced further back than these reports. In 2009, in Rebecca Thomson's Computer Weekly

We said that what we could not understand was how this problem remained so obdurate because we had so many advantages on our side. From the Hansard archive

I am therefore surprised to receive the impression that he is being obdurate in this respect. From the Hansard archive

I have no wish to be intolerant or unduly obdurate in this matter. From the Hansard archive

The persecutors are quite obdurate to any public opinion. From the Hansard archive

. . . On

The Post Office has failed to facilitate redress. The Post Office is not fit for purpose to administer any of the schemes of redress. The Government must immediately remove the Post Office from any involvement in delivering redress and should set out to the Committee how it proposes to deliver swift and effective redress for sub-postmasters, and in what legally binding timeframes.

We repeat the Committee’s 2022 recommendation that the Government set up a properly resourced independent intermediary to assist sub-postmasters seeking to overturn convictions and seek compensation across all redress schemes and include in its forthcoming legislation legal timeframes to deliver redress with financial penalties awarded to the claimant for failure to meet deadlines. The Government must review and radically simplify the evidential requirements of the claims process.

4. To ensure that offers of redress are fast and fair, the Government must:

a) Require full disclosures by the Post Office of the information needed to submit full and fair claims within legally binding timeframes;

b) publish a standardised tariff of damages to help sub-postmasters claim the full amount to which they are entitled;

c) remove the cap on legal expenses for sub-postmasters to contest their claims;

d) allow those who have already settled under the Horizon Shortfall Scheme to revisit their claims to ensure that they have received fair redress; and e) introduce a legally binding independent appeals mechanism.

exeter on Altman Neidle said:

. I. .

""

Perverting the course of justice
Police investigation into Post Office Horizon scandal will take until ‘at least’ 2026, says Met chief.

An investigation into potential criminal offences linked to the Post Office/Horizon scandal will take at least until 2026, Britain’s most senior police officer has admitted. Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said that an exhaustive nationwide investigation will take place to determine whether crimes have been committed. The investigation will follow the public inquiry into the scandal, which is due to publish its findings late next year.

He said detectives will have to trawl through tens of millions of documents in order to establish whether crimes such as fraud or perverting the course of justice took place. Officers will have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there was “deliberate malice” on the part of alleged suspects.

Sir Mark told LBC: “We’re now working with police forces across the country to pull together what will have to be a national investigation, which we’ll pull together because there’s hundreds of postmasters and mistresses from across the country.

“Fujitsu are based in one part of the country and the Post Office is in another part of the country; [it’s a] massive piece of work to do.

“There are tens of millions of documents to be worked through in a criminal investigation. And of course, we’ve got to do that following on behind the public inquiry, which I think finishes at the end of this year but won’t publish until late next year.”

He told host Nick Ferrari it would take until at least 2026 for the work to be completed. Proving criminal intent, if it existed, will need a detailed investigation that “won’t be quick”, he said.

“At the core of the issue you’ve potentially got fraud in terms of false documents if it’s for financial purposes, and you’ve potentially got perverting the course of justice if people have deliberately set in train evidence into a legal process which they know is false. That would be perverting the course of justice.

“To prove this to a criminal standard is different to what’s in a documentary. Clearly, we have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt, really 99.99 per cent, that individuals knowingly corrupted something. So that’s going way beyond incompetence, you have to prove deliberate malice, and that has to be done very thoroughly with an exhaustive investigation. So it won’t be quick.

“But the police service across the country is alive to this, and we will do everything we can to bring people to justice if criminal offences can be proven.”

Google search williams against Post Office. 

Disclosure.

Post Office involvement in appeal process.
The Times, 7 January, 2024 reported that Alex Chalk is looking at whether the Post Office can be stripped of its role in the appeals process, with many victims still attempting to overturn wrongful convictions. In August 2023 the chair of the Horizon  Compensation Advisory Board,, Christopher Hodges, wrote to the CCRC setting out the belief of the Board. "Our strong belief is "that the overwhelming majority of convictions of Sub-Post-Masters and -Mistresses (SPMs) related to Horizon, and possibly also a significant number of those not directly related to Horizon, are unjust."

On 9 January 2024 Nick Reed wrote to ministers saying it would stand by the prosecution of more than half of the post office operators targeted during the Horizon scandal. it would be “bound to oppose” appeals in 369 cases. In the letter, Read wrote: “This clearly raises acute political, judicial, and communications challenges against the very significant public and parliamentary pressure for some form of acceleration or by-passing of the normal appeals process. The next day, under public pressure, Rishi Sunak announced a plan for the mass overturning of convictions through an act of parliament.

We see three reasons why these injustices are not being overturned."


 * 1) It is clear that the Post Office's approach to prosecutions, to disclosure and to investigations contravened the established rules of justice.
 * 2) Unsurprisingly, evidence is now scarce in many cases. Many postmasters had their potential evidence confiscated by the Post Office at an early stage in investigations: it was never returned.............We understand that the Court of Appeal had indicated that the burden of overturning cases should remain with the postmaster, and that the Post Office should not concede in such cases. That approach piles injustice upon injustice.
 * 3) It is entirely predictable that the mass of individual unjustly convicted victims of the Post Office are unwilling to come forward and pursue appeals. Many are deeply traumatised by years of appalling treatment, and have no trust in any public process or bodies. Many are elderly. All are vulnerable. By definition, they have low resources, since their assets were unjustly stripped from them and they are unable to access any compensation until their convictions are overturned. Many would not wish to risk further trauma and do not have the emotional resources to invest in seeking justice. They will be further deterred by the barriers described above. This means that unless others act on their behalf, serious major injustice will simply not be righted.

Settlement AgreementMalicious Prosecutions
In April 2021 the Court of Appeal overturned the criminal convictions of 43 victims of the scandal on the ground that there had been an abuse of process. Before that declaration. Counsel for some of the appellants had written to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking. on 30 July 2020  He said ""it struck me as intuitively strange that the claimants who had been convicted of criminal offences should have got nothing out of this enormously expensive large-scale litigation at all - except that they retained ....... a residual possible claim for malicious prosecution, contingent upon (i) the CCRC referring their case to the Court of Appeal and (ii) the Court of Appeal quashing their conviction. A rather rocky and uncertain road that starts, if at all, after the Court of Appeal. ..........Tracy Felstead was prosecuted in 2002 by the Crown Prosecution Service – in which case I don’t think there is a single instance of a claim for malicious prosecution ever succeeding." In January 2021 the Financial Times reported that the subpostmasters were set to file UK lawsuits for malicious prosecution. Although normally lodged against the police, in this case the defendant would be the Post Office, which pursued the sub-postmasters through private prosecutions. Damages can be substantial, according to lawyers, because any compensation by the court must put the claimant in the same financial position as they would have been had the wrongdoing not occurred.

Move against Post Office follows quashing of several convictions related to faulty computer system

After Second Sight issued its first (interim) report the Post Office and jsma went into mediatio

to file UK lawsuits for malicious prosecution

Jane Croft and Michael Pooler in London

JANUARY 10 2021

Move against Post Office follows quashing of several convictions related to faulty computer system

The original version, introduced in 1995 is sometimes referred to as “Legacy Horizon” and the current version, known as “Horizon Online”, is sometimes referred to as “HNG-X”.

exoneration

Whilst it is widely reported that Second Sight were appointed and paid for by the Post Office, the firm itself, in 2012 claimed to have been "appointed jointly by a small group of MPs and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (‘JFSA’) in order to conduct an independent investigation into Post Office Horizon." Second Sight agreed to investigate “only if they convinced us that they were going to join forces in a search for the truth, not withhold papers, and let us off the leash to do what we thought appropriate.”  Eventually Second Sight's contract was terminated, but not before Warmington had contemplated “sacking” his client.

After Second

During this period the Post Office commenced 'Project Sparrow", the codename given by the Post Office to its interactions with the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, MPs and Second Sight (independent investigators) between 2013 and 2015. The project first became publicly known during the Bates & Others case under the name of the 'X Working Group'. The Post Office claimed privilege in respect both of the name of the project and some of the contents of a document referred to as the 'X Action Summary'. The Evidence Based Justice Lab Post Office Scandal Project at Exeter University noted that the judge criticised "POL for what appears to be excessive redaction, which includes concealing the name of a working group called “X” [Project Sparrow is our assumption] and other redactions which the judge appears to regard as more serious and, “not quite so easily explained”. In January 2024, the BBC Economics correspondent Andy Verity published meeting minutes of the ad hoc  group in an article headed "Post Office accused of cover-up over secret Horizon documents". They also reveal the government had knowledge of the decision, taken by a Post Office board sub-committee, codenamed "Project Sparrow". The sub-committee was led by Post Office chair Alice Perkins and included chief executive Paula Vennells, alongside the Post Office's most senior internal lawyer, general counsel Chris Aujard, and Richard Callard, a senior civil servant at UK Government Investments, then a division of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

edit]. After Second Sight's interim report "The Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme was developed by Post Office, forensic accountants Second Sight and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, which represents some of the subpostmasters involved, in 2013 and supervised by a Working Group, independently chaired by Sir Anthony Hooper, a former Court of Appeal Judge.
 * 1) Interim Report dated 8 July 2013
 * 2) Briefing Report Part One dated 25 July 2014
 * 3) Briefing Report Part Two version 1 dated 21 August 2014
 * 4) Briefing Report Part Two version 2 dated 9 April 2015.

COVER UP. Andy Verity BBC. Most important

In written evidence, vennels she told the inquiry an ad-hoc Post Office board sub-committee was set up to discuss Post Office decisions in relation to the Complaint and Mediation Scheme, which was set up in 2013 and ran until its sudden demise in 2015.

EXETER. "The Inquiry shall:

A: Understand and acknowledge what went wrong in relation to Horizon, leading to the civil proceedings in Bates and others v Post Office Limited and the quashing of criminal convictions, by drawing from the judgments of Mr Justice Fraser in Bates and others, the judgments of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) in R v Hamilton and others, other judgments in which convictions have been quashed, affected postmasters’ experiences and any other relevant evidence in order to identify what key lessons must be learned for the future.

B: Build upon the findings of Mr Justice Fraser and the judgments of the criminal courts specified in A above by obtaining all available relevant evidence from Post Office Ltd, Fujitsu, BEIS and UKGI to establish a clear account of 1) the implementation and failings of Horizon over its lifecycle and 2) Post Office Ltd’s use of information from Horizon when taking action against persons alleged to be responsible for shortfalls.

C: Assess whether Post Office Ltd has learned the lessons from the criticisms made by Mr Justice Fraser in his judgments following the ‘Common Issues’ and ‘Horizon Issues’ trials and those identified by affected postmasters and has delivered or made good progress on the organisational and cultural changes necessary to ensure a similar case does not happen in the future.

D: Assess whether the commitments made by Post Office Ltd within the mediation settlement – including the historical shortfall scheme – have been properly delivered.

E: Assess whether the processes and information provided by Post Office Ltd to postmasters are sufficient:


 * i. to enable both parties to meet their contractual obligations
 * ii. to enable postmasters to run their businesses. This includes assessing whether Post Office Ltd’s related processes such as recording and resolving postmaster queries, dispute handling, suspension and termination are fit for purpose. In addition, determine whether the quality of the service offer for postmasters and their relationship with Post Office Ltd has materially improved since the conclusions reached by Mr Justice Fraser.

F: Examine the historic and current governance and whistleblowing controls in place at Post Office Ltd, identify any relevant failings, and establish whether current controls are now sufficient to ensure that failings leading to the issues covered by this Inquiry do not happen again.

The Inquiry will consider only those matters set out in the preceding sections A-F. The Inquiry will not consider any issue which is outside the scope of the powers conferred upon the Inquiry by the Inquiries Act 2005. The Horizon group damages settlement (albeit the Inquiry may examine the events leading to the settlement), and/or the engagement or findings of any other supervisory or complaints mechanisms, including in the public sector, are outside the Inquiry’s scope.

Terms of Reference are not the same as a list of issues to be explored. The former set the boundaries of the Inquiry but do not go into any detail about the individual areas of focus or the particular lines of investigation. A list of issues provides more detail about the themes which the Inquiry will focus on. Over the course of the coming weeks the Inquiry Team will formulate a provisional list of issues to be explored by the Inquiry and then publish the same.

All Core Participants will have an opportunity to make written submissions as to the list of issues before the list is finalised. If Sir Wyn considers it necessary, he will convene a hearing at which oral submissions about the list of issues can be advanced by Core Participants. The timetable for making written submissions will be announced at the same time as the provisional list of issues is published."

Exoneration
The precise number of victims of the scandal is not yet known

15. Section 133(1) of the 1988 Act provides: “(1) Subject to subsection (2) below, when a person has been convicted of a criminal offence and when subsequently his conviction has been reversed or he has been pardoned on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that there has been a miscarriage of justice,

17. Section 133(1) restricts compensation to cases where a person’s conviction has been reversed (or he has been pardoned: for the sake of brevity, I will focus from this point onwards on cases where convictions are reversed) “on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that there has been a Page 9 miscarriage of justice”. Convictions are not quashed in England and Wales on the ground that there has been a miscarriage of justice, but on the ground that they are unsafe: see further paras 25 et seq below. It was said in Adams, para 36, that the words “on the ground that” must, if they are to make sense, be read as “in circumstances where”, and that the Secretary of State must therefore determine whether a new or newly discovered fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that there has been a miscarriage of justice. In deciding that question, the Secretary of State would have regard to the judgment of the CACD, but ultimately had to form his own conclusion. 18. The term “miscarriage of justice” was not defined when section 133 was originally enacted. This resulted in a series of cases in which the courts sought to interpret the term, culminating in the decision of this court in Adams delivered on 11 May 2011. In that case, the court adopted four categories of case, of progressively wider scope, as a framework for discussion. They were:

1) cases where the fresh evidence shows clearly that the defendant is innocent of the crime of which he was convicted;

2) cases where the fresh evidence so undermines the evidence against the defendant that no conviction could possibly be based upon it; 3) cases where the fresh evidence renders the conviction unsafe in that, had it been available at the time of the trial, a reasonable jury might or might not have convicted the defendant; and

4) cases where something has gone seriously wrong in the investigation of the offence or the conduct of the trial, resulting in the conviction of someone who should not have been convicted.

26. In English law, as in many other legal systems, it is not the function of criminal proceedings to determine innocence. As Lady Hale stated in Adams, para 116: “Innocence as such is not a concept known to our criminal justice system. We distinguish between the guilty and the not guilty. A person is only guilty if the state can prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.”

27. It is equally not the function of the CACD on an appeal (or on a reference by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is by statute treated as an appeal) to determine whether the appellant did or did not commit the offence. The question for the CACD is whether the conviction is unsafe. Section 2(1) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 provides that the CACD shall allow an appeal “if they think that the conviction is unsafe”. The court is then required by section 2(2) to quash the conviction. Section 2(3) provides that an order quashing a conviction shall, except where a retrial is ordered “operate as a direction to the court of trial to enter, instead of the record of conviction, a judgment and verdict of acquittal”. A successful appellant is therefore “in the same position for all purposes as if he had actually been acquitted”: R v Barron [1914] 2 KB 570, 574.

It is not a violation of the presumption of innocence to say that a case falling within category 3 (or category 4: cases where something has gone seriously wrong in the investigation of the offence or the conduct of the trial, resulting in the conviction of someone who should not have been convicted) does not constitute a miscarriage of justice. Nor is there any objection under article 6(2) to other criteria for the award of compensation that do not require the applicant to establish his or her innocence: for example, criteria precluding compensation where successful appeals are brought within time, or where convictions are quashed because of misdirections. The problem which arises under article 6(2) when compensation is confined to persons in category 1 - cases where the fresh evidence shows clearly that the defendant is innocent of the crime of which he was convicted - as under section 133 as amended, is quite specific. It is that it effectively requires the Secretary of State to decide whether persons whose convictions are quashed because of fresh evidence have established that they are innocent. In Allen, the Grand Chamber found at para 128 that there was nothing in the criteria set out in section 133 as it then stood which called into question the innocence of an acquitted person, and that the legislation itself did not require any assessment of the applicant’s criminal guilt. I doubt whethe

Court allows police to reveal acquittals during record checks

Ben Gordon successful for Appellant in the Post Office sub-postmasters conviction appeals April 23, 2021

Jo Hamilton. First noticed problems with the Horizon system in 2005 and lost £36,000; she pleaded guilty to false accounting after trying to hide the resulting incorrect deficit. She was originally charged with theft, but was told that if she repaid the money and pleaded guilty to 14 counts of false accounting, she would be less likely to go to prison. At the time, she was told that she was the only person who had had these problems. She pleaded guilty, and, under the terms of her contract, she paid her wages for the next ten months to Post Office Ltd, and had to remortgage her house to pay the money.

Noel Thomas, a man who had worked for the Royal Mail for 42 years, went to prison as a result of the errors.

Sarah Burgess Boyd, said she lost her life savings in repaying an incorrect shortfall.

Rubina Nami was jailed for 12 months in 2010 for false accounting of £43,000. She and her husband fell behind on mortgage payments and in February 2013 bailiffs seized their home and changed the locks. They slept in their van for six weeks before being given a one-bed flat by the local council.

Seema Misra was pregnant with her second child when she was convicted in 2010 of theft, and sentenced to 15 months' jail. Misra told The Guardian that had she not been pregnant, she would have taken her own life. Local press reports at that time described her as the "pregnant thief" and her husband was physically attacked in the aftermath of her conviction. Misra has indicated that her ordeal was continual for the entire time period it took for the case to reach a resolution.

BEFORE. The Crown Prosecution Service, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, and the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland. A 1984 act of parliament ruled that computer evidence was only admissible if it could be shown that the computer was used and operating properly. But that act was repealed in 1999, just months before the first trials of the Horizon system began.

Suggested restructure

Post Office ''How it got to where it was by start of scandal. Recent press now indicate mid 1990s''

→ Business structure and management Chairs, CEOs etc.

→ Post Office computer programmes cost, Fujitsu, perhaps testing &implimentention?

→→ Capture  ''Reportage, problems with software, what was known by whom and when. what was in the open, what wasn't''

→→ Horizon. Installation and roll-out (summarised), Second Sight reports (summarised). ''Reportage, problems with software, what was known by whom and when. what was in the open, what wasn't''

→ Investigation of subpostmasters and prosecution of subpostmasters by Post Office Reportage of how they went about it,

→→ Sample cases Castleton. ''Possibly the stuff that was in, perhaps anonymised. Reportage''

→ Investigation of Post Office & Fujitsu ''findings of Case of Bates and others, Hamilton. and others. Police investigations''

To try to explain with an example. The Horizon Inquiry has recently published the list of 68 witnesses for the next hearing. There has been a great deal of important informing RS commentary both about the people and about the fact that they have been called. In is current structure where does this material go. Its as plain as a pike staff their parts in the scandal (good, dodgy on informative) but where to put the important stuff in the article with iits current structure. Sample from the 68: -Altman, Arbuthnot, Bates, Crozier, De Garr Robinson, Grabiner, Hooper, Clarke, Cable, Crozier etc

rrr

 * 1) Brian Altman KC
 * 2) Lord James Arbuthnot of Edrom
 * 3) Chris Aujard
 * 4) Alan Bates
 * 5) Tom Beezer
 * 6) Patrick Bourke
 * 7) Harry Bowyer
 * 8) Sir Vince Cable
 * 9) Richard Callard
 * 10) Mark Callister-Davies
 * 11) Alisdair Cameron
 * 12) Richard Christou
 * 13) Greg Clark MP
 * 14) Simon Clarke
 * 15) Alan Cook
 * 16) Tom Cooper
 * 17) Belinda Cortes-Martin (Crowe)
 * 18) Susan Crichton
 * 19) Adam Crozier
 * 20) Sir Edward Davey MP
 * 21) Christopher Day
 * 22) Anthony De Garr Robinson KC
 * 23) Andrew Dunks
 * 24) Martin Edwards
 * 25) Hugh Flemington
 * 26) Ben Foat
 * 27) Lord Anthony Grabiner KC
 * 28) Dame Moya Greene
 * 29) Ian Henderson
 * 30) Sir Michael Hodgkinson
 * 31) Sir Anthony Hooper
 * 32) Rod Ismay
 * 33) Margot James
 * 34) Gareth Jenkins
 * 35) Tony Kearns
 * 36) Allan Leighton
 * 37) Matthew Lenton
 * 38) Kay Linnell
 * 39) Jon Longman
 * 40) Sir Stephen Lovegrove
 * 41) Alwen Lyons
 * 42) Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe
 * 43) Jane MacLeod
 * 44) Ken McCall
 * 45) Neil McCausland
 * 46) Pat McFadden MP
 * 47) David Miller
 * 48) David Mills
 * 49) Patrick O'Sullivan
 * 50) Tim Parker
 * 51) Andrew Parsons
 * 52) Alice Perkins
 * 53) Mark Russell
 * 54) Lesley Sewell
 * 55) Jarnail Singh
 * 56) David Smith
 * 57) Martin Smith
 * 58) Susannah Storey
 * 59) Robert Swannell
 * 60) Jo Swinson
 * 61) Duncan Tait
 * 62) George Thomson
 * 63) Kelly Tolhurst MP
 * 64) Angela Van Den Bogerd
 * 65) Paula Vennells
 * 66) Ron Warmington
 * 67) Rodric Williams
 * 68) Andrew Winn

results
During the period of public concern and increased press coverage of the Post Office scandal after the transmission of 'Mr Bates vs the Post Office, there has been complaints of ill-treatment by the Post Office of subpostmasters during a period preceding the 'Horizon' system. A computer system named 'Capture' was in used and is now alleged to have created false accounting information that led to prosecutions. Kevan Jones MP has highlighted evidence of injustices caused by a computer system used in Post Office branches prior to the introduction of the controversial Horizon system. A lawyer has said there is no reason to believe the Post Office treated unexplained shortfalls on systems prior to Horizon any differently to the way it dealt with unexplained Horizon shortfalls. Jones has written to the post office minister demanding answers about what the Post Office knew about Capture errors and why some subpostmasters were “persecuted and prosecuted“ based on the Capture-generated data. "“We know that the Capture software was faulty, resulting in corrupted data. We also know that the Post Office knew about these faults at the time, as it openly communicated with subpostmasters about them.” The Post Office is refusing to answer detailed questions about the system known as Capture, leaving uncertainty around how many subpostmasters could be affected..

He wrote:

He said that some of the affected subpostmasters were prosecuted, others put tens of thousands of pounds of their own money aside to make their accounts balance, and many lost their livelihood and their good standing in their community after their contracts with the Post Office were ended.

“I am shocked that we are only just beginning to scrape the surface on what seems to be a second scandal involving the persecution and prosecution of subpostmasters on the basis of evidence from a computer system that was known to be faulty,” said Jones.

Steve Marston, a former subpostmaster in Bury, Lancashire, who was prosecuted in 1996 for theft and false accounting following an unexplained shortfall of nearly £80,000, said that he had never had any problems using the paper-based accounting system until his branch, which ran from 1973, began using the Capture system.

“We were pushed into using it by the Post Office in 1996,” he said, describing it as a standalone system, which required the subpostmasters to buy their own computers to run the software. He added that he felt pressured into using the system at a time when many branches were being closed by the Post Office.

“It was a choice of moving to this system or remaining with the manual system and risk closure. I had no problems for 20 years using manual accounting processes, but within 2 years of using Capture, I ran up a debt of £79,000,” said Marston.

He said that he didn’t inform the Post Office because he thought he was making mistakes and that it would correct itself. He was not experienced with computers and believed that they could not make mistakes.

“Computers had just come out and I was under the impression that computers can’t make mistakes. Every time I had a loss, I thought it must be me – that I made a mistake even though I hadn’t for over 20 years.” Marston covered the losses with his own money, but it kept getting “worse and worse”, he said.

After an audit revealed a loss which he couldn’t fully cover out of his own pocket, he was advised to plead guilty of theft and fraud to avoid jail. The judge took into account two bravery awards Marston had previously received for standing up to armed robbers, saving him a jail sentence. He received a 12-month suspended sentence, lost his home and business, and went bankrupt.

Post Office was warned about Fujitsu IT software 13 years before Horizon scandal. The regulator of Fujitsu's benefits system claims the £1.5bn IT project suffered data errors like those that later hit the Horizon software. and the government has calls on the Post Office to look at case linked to Capture IT system. Post Office urged to look at second IT system after former ... . But the Government has now asked it to look into the case of Steve Marston, a 67-year-old former subpostmaster in Heap Bridge, Greater ... The Department for Business and Trade has asked the Post Office to look into the case following reports in the i newspaper. Officials expect the Post Office to take appropriate action if there are issues discovered with other systems currently or previously used by the firm. Mr Marston told the i he did not steal “a penny” but pleaded guilty to avoid being sent to prison. “They said pleading guilty was the only way to avoid going to jail,” he said. “I just thought it must be something I’m doing wrong; computers were in their infancy, you didn’t think they could be wrong.” Mr Marston says he told Post Office auditors that he was innocent, but was unable to explain what had happened. “They said ‘Capture doesn’t make mistakes’,” he added

M

Post Office IT systems [edit]
The Horizon accounting system was developed by ICL Pathway, owned by the Japanese company Fujitsu. In 1999, the Post Office started to roll out the new software to its branches and sub-post offices, the latter managed by subpostmasters on a self-employed basis under contracts with the Post Office. Before then su

Post Office
Maine Articles: Royal Mail, General Post Office and Post Office Ltd.

Post Office Ltd, along with the Royal Mail delivery service, were formerly part of the General Post Office, tracing its origins back to 1516. It became a statutory corporation after the passage of the Post Office Act 1969, A gradual business restructuring process had started in 1969 and was completed in 2012   During that time Post Office Ltd. became and has remained a single share government owned entity with government represented at board level. The possibility of future mutualisation was created in the 2011 Postal Services Act .The then minister had written: “I want clear progress to have been made towards mutualisation of the Post Office by the end of this parliament.” Mutualisation diid not then happen.

In July 2023, Parliament debated Post Office management culture. The then government representative, Tom Cooper a senior civil servant, had been heavily criticised.and had resigned following a scandal concerning Post Office bonuses and disclosure to the Horizon Inquiry. "That is not a great look for the Government and it raises real questions about the governance of Post Office Ltd." said Marion Fellows MP In February 2024 it was reported that the government is to meet representatives of post office operators this week to discuss the possibility of handing them ownership of the Post Office.

The move follows a chastening few months for the government and the network after historical scandals – frequently described as “the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history” – caught the public imagination with the broadcast of ITV’s drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office.

The Post Office Investigation Branch was established in 1793; it now acts as a private prosecutor in England and Wales with access to the Police National Computer system "for intelligence and prosecution purposes" and the authority to authorise "directed surveillance". I

The Post Office is in a perhaps unique position as a private prosecutor, and it is that unique position that gave the CCRC the greatest

In July 2012, Norman Lamb, minister for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs, wrote: “I want clear progress to have been made towards mutualisation of the Post Office by the end of this parliament.”

Mutualisation did not go ahead at the time; the government argued that the Post Office needed to be made more commercially viable. However, the possibility of future mutualisation was created in its 2011 Postal Services Act.

The Department for Business and Trade did not comment on the meeting, but is understood to be sticking to its position that mutualisation would be appropriate only when the Post Office is financially sustainable.

In Januar.

blah blahy,

2024, after the broadcast of Mr Bates vs the Post Office, and before Prime Minister Sunak announced legislation to acquit subpostmasters en masse, the Post Office privately told ministers that it would have opposed the appeals of nearly half of the 700 convicted subpostmasters. In a letter it said that in 333 cases non-Horizon evidence supported the convictions. The letter was criticised by Horizon Compensation Advisory Board board member, Richard Moorhead, "almost any evidence coming from the Post Office would have to start with the assumption that it’s now seriously flawed.” Another board member Kevin Jones MP said in the Commons after Sunak's announcement, that the board had 'been tied in a Gordian knot for quite a few months, which is why we wrote our letter to the Justice Secretary before Christmas. Liam Byrne, chair of the Commons Business and Trade Select Committee asked post office minister Kevin Hollinrake "Three years after the landmark case, 85% of convictions have not been overturned, only 4% of the cases have resulted in a full and final settlement, and we have heard evidence from victims this week already that even when settlements have been made, the cash has not yet been handed over. Can I ask the Minister again what his target is? What is his goal, approximate or otherwise? When will those wrongfully prosecuted have their full and final settlement delivered, in cash?" Hollinrake that he looked forward to appearing before the Select Committee and welcoming some challenging questions,  "To be clear, 64% of all those affected by the scandal have received full and final compensation." [147] (ref in page) On 27 January 2024 Post Office chairman Henry Staunton was dismissed by Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who said that his departure was about more than just the Horizon scandal, but concerned the governance of the Post Office more generally. [180] on page.

And moo go to moorhead my emails. Sols referred. . sol push boundries blocking disclosure. Post Office scandal: SRA chief vows “serious consequences” for solicitors. he Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has warned solicitors not to get involved in litigation aimed at silencing legitimate critics, known as ‘strategic lawsuits against public participation’ or SLAPPs.

The SRA is concerned, alongside increasing public concern, some solicitors in England and Wales are using SLAPPs on behalf of their clients to prevent publication on matter.

Around 30 individuals have accepted in principle the government’s offer of a £600,000 settlement and most of the others have had interim payments, he told the business select committee today. A further 150 of his clients were not convicted but were affected by the Horizon IT scandal, with 200 more people coming forward in the past two weeks. Hudgell told MPs that the ‘machine’ of the Post Office is slowing down final settlements. But with hundreds more people set to be exonerated by primary legislation announced last week, Hudgell said the process of securing redress is already proving to be slow and is adding to victims’ suffering.

'The Post Office is finally paying compensation to the thousands of postmasters who it falsely accused of theft in the 2000s. 90% of these postmasters don’t have legal representation, and many believe they were pushed into accepting settlement offers that were insultingly low.'

'We can reveal today that the Post Office falsely asserted that its settlement offers were confidential. They weren’t. But that falsehood intimidated postmasters into not comparing offers with each other, not speaking to friends and family, and not going public. 90% never even spoke to a lawyer. cant cite ' but in times

Times reports
 * 1) "Post Office Horizon Scandal". Hansard. 10 January 2024.

.

here

jjj 	Link label https://w.wiki/8ijW

Compensation
There are three main schemes, for groups of victims who had different experiences of the scandal.

Group Litigation Order (GLO) scheme

The GLO settlement agreement.

This was paid to members of the

Following various failed attempts to expose the scandal, in 2016 a group of 555 people took the Post Office to the High Court. This legal action culminated in two major judgments which were very critical of the Post Office’s software, its contracts with postmasters and its general behaviour. In December 2019, a settlement was agreed. The Post Office accepted that it had “got things wrong in [their] dealings with a number of postmasters”. In December 2019, the Post Office settled out of court for £42.5 million plus costs. The details of the settlement between the subpostmasters and the Post Office were not made public until August 2020. The postmasters paid approximately £31 million of this sum to the company which had funded their action,

Group Litigation Order (GLO) scheme
which ultimately meant that these postmasters who had taken part in the GLO did not receive as much compensation as was available under other schemes (Horizon Shortfall Scheme or for overturned convictions, both discussed later). 28

In December 2019, at about the time of the high court verdict in Bates & Others v Post Office, The group of 43 convicted subpostmasters settled with the government decided this group could not apply for compensation through the historical shortfall scheme.

Eligibility for compensation depends on the circumstances of an individual's case. As of 11 January 2024, approximately £153 million has been paid to over 2,700 claimants across these three schemes. It is estimated that more than 4,000 people have been told they are eligible for compensation.

The Horizon shortfall scheme, originally named the historic shortfall scheme, was established by the agreement between the Post Office and the 555 subpostmasters in Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd. It was designed to compensate subpostmasters who had lost money due to shortfalls caused by Horizon, but had not taken part in the group action and had not been convicted. The scheme is administered by the Post Office. By 15 January 2024 the scheme had received 2,753 eligible claims and paid out £93 million to over 2,172 claimants.

In February 2 022, MPs from parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee expressed concerns about the time taken to make settlements to former Post Office operators who were wrongfully convicted as a result of errors in the company’s computer accounting system and warned that compensation needed to be concluded urgently, as many of those affected by the long-running scandal are elderly, some having died while awaiting redress, while others remained at risk of losing their homes.

In April 2021, Nick Read, Post Office chief executive, urged the government to provide funding for compensation, saying "The Post Office simply does not have the financial resources to provide meaningful compensation." Shortly afterward, the government promised "fair and speedy" pay-outs for the 555 victims of the Horizon IT scandal who had been excluded from the Post Office's compensation scheme.

In July 2021, the government announced that subpostmasters wrongly convicted of offences would get interim compensation of up to £100,000.

On 22 March 2022, a government scheme was launched to compensate the 555 subpostmasters at the same level of compensation as subpostmasters who had had their convictions overturned..

In December 2022, the Horizon Inquiry heard that postmasters made bankrupt after being wrongly prosecuted were receiving a fraction of what they were due. One applicant ran a successful postmaster business for 20 years before his life was ruined by a false conviction which led to his mental health deteriorating and his being unable to pay his mortgage. In another case, a victim’s award of £25,000 was reduced to £4,500 after deductions paid to the official receiver. It appears that the shortfall scheme takes no account of whether the root cause of the bankruptcy was or may have been generated by the Horizon software. Tim Moloney said "Compensation is intended to put the claimant in the position they would have been if they had not been adversely affected… many of the debts accrued by these people which led to bankruptcy were caused by the shortfalls [wrongly flagged up by Horizon]". The compensation award is then "swallowed up" by legal obligations to repay debts.

In September 2023, the government announced that subpostmasters who have had their convictions on the basis of Horizon evidence overturned would be offered compensation of £600,000 in full and final settlement of their claim. In March 2023, The Law Society Gazette had stated "Journalist Nick Wallis, who wrote The Great Post Office Scandal, tweeted today that 27 claimants who would have qualified for the group litigation scheme have died waiting for compensation." In January 2024, postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake told the Commons the families of the 60 people who died before receiving any compensation will be able to apply for compensation in their place.



The British Post Office scandal (also known as the Horizon scandal) involved faulty Post Office accounting software, called Horizon, creating false shortfalls in the accounts of many subpostmasters. Between 1999-2015, over 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting, with 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. By January 2024 nearly 100 of these convictions had been overturned in court, and plans for a blanket exoneration were announced by the government. Those wrongfully convicted became eligible for compensation from the Post Office. Other subpostmasters who had been forced to cover Horizon shortfalls with their own money or had their contracts terminated also received compensation from the Post Office; by January 2024 there had been over 2,750 eligible claims. Although many subpostmasters had reported problems with the new software, the Post Office had insisted that Horizon was robust and failed to disclose its knowledge of faults in the system while securing convictions. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts and bankruptcies, took a heavy toll on the victims and their families, leading to stress, illness, divorce and, in at least four cases, suicide. In 2019 the high court ruled that there were bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon software, paving the way for subpostmasters' convictions to be overturned, and for victims to receive compensation. Subsequently, a statutory public inquiry was established.

In May 2009, Computer Weekly broke the story about problems with Horizon, and in September 2009 subpostmaster Alan Bates launched the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA). In 2012, following pressure from campaigners and a few Members of Parliament, led by James Arbuthnot, the Post Office appointed forensic accountants from the firm Second Sight to conduct an investigation into Horizon. Second Sight concluded that Horizon contained faults that could result in accounting discrepancies, but the Post Office nevertheless insisted that there were no systemic problems with the software.

In 2017, a group of 555 subpostmasters led by Bates brought a group action in the High Court against the Post Office. After the judge ruled in 2019 that the subpostmasters' contracts with the Post Office were unfair and that Horizon contained bugs, errors and defects, the case was settled out of court for £58 million, which left the claimants with about £20,000 each after legal costs. The government later agreed to supplement their awards. In February 2020 the prime minister said that the government would establish an independent inquiry into the scandal. The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry was set up later that year, and was converted into a statutory public inquiry in June 2021. Courts began to quash convictions from December 2020.

As of January 2024, most of those wrongly convicted are still waiting to have their convictions overturned, the public inquiry is ongoing, and the Metropolitan Police is investigating individuals from the Post Office and its software provider, Fujitsu.

A four-part television drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, was broadcast on ITV in January 2024, after which the scandal became a major news story and political issue. The same month, prime minister Rishi Sunak announced that the government would introduce legislation to exonerate wrongly convicted subpostmasters, describing the scandal as "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's history".

Elements of the scandal

 * 1) The way set up Post Office as arms length with inadequate supervision of Board
 * 2) Sloppy work by Law Commission then by Government re change of law re computers
 * 3) botched public sector IT procurement process, millions wasted
 * 4) Inadaquate Judicial management of prosecution and civil pre Bates, and during Hamilton
 * 5) A public body drawing up and entering into contracts declared in court to have been unlawful & conducted unfairly, Bares 2
 * 6) unethical/unlawful practice by Gov, PO  Board, lawyers, Fujitsu  and others during period of prosecution cases (Crozier's time)
 * 7) unethical/unlawful practice by Gov. PO  Board, lawyers, Fujitsu,  Accountant   and others during lead up to and during the process of Bates, Hamilton, Felstead Cases
 * 8) High cost to public purse
 * 9) Time taken at each stage and it effect on victims  and as a tort.

In my view ! & 2 had mentions and pointers only in earlier edition of the page but they remain inadequately covered and RS does exist. 3 is not now covered. 4, is only (hardly) hinted at, and only by detailed reading of the Judgements. 5 is not otherwise covered. RS coverage does exist, but is not found easily found. 6 is hardly covered in article, now well covered in RS since October last year. 7 beginning to be covered in RS but not found easily. The reverted bit I put in from the Inquiry is over two years old.

The 'Clarke advice', CK Review, Altman review process was described critically in submissions to the Horizon Inquiry in November 2021. Marshall said "The stated purpose of his review of Mrs Misra’s prosecution was very limited. It was to consider whether the Second Sight report or the Helen Rose reports should be disclosed to Mrs Misra. The extraordinary thing about Mr Clarke’s review is that Mr Clarke was not provided with a Post Office’s prosecution file. In his advice, he records that he was only provided with the transcripts of Mrs Misra’s trial. It follows from that that Mr Clarke will not have seen Mr Jenkins’ witness statements, in which he denied that remote access to Horizon branch accounts was possible. He would not, therefore, have identified that, whilst Mr Jenkins is unqualified in his written evidence that remote access to branch accounts without postmaster knowledge and approval was not possible, that evidence went unchallenged in his oral evidence. But Second Sight, in their interim report in 2013, disclosure of which was the whole point of the question Mr Clarke is specifically considering, records that they are left with a conflict of evidence on the point. Given the emergence of the shredding advice, shortly before the Court of Appeal hearing in March this year, one is bound to enquire as to whether Mr Clarke had intentionally withheld from him the prosecution file. I have also referred to this in the context of Second Sight’s request for prosecution files that were refused, it seems, by the Post Office’s general counsel, Mr Aujard and were the subject of the Select Committee hearing the following year.

e, and there’s time, the first.*. At the Horizon in November The 'Clarke advice' was criticised Clarke was not give

In November 2021 Marshall, barrister in the Hamilton case, submitted to the Horizon Inquiry that the Clarke review had included a review of the Misra case. Mr Simon Clarke undertook a review of Mrs Misra’s criminal prosecution, I believe, in early 2014. The stated purpose of his review of Mrs Misra’s prosecution was very limited. It was to consider whether the Second Sight report or the Helen Rose reports should be disclosed to Mrs Misra. The extraordinary thing about Mr Clarke’s review is that Mr Clarke was not provided with a Post Office’s prosecution file. In his advice, he records that he was only provided with the transcripts of Mrs Misra’s trial. It follows from that that Mr Clarke will not have seen Mr Jenkins’ witness statements, in which he denied that remote access to Horizon branch accounts was possible. He would not, therefore, have identified that, whilst Mr Jenkins is unqualified in his written evidence that remote access to branch accounts without postmaster knowledge and approval was not possible, that evidence went unchallenged in his oral evidence. But Second Sight, in their interim report in 2013, disclosure of which was the whole point of the question Mr Clarke is specifically considering, records that they are left with a conflict of evidence on the point. Given the emergence of the shredding advice, shortly before the Court of Appeal hearing in March this year, one is bound to enquire as to whether Mr Clarke had intentionally withheld from him the prosecution file. I have also referred to this in the context of Second Sight’s request for prosecution files that were refused, it seems, by the Post Office’s general counsel, Mr Aujard and were the subject of the Select Committee hearing the following year.

The second reason I refer to this is that the very restrictive nature of the review of at least Mrs Misra’s prosecution is not, I think, well knon. The Post Office has made much of having undertaken reviews of its prosecutions following the Clarke advice in 2013. In the light of what I have said, there is an obvious serious and substantial question of the thoroughness and completeness of those reviews. Had the Second Sight interim report been disclosed to Mrs Misra in 2013 or 2014 it would have put any competent lawyer on energetic enquiry.

The only additional thing I shall say on this point is that Mr Clarke, in early 2014, advising the Post Office against disclosing the Second Sight interim report to Mrs Misra, expressly relied upon the written advice of Mr Brian Altman QC.

The day after I received Mr Clarke’s advice in November 2020, I raised with Mr Altman the question as to whether, given an issue in the appeals with the adequacy of the disclosure given by the Post Office and that he appeared to have advised the Post Office on its disclosure obligations in 2013, there might be an issue of an apparent conflict of interest.

s://www.google.com/search?q=subpostmasters+legal+costs&sca_esv=600017421&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB973GB973&sxsrf=ACQVn09751X1sFv5ETaOPpWDU2MrlCZIVA%3A1705736182482&ei=9nerZdyIHbu3hbIP9bmgmA0&ved=0ahUKEwjc2_K5uuuDAxW7W0EAHfUcCNMQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=subpostmasters+legal+costs&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiGnN1YnBvc3RtYXN0ZXJzIGxlZ2FsIGNvc3RzMgUQIRigAUjT1wFQ-QtYtYQBcAF4AZABAJgBYqABngeqAQIxMbgBA8gBAPgBAcICChAAGEcY1gQYsAPCAggQIRigARjDBMICChAhGAoYoAEYwwTCAggQABiABBiiBOIDBBgAIEGIBgGQBgg&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

Lawyering
The court of appeal judgment ,that all of the successful appeals had suffered a prosecution that was an affront to the conscience of the court, has important implications for future cases for compensation.

Post Office compensation chart

Article Compensation
There isn't a single compensation scheme for sub-postmasters, eligibility depends on the particular circumstances of an individual's case. The three main schemes are aimed at groups of victims who had different experiences of the scandal.


 * Group Litigation Order (GLO) scheme
 * announced in March 2022, aiming to ensure that “postmasters who were part of the GLO and not eligible to seek compensation from the Post Office have access to fair compensation for their Horizon-related losses”. Funded and administered by the government with an independent advisory board.


 * Horizon Shortfall Scheme
 * Overturned Convictions compensation


 * 1) As of 11 January 2024, approximately £153 million has been paid to over 2,700 claimants across three schemes. It is estimated more than 4,000 people have been told they are eligible for compensation across three separate schemes; how many will be able to fully recover their losses is not knon

The Horizon shortfall scheme, originally named the historic shortfall scheme, was established by the agreement between the Post Office and the 555 subpostmasters in Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd. It was designed to compensate subpostmasters who had lost money due to shortfalls caused by Horizon, but had not taken part in the group action and had not been convicted, and is administered by the Post Office. By January 2024 the scheme had received more than 2,700 eligible applications.

In December 2019, at about the time of the high court verdict in Bates & Others v Post Office, the government decided this group could not apply for compensation through the historical shortfall scheme. The details of the settlement between the subpostmasters and the Post Office were not made public until August 2020. In February 2022 MPs from parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee expressed concerns about the time taken to make settlements to former Post Office operators who were wrongfully convicted as a result of errors in the company’s computer accounting system and warned that compensation needs to be concluded urgently, as many of the former Post Office workers affected by the long-running scandal are elderly, some have already died while awaiting redress, while others remain at risk of losing their homes..

In April 2021, Nick Read, Post Office chief executive, urged the government to provide funding for compensation, saying "The Post Office simply does not have the financial resources to provide meaningful compensation." Shortly afterward, the government promised "fair and speedy" pay-outs for the 555 victims of the Horizon IT scandal who had been excluded from the Post Office's compensation scheme.

In July 2021, the government announced that subpostmasters wrongly convicted of offences would get interim compensation of up to £100,000.

On 22 March 2022, a government scheme was launched to compensate the 555 subpostmasters at the same level of compensation as subpostmasters who had had their convictions overturned..

In December 2022 the Horizon Inquiry heard that postmasters made bankrupt after being wrongly prosecuted were receiving a fraction of what they were due. One applicant, who had run a successful postmaster business for 20 years before his life was ruined by a false conviction which led to his mental health deteriorating and his being unable to pay his mortgage. In another case, a victim’s award of £25,000 was reduced to £4,500 after deductions paid to the official receiver. It appears that the shortfall scheme takes no account of whether the root cause of the bankruptcy was or may have been generated by the Horizon software. Tim Moloney said "Compensation is intended to put the claimant in the position they would have been if they had not been adversely affected… many of the debts accrued by these people which led to bankruptcy were caused by the shortfalls [wrongly flagged up by Horizon].’" It appears that the shortfall scheme takes no account of whether the root cause of the bankruptcy was or may have been generated by the Horizon software. The compensation award is then ‘swallowed up’ by legal obligations to repay debts,

On 23 September 2023, the government announced that subpostmasters who have had their convictions on the basis of Horizon evidence overturned would be offered compensation of £600,000 in full and final settlement of their claim. In March 2023 The The Law Society Gazette had stated "Journalist Nick Wallis, who wrote The Great Post Office Scandal, tweeted today that 27 claimants who would have qualified for the group litigation scheme have died waiting for compensation." On 10 January 2024, the postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake told the Commons the families of the 60 people who died before receiving any compensation will be able to apply for compensation in their place.

compensation

 * Group Litigation Order (GLO) scheme
 * Horizon Shortfall Scheme
 * Overturned Convictions compensation

The Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill was introduced in Parliament on 29 November 2023. The Bill is due to have its second reading and all Commons stages on 19 December 2023.

The Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill was introduced in Parliament on 29 November 2023. The Bill is due to have its second reading and all Commons stages on 19 December 2023.

The GLO compensation scheme is being funded using temporary powers, which can last at most two years. While the Government has said that it intends to complete compensation payments before August 2024, when these temporary powers expire, it has introduced the Bill to allow it to make payments after this date. It says that “time needs to be taken to assess more complex claims, so postmasters receive full and fair compensation and are not unduly rushed into making a decision on their claims”. This follows a recommendation by Sir Wyn Williams, chair of the Horizon IT inquiry.

In December 2019, a settlement was agreed between the claimants and the Post Office, and the Post Office accepted that it had “got things wrong in [their] dealings with a number of postmasters”.10 The JFSA have many relevant documents, including copies of the main judgements, available on their resources pages.

The Law gazette

The leading academic expert on this is Professor Richard Moorhead. He recently addressed a private workshop at which O’Brien and Yong discussed their forthcoming paper. On his blog last weekend, Moorhead published comments he had made at the workshop about two retired judges who were involved in litigation related to the scandal.

Joshua Rosenburg's Blog all underlined

The scandal
When 39 former sub-postmasters had their convictions set aside by the Court of Appeal more than two years ago because they had been based on data produced by the Post Office’s now-discredited Horizon accounting system, I described it as the biggest miscarriage of justice in England and Wales to be put right in a single ruling. But that was merely the start.

A statutory inquiry was eventually set up under Sir Wyn Williams — who, as you might expect, is a former High Court judge. Williams reported at the beginning of this year that 83 people had now had their convictions overturned. But, he added, the Post Office was estimating the number of people who were wrongly convicted to have been more than 700

In the words of Nick Wallis, the journalist who has covered this story from the start, “the reaction at the Post Office was apoplexy”. Their counsel not only advised the Post Office to appeal against Fraser’s judgment but also recommended that the judge should be asked to recuse himself — in other words, to withdraw from the next phase of the trial, which was just about to begin.

The grounds for recusal were “apparent bias”. In law, the test for apparent bias is whether a fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that a judge was biased. If so, the judge must cease sitting on the claim, whether or not that judge was in fact biased.

On 3 April 2019, an oral application for recusal was made to Mr Justice Fraser by Lord Grabiner KC. Alerted to this by Wallis’s blog, I was in court to watch what turned out to be a dramatic piece of advocacy.

Fraser, an ironman triathlete in his spare time, was being addressed by Grabiner, one of the bar’s leading heavyweights. The judge was told he had made findings, or given clear indications of his concluded views, on a large number of matters that were outside the scope of the common issues trial and had not yet been tried. While not accusing Fraser of actual bias, Grabiner argued that Fraser had given the appearance of prejudging those matters.

As the barrister acknowledged, Fraser had stressed that he was making no findings at that stage on issues such as breach, causation or loss. But that was just a “mantra” that would not convince the fair-minded observer, Grabiner insisted. Recusal for apparent bias was the “only option”.

Grabiner spoke with authority. But it was what he said next that stuck in my mind: This is an extremely serious application to be making. It was made at board level within the [Post Office]…

And I am not the only judicial figure or barrister that has looked at this…  It has also been looked at by another very senior person before the decision was taken to make this application. We guessed that Grabiner was referring to Neuberger, who had returned to Grabiner’s chambers in 2017 after reaching retirement age. But we had no reason to think the initial advice had come from anyone other than Grabiner himself.

After taking time to consider Grabiner’s application, Fraser gave written reasons for dismissing it. An application by the Post Office for permission to appeal was refused by Lord Justice Coulson, who concluded that “the recusal application never had any substance and was rightly rejected by the judge”.

Coulson a.'rosenburg blog.

During the first week of phase two of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry we discovered more about Lord Neuberger’s involvement in the decision to ask Mr Justice Fraser to recuse (remove) himself as managing judge from the Bates v Post Office group litigation, something the Post Office recognised internally was “the nuclear option.”

It’s a squalid little episode.

Personnel set out history

Searchable transcripts of the Post Office Horizon IT

moorhouse

As the mediation process broke down, the subpostmasters began to consult and combine their efforts into legal action. The action taken against the Post Office took the form first of group litigation in the name of Bates and others, a civil action in the High Court by some 555 people. There were six 'lead claimants', and 23 'common issues' were identified and agreed to enable the court to examine the 555 cases. The case was settled mid-trial by consent and without judgment as to costs; Post Office costs have been estimated as £100m and the subpostmasters' as £47m. The Post Office agreed to pay the subpostmasters £58 million, but after legal costs the claimants were left with £12 million to share. At the Horizon inquiry, a former Post Office manager admitted that the ultimately lost case was seen by the Post Office as a way of "killing off" challenges to the Horizon system. The linked appeal cases, first of R v Christoper Trousdale & Others in the Crown Court, and then of Hamilton and Others in the Court of Appeal, (Criminal Division) followed. In the Trousdale and Hamilton appeals, the findings in the civil case (Bates) were used in support. The judgment that all of the successful appeals had suffered prosecution that was "an affront to the conscience of the court" has important implications for any future civil cases against the Post Office. The ethics and practice of the lawyers during and before the key cases of Bates and Hamilton have been criticised. In respect of disclosure of documents, Judge Fraser said{26]|577 "The suggestion ... that the Known Error Log was not relevant is simply wrong and, in my judgment, entirely without any rational basis. The further suggestion viewed with the hindsight now available, that the Known Error Log may not exist, is disturbing. The claimants’ request use the precise title, “Known Error Log”, and this clearly did exist. To suggest in an answer ‘if they exist’ is somewhat misleading.”[26] The Horizon Inquiry, in a submission from a lawyer acting for subpostmaster in the Bates case was told that a barrister who had represented subpostmasters before Mr Justice Fraser had said that blocking disclosure was a key part of the Post Office’s legal strategy. She said it ( the Post Office ) sought to exploit an “imbalance of knowledge about the Horizon system” through withholding information. Further cases since the Hamilton appeal have been heard and further appeals and civil claims are expected. The Financial Times headlined an article "sub-postmasters set to file UK lawsuits for malicious prosecution". The CCRC is calling on more subpostmasters to come forward to have their convictions reviewed and,, 86 people have had their convictions quashed.

A key figure is likely to be POL’s [unnamed] Head of Criminal Law during the cases. Given the castigation of the Post Office in the appeal judgment and Fraser J’s high court judgments in the civil litigation on the case, there are really important questions about the conduct of the criminal cases, in particular, but also the “bitterly contested” group litigation during which, “POL continued to assert that Horizon was a robust system and could be relied upon.”

“It is obvious that the Post Office had a strategy to withhold material until they were forced to produce it. This caused delay, disruption and ran up costs. We only received significant documents after a battle and were left with little time to review them, sometimes just days before a witness was cross-examined. It was exasperating.”

Compensation
This article page section is located below the Court Cases section and above the Inquiry and investigation types of sections. I suggest it is in the wrong place. It is very long, a reflection of just how complicated and confusing the situation has been. Do please have a look at this chart [https://corporate.postoffice.co.uk/en/horizon-scandal-pages/post-office-compensation-schemes#:~:text=On%2018%20September%202023%20the,to%20bring%20a%20formal%20claim. post office guide to their compensation schemes]. There are some 3 or four different schemes one incorporating in its name the word 'shortfall'. Although compensation in some form started a long time ago, which is why its where it is in the article, the subject has a long way yet to run. I suggest splitting what is in there now into Investigation, Inquiry, Compensation sections, possibly in the orderInto run Over time different euphemisms have been used to describe the Post Office's relationship with its single share owner, the British Government. Subsequent to a press outcry and later investigations, sub-postmasters convicted of criminal offences had their convictions declared unsafe, possibly illegally obtained, and quashed. , the government has promised financial compensation to the victims of the scandal, which has been described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history. Revision as of 14:32, 21 July 2021

this

Wallis is a freelance investigative journalist. Is it correct to refer to him as a campainger, particularly a campaigner blowing his own trumpet? I suspect he would not like it. Indeed, does it offend WP:LP etc.? He makes his living selling his journalism. I hane not read anything of substance on this matter in any RS that I haven't alsoread in his work, usually previously. He has been behind and/or involved in all the stuff on BBC. If another ref is needed surely it should be findable? The mention that he raised £9000 is a little misleading. Wasn't this raised to pay himself for attending hearings? The entry could be interpreted to mean he raised it for campaign or others. this

During my working life, there was a General Post Office, and a [Postmaster General]] (eg John Stonehouse) The Postmaster General was, a bit as Stonehouse later pretended, done away with (1969). There were many postmasters and many subordinate sub-postmasters. All were civil servants, 'signed' the Official Secrets Act, had pensions etc. and, as Royal Mail gradually reorganised and privatised, sold its properties, these posts were done away with. I can imagine that there was some overlap; that some sub-postmasters were still in post as the new, self-employed contractually created Subpostmasters arrived. This article is not about sub-postmasters, it is about subpostmasters. As sub-postmaster had been around since 1600 it is hardly surprising it drips off the tongue and pen so easily. The then Mr Justice Fraser, now Lord Justice Fraser, had to study the subpostmasters' contracts. Unsurprisingly, he got it right.

Ref
In 1999, Post Office Counters Ltd introduced a computer accounting system called Horizon, developed by ICL (which in 2002 rebranded under the name of its Japanese owner, Fujitsu). From 2001, the Post Office company (by then renamed Post Office Limited) was a subsidiary of Royal Mail Group. On 1 April 2012, Post Office Ltd became independent of Royal Mail Group and was reorganised to become a subsidiary of Royal Mail Holdings, with a separate management and board of directors.

Revision as of 15:59, 27 February 2022 edit undo Jacksoncowes (talk | contribs) →‎Overview: Timeline added

Revision as of 18:37, 3 January 2024 edit undo thank DeFacto (talk | contribs) →‎Overview: rm unnecessary unwieldly hidden table Tag: Visual edit Next edit →

I urge those now working to better this article to be aware of the factors that make this a scandal rather than just a string of events started by a dicky computer program. Andrew Rawnsley highlights the current enthusiasm for hailing steps being taken towards redress amid a reluctance to expose failure.The abuse of unaccountable power is at the wicked heart of the Post Office scandal "Politicians are hailing the campaign led by Mr Bates. There’s less enthusiasm for acknowledging a collective failure." Scandals involve skullduggery and coverup. Not easy for respectable sources to publish and rightly impossible for Wikipedia to describe before they do. Published pointers towards the wrongs that Rawnsley discusses were in this wiki article, but less now. For example, the judge in Bates severely criticised witnesses, They were named in the judgment and in the article, but not now. The judge referred unnamed witnesses to the DPP. In 2019 this was reported in the article. These matters currently appear in the article under the Criminal investigation into Post Office Limited section (Fujitsu?). This short section quotes from two good sources but misses the question that arises from the actuality, What's been going on these last 4 years? The Guardian article points to the sophistry of the quoted police statement by mentioning its lack of clarity but this article doesn't. The judge's trenchant criticism of Angela van den Bogerd is gone from this article. She has made a recent appearance in the press complaining that she was misrepresented in the television docudrama. Would anyone reading this article today know of her part in this scandal? They would have 4 years ago. I have every understanding of the need to edit, remove, add, trim etc and, possibly, of the approaching need to split. This article has reached the size beyond which it becomes hard to read. Good editing is not the same as simple precis without proper knowledge. Many of the criticisms on this Talk page are valid and are welcomed by me. But care needs to be taken to avoid removing published material that points to the skullduggery. An article about a scandal must say or work towards saying what was done and not done, what shouldn't and should have been done, and by whom. Contrary to the talk page bombast this should be done slowly and carefully. Governments, civil servants, politicians, Post Office senior management, Fujitsu, the judicial system, judges, and lawyers are all in the frame.

By about 2022 the article the article was trying to cover events that had started about 20 years previously but a scandal that then obviously still had a long way to run. The article was way over size. Many editors trimmed it and many tried to deal with the so-called ″aftermath″ which was still an ongoing scandal. We are at that stage again now, both in terms of the size (9779 words), and the fact that the scandal is clearly far from ending. The analysis of causes of one of the significant heroes of this saga, Paul Marshal was: Of the first some of this has, I think, been addressed but is not described in the article. For example, relatively recent statute required courts to take evidence from computers as unarguable. Has that been repealed? Of the second, see the work of Bristol University and others questioning the ethical and legal behaviour of all levels within the legal profession. The third and fourth are getting media attention and will increase.
 * 1) Legal – legislative failure.
 * 2) Legal – court/judicial failure.
 * 3) Post Office mendacity/opportunism.
 * 4) Failure in Post Office corporate governance.

Categories of victims
Those:-
 * 1) bullied/abused during PO investigation
 * 2) that 'repaid' shortfall money and/or suffered financial loss
 * 3) dismissed from employment
 * 4) sacked or had contracts terminated.
 * 5) convicted after NG plea
 * 6) convicted after guilty plea
 * 7) family members of principal victims

Categories of exoneration
Those :-
 * 1) whose conviction was judicially found to be unsafe
 * 2) whose conviction was judicially found to be unlawful
 * 3) paid financial compensation.

Last
In November it held a preliminary 'List of Issues Hearing' and, in February 2022, commenced a series of 'Human Impact Hearings' investigating whether the Post Office and software supplier Fujitsu knew about the faults in the IT system and the blame came to be passed to the SPMs. The inquiry was expected to take most of 2022.

Sub-Postmasters in Bates & Others v Post Office announced on 11 December 2019 that they had reached an out of court settlement with the Post Office. The Post Office did not accept liability so this was a costs settlement, not compensation. The details of the settlement were not made public until August 2020. At the time of the high court verdict, the government decided this group could not apply for compensation through the historical shortfall scheme. The group who brought the legal action was awarded £57.75m, but some £46m was taken in legal costs, leaving only about £20,000 for each person. MPs said the victims view as “inadequate”. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx In 2021, the government promised financial compensation to the victims of the scandal. Nick Read, the Post Office chief executive, has urged the government to provide funding for compensation. "The Post Office simply does not have the financial resources to provide meaningful compensation," he said in a recent speech. "I completely understand that government is keen that Post Office should be seen to be fixing its own mess – and through the work being undertaken across the business every day to place the needs and interests of postmasters first, we are doing just that. ... But financial compensation commensurate with wrongful conviction is a different matter. ... I am urging government to work with us to find a way of ensuring that the funding needed for such compensation, along with the means to get it to those to whom it may become owed, is arranged as quickly and efficiently as possible."

In July 2021 government announced that SPM wrongly convicted of offences would get interim compensation of up to £100,000.

Possiblity of retalitative action Possible retaliation. When is reciprocate a more appropriate choice than retaliate? While in some cases nearly identical to retaliate, reciprocate implies a mutual or equivalent exchange or a paying back of what one has received.

reciprocated their hospitality by inviting them for a visit

Where would requite be a reasonable alternative to retaliate? While the synonyms requite and retaliate are close in meaning, requite implies a paying back according to one's preference and often not equivalently.

requited her love with cold indifference

Box
In the List of post-nominal letters (United Kingdom) CF = Churchill Fellow, not Companion of the Order of Fiji. In Template:Post-nominals there is a specific data template for Fiji which shows

It seems straightforward to me that 'CF' should remain in the Template:Post-nominals/FJI indicating Companion of the Order of Fiji and the Template:Post-nominals/GBR be amended to show 'CF' as Churchill Fellow. 'OF', 'MF' and 'MOF' mean nothing without the 'country=FIJI' code added. 'CF'is out of step. Adding 'CF', referring to Order of Fiji and not to Churchill Fellow, to the Template:Post-nominals/GBR was an error. My simple request is that error be corrected.

produces: Therefore

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jane GBR Smith {br}

Jane no country Smith

Jane NZ Smith 

Jane FJI Smith 

CF    CF

(11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995)

jjjkkkk Those whose convictions have been quashed are Josephine Hamilton Hughie Noel Thomas Allison Henderson Alison Hall Gail Ward Julian Wilson Jacqueline McDonald, Tracy Felstead, Janet Skinner, Scott Darlington, Seema Misra, Della Robinson, Khayyam Ishaq, David Thomas Hedges, Peter Anthony Holmes, Rubina Shaheen, Damien Owen, Mohammed Rasul, Wendy Buffrey, Kashmir Gill, Barry Capon, Vijay Parekh, Lynette Hutchings, Dawn O'Connell, Carl Page, Lisa Brennan, William Graham, Siobhan Sayer, Pauline Thomson, Tim Burgess, Nicholas Clark, Margery Williams, Tahir Mahmood, Ian Warren, David Yates, Harjinder Butoy, Gillian Howard, David Blakey and Pamela Lock.

Robert Ambrose, Hasmukh Shingadia, John Armstrong, Timothy Brentnall, Jerry Hosi, Gurdeep Singh Dhale, John Dickson, Abiodun Omotoso, Malcolm Watkins, Sami Sabet, Carina Price and Rizwan Manjra.19 Jul 2021

Important CCRC doc. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/957079/Statement_005_-_The_Criminal_Cases_Review_Commission.pdf

The 'Clarke Advice' consists of two pieces of advice to the Post Office in 2013 by a Barrister, working for a solicitors’ firm instructed in relation to the prosecutions. It was disclosed by the Post Office amongst a bundle of post prosecution disclosures at the request of the solicitors for three appellants in these proceedings in November 2020; it was described by Lord Falconer as a likely "smoking gun".

" – Second Sight's Interim report (July 2013) stated as an agreed fact there had been serious bugs in the Horizon IT system. It also noted significant concerns about the Post Office’s investigation function, citing reports of “an asset-recovery or prosecution bias.”  Shortly after its publication the Post Office received the Clarke advice

After the meeting, Seema, Davinder and I discussed the options and I must admit it was difficult not to suggest that they fought for G2 even though it meant a delay to the convictions being overturned for all not just Seema. To wait for so long to have justice served and then being asked to wait for at least another 3 months reminded me of what Smuts Ngonyama once told me in South Africa and I wrote about in a blog post here some time ago. How could I suggest that they should wait a little longer

Most that I have spoken to think the Court of Appeal made a mess of this: Page and Marshall could have been asked to explain themselves and apologise/give assurances and that could have been the end of it without the appeal’s progre

In Group litigation and in this litigation there may be some years before all claims are resolved in terms of liability, causation and quantum.

Before the disruption caused to the Horizon Issues trial, no claims were likely to be finally resolved (and even then only a very small number) until some time in mid-2020. Whether that timescale remains feasible given the delay caused by the recusal application has not yet been addressed. This latter point about timing is an important one, in my judgment. The rationale for the Post Office seeking to have me reserve the costs is said to be that greater knowledge of who has in fact won (and by extension, by how much) will be much clearer after further trials. That is true in one sense, but applied rigidly it would mean that no costs orders would (or on the Post Office's submissions, should) be made until the very end of the litigation, some time in the uncertain future. I do not consider that is the correct approach. The Common Issues that were resolved in Judgment No.3 go centrally to the first head of relief sought as a declaration in the Particulars of Claim. They also govern the entire basis of the contractual relationship between the different sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses ("SPMs"), who are the claimants in the Group Litigation, and the Post Office. They were packaged as a separate and distinct group of issues at an early stage and the exact drafting and selection, though guided and assisted by the court, was effectively done by the parties themselves. They are the foundation of the parties' contractual relationships. In my judgment, it would not be consistent with the principles included in CPR Part 44, CPR Part 46.6, or even the overriding objective in CPR Part 1.1 itself, to reserve the costs of the Common Issues. CPR Part 1.1(2)(a) requires the court, in order to deal with a case justly and at proportionate cost, to ensure that the parties are on an equal footing. The claimants would not be on an equal footing with the Post Office, a publicly funded body, if I reserved the costs of the Common Issues trial until the very end of the litigation.

RVYC
Fox (ship). Sailing at the 1908 Summer Olympics

http://www.clyc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/mess-dress.pdf

John Franklin ......

Yacht racing

http://www.alinghi.com/en/racing/americas_cup/history.php?idContent=8693

https://www.maritimeviews.co.uk/?s=Royal+Victoria+yacht+club

Royal Yachting Association

https://www.yachtworld.co.uk/research/the-rya/

The clubhouse
 https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Gentleman_s_Magazine_and_Historical/ZWXQAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=hunts+yachting+magazine+royal+victoria+yacht+club&pg=PA721&printsec=frontcover

The club leased land on the waterfront at Ryde and raised £4000000 to build a club house Mathews part one lease sont to council 1960 mathews part two. Prince and masons https://www.iowlodge.co.uk/events/index.php/provincial-history

https://www.iowlodge.co.uk/events/index.php/eastmedinalodgehistory

http://rshg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/RSHGMagazineApril2012.pdf Monday 2 March 1846 Royal Victoria Yacht Club Foundation Stone laid by HRH Prince Albert. The meeting of the Lodge at the Town Hall was the largest on record, some 138 Brethren attending. Although normally only allowed when one of the Brethren was to lay the stone "to do honour to her (the Sovereign) august and illustrious consort" a procession was formed and they proceeded to the end of the Pier at Ryde where HRH having landed at 3pm, accompanied him to the site of the intended building, where the tools were handed to him, and at the same time explained to him their proper use, and the stone having been laid in proper form, the Brethren reformed the procession and accompanied HRH as far as the gate of the Pier, then returned to the Lodge room. Union Street, Ryde Illustrated London News 7 March 1846 The procession composed the Masonic Lodge, the magistrates and authorities, and principal inhabitants of the town. Source: The Freemasons History of East Medina Lodge No 175 from 1813 – 1913 and Freemasonry in the Isle of Wight published by W Bro F W Sargent, 177 High Street, Ryde 1913

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/abchAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP11

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Illustrated_London_News/KYc-AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=yacht+czarina+rothschild&pg=PA263&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Truth/i8gcAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=yacht+czarina+rothschild&pg=PA711&printsec=frontcover

Club House
On 2 March 1846, at Ryde, the ceremonial laying of the foundation-stone of the original clubhouse by H.M. Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort took place. Many of the members of the Royal Yacht Squadron became members also of the Royal Victoria. The club was sometimes referred to as the 'Red Squadron'.

Royal Visits
In 1962, His Royal Highness visited Fishbourne to open our new premises. Having officially opened the club, he entertained several members in the 'snug' (gentlemen only!).

n July 1965, HM The Queen and Prince Philip paid an official visit to the Island. The principle event was to instal Lord Mountbatten as Governor of the Isle of Wight, the ceremony being held at Carisbrooke Castle. The Royal party then toured several Island towns and the only visit to a private venue was to RVYC's building in Ryde.

14 April 2021 "Princess Anne reminisces about sailing with Prince Philip on first public appearance since his death. Despite officially being in a two-week period of mourning, the Queen gave permission for her daughter to visit two prestigious yacht clubs(the Royal Yacht Squadron and the RVYC) on the Isle of Wight, where Prince Philip used to enjoy glamorous days of yacht racing during Cowes Week. (club site) NB The club was celebrating its 175th anniversary (rolled over from 2020) and the actual 175 anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41971/41971-h/41971-h.htm#page222 C''uriously enough, the advantages of the Solent for yachting have only been fully appreciated during the past few years. It is true that the Royal Yacht Squadron was started early in the century, and the Royal Southern and Royal Victoria Yacht Clubs early in the forties; but yachting on the Solent as we know it now was not dreamt of, and the Thames held for many years the leading position as the centre of this essentially English sport.''

''Many things have combined to drive yachts from the Thames. Manure, marmalade, cement, gas, and other manufactories now line its banks; the Barking outfall fouls its waters, and an enormous steamer and barge traffic obstructs them. No wonder the yachtsmen deserted the Thames. But this is not all; a new sport has been born—the racing of small yachts, for which the Thames is peculiarly unsuited. Steam yachting has caused this development of small yacht racing. Men who would otherwise have built or purchased large sailing yachts now prefer steam, and, although they may themselves race but little in any craft, their action has destroyed our fleet of large sailing yachts, and with it the market for outclassed racers of any considerable size. Moreover, the very perfection to which racing has been brought tells in the same direction, because few men can afford to build large racers year by year to replace those which are outclassed. Yacht clubs have increased both in numbers and wealth, and the executives find that racing brings grist to the mill and repays the cost and the trouble. This especially applies to small yacht races, the prizes for which are not a severe tax on a club's exchequer, and can therefore be given more frequently.''

Owners were not slow to avail themselves of the sport offered, which on trial proved to possess many advantages over large yacht racing.

is  yacht of that  18 years after the Royal Yacht Club, changed it name to the Royal Yacht Squadron at the command of the King, William IV. The club' original clubhouse was at Ryde aa

aaaaaa http://historicrydesociety.com/history/entertainment-and-leisure/leisure-in-the-1900s/the-royal-victoria-yacht-club/

The R.V.Y.C. was founded on 24 May 1845 by Prince Albert to give Queen Victoria a Yacht Club which she was entitled to enter as a mere female. The original club location as at Ryde and was for the Queen's reign it was one of premier racing clubs in the land and indeed the world. Members owned some of the finest and most competitive vessels of the time.

Queen Victoria's death however brought about a change in emphasis and the yachting fraternity returned to their traditional clubs in Cowes. Between the wars the fortunes of the Ryde based club declined and during the 1950s there was very little activity. Fortunately some farsighted members sought a union between the RVYC and two dinghy clubs, Fishbourne Sailing Club and Wootton Creek Sailing Club.

In the early 1960s the clubs relocated to its present premises at the mouth of Wootton Creek at Fishbourne. Since then the club has flourished and activities include fast, slow dinghies and Squib fleets, rallies, cruiser racing and training of for junior and adults.

Improved changing facilities and excellent pontoon and landing stage with space for visiting boats to moor overnight. http://woottonbridgeiow.org.uk/rvyc.php aaaaa

March 2, 1846, was an eventful day for Ryde, for it witnessed no less a ceremony than the laying of the foundation-stone of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club by H.M. Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. The excellently laid-out town of Ryde had for many years previous to this date been gradually increasing in importance as a fashionable seaside resort during the summer months, and every season saw its houses more occupied and its pier more crowded with fashionable people. It was only natural, therefore, that with the development of yachting as a British sport, Ryde soon became a very popular resort for yachtsmen, and in 1845 it was decided to form a local yacht club there on similar lines to the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes. A meeting was held to consider the question, and a set of preliminary rules were passed.

Launched as it was under such brilliant and influential circumstances, it is not surprising that the club rapidly developed into a powerful association, and its ensign being a red one, it soon became known as the ‘Red Squadron.’ The red ensign was distinguished by a crown in the Union Jack as showing its royal title. From its earliest days to the present time it has always set itself particularly for the encouragement of yacht-racing on the largest and most liberal scale. Its first Commodore was Thomas Willing Fleming, a local resident, with Albert J. Hambrough, of Steep Hill Castle, Ventnor, as Vice-Commodore; and in 1859 George Harold Ackers hoisted the Commodore’s flag on the Brilliant. Mr. Ackers was the well-known yachtsman and inventor of Ackers’ time-scales for racing, which were generally used until the advent, many years later, of the Yacht Racing Association, whose time-scale then became universally used. One of the first acts of the club was to offer a reward for the best code of signals suitable for use with yachts, and here again the Commodore’s ingenuity was apparent, for the Ackers set of signal-flags was not only adopted by this club, but also by many others, till the international code of signals replaced it.

Its present flag-officers are : Commodore, Mr. W. B. Paget (yacht Madrigal); Vice-Commodore, Colonel Bagot (yacht Creole); and Rear-Commodore, the Marquis of Exeter.

https://www.maritimeviews.co.uk/yacht-clubs/the-royal-victoria-yacht-club/

OTHER
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= Cases listed European Court =

Abraham Lincoln# “In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.” ― Abraham Lincoln The Children Act 1989

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser -- in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough." ~ Abraham Lincoln

Re A (Children) (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) [2001] 2 WLR at p.480.

An NHS Trust v. MB (A Child represented by CAFCASS as Guardian ad Litem)

Family Procedure Rules 2010

R & Ors v. Cafcass [2012] EWCA Civ 853

International Law and Practice

1. United Nations

51. Article 3 (1) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

= Cases listed High Court = Ward LJ in Re A (Children) (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) [2001] 2 WLR at p.480.

In Wyatt v. Portsmouth NHS Trust [2000] 1 FLR 554, the Court of Appeal set out what it referred to as the "intellectual milestones" for a Judge making a decision of the kind with which I am faced today. They said as follows: "In our judgment, the intellectual milestones for the judge in a case such as the present are, therefore, simple, although the ultimate decision will frequently be extremely difficult. The judge must decide what is in the child's best interests. In making that decision, the welfare of the child is paramount, and the judge must look at the question from the assumed point of view of the patient. There is a strong presumption in favour of a course of action which will prolong life, but that presumption is not irrebuttable. The term 'best interests' encompasses medical, emotional, and all other welfare issues. The court must conduct a balancing exercise in which all the relevant factors are weighed and a helpful way of undertaking this exercise is to draw up a balance sheet."

The nature of these milestones was elaborated upon by Holman J in An NHS Trust v. MB (A Child represented by CAFCASS as Guardian ad Litem) [2006] 2 FLR 319.

I must also have regard, and I do so, to the Supreme Court judgment in Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust v. James [2013] UKSC 67 and in particular to the following passages:
 * which quoted Airedale NHS Trust v Bland [1993] AC 789,

New
Public and ethicist's commentary continued as the case progressed through the courts. The public commentary changed little. Apart from the political comments about socialised medicine, single-payer health systems etc., the majority of public comment concentrated on the rights of the parents to make the medical choices for their child; on what was seen as the usurping nature of the court case. There were many claims that the court decisions were ordering or sanctioning euthanasia. The commentary of ethicists tended to change as the court process progressed.