Post office Horizon scandal just got worse

[Gfamily]

Yesterday the PO Enquiry heard some properly weird testimony from George Thomson, former CEO of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters (BBC summary here, YouTube video of testimony here). He still maintains that Horizon was robust, blames the PO for failing to defend it more forcefully, and clearly colluded with the PO to deter sub-postmasters from taking part in the Bates vs the PO group litigation order.

Just for clarity, the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters is meant to defend the interests of sub-postmasters.

But (if I've read it right) is funded by POL.

[snoozeofreason]

Yesterday the PO Enquiry heard some properly weird testimony from George Thomson, former CEO of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters (BBC summary here, YouTube video of testimony here). He still maintains that Horizon was robust, blames the PO for failing to defend it more forcefully, and clearly colluded with the PO to deter sub-postmasters from taking part in the Bates vs the PO group litigation order.

Just for clarity, the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters is meant to defend the interests of sub-postmasters.

But (if I've read it right) is funded by POL.

Indeed. POL seem to have had a decent return on their investment.

[JQH]

Which is probably why the Federation was expelled from the TUC

[snoozeofreason]

There have been a couple of interesting tangential developments from the Post Office scandal. The first is that a spotlight has been thrown on other organisations that operate as private prosecutors. In particular, rail operators have been making extensive use of the Single Justice Procedure to bring prosecutions for fare evasion under the Regulation of Railways Act. It looks as if they aren't allowed to do that, and around 75,000 convictions are likely to be quashed (and yes, all the zeroes in that figure are meant to be there, and the comma is in the right place). It is likely that the cases involve defendants who pleaded guilty, and probably were guilty but, as the Chief Magistrate has pointed out "Innocent until proven guilty is only really as good as the process, and you can’t have undue process to get there."

The other development is that, as I mentioned earlier, questions are now being asked about prosecutions related to the Capture system, which was the predecessor of Horizon. The government have now appointed a firm of forensic accountants (Kroll, this time, rather than Second Sight) to investigate.

Apparently the Kroll report on Capture is due to appear in mid-September.