Happy new year to all my readers and thank you for your forbearance while my wife and I took a few days’ holiday this week.
I haven’t had a chance yet to see ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office or the documentary that followed it. But there are some other developments that will interest those who are now taking a closer interest in the scandal.
Lord Denning — as then he wasn’t — gave the first series of Hamlyn lectures in 1949. This year’s lectures will be given by Professor Richard Moorhead, a specialist in legal ethics. As a member of the committee that selects the Hamlyn lecturers, I was delighted with this year’s unanimous choice. Moorhead explains in his Substack blog that he will look not only at the Post Office scandal but also beyond it.
He has also written a detailed post about the involvement of lawyers in what went wrong — though Moorhead would be the first to stress that references to individuals are no more than allegations at this stage. There will be great interest in the evidence they’ll give in the coming months to the public inquiry chaired by Sir Wyn Williams.
My own column for today’s Law Society Gazette raises similar concerns about lawyers. But I have to say I’m not persuaded by an entirely separate recommendation to the lord chancellor from an advisory board comprising Moorhead, another academic and two parliamentarians. Given how few wrongful convictions have been overturned, they say
the only viable approach is to overturn all 900+ Post Office-driven convictions from the Horizon period. A small minority of these people were doubtless genuinely guilty of something. However, we believe it would be worth acquitting a few guilty people (who have already been punished) in order to deliver justice to the majority — which would not otherwise happen.
As I report, the government responded politely. But I can’t see this happening.
My partner (a solicitor) has raised the question of how Mr Jenkins of Horizon was permitted to have the status of an expert witness in the Post Office prosecutions. Surely he was a witness only as to fact and not of opinion He was not independent because of his tole within Horizon. An expert’s witness statement should set out the basis of a claim to expertise (in the legal sense). Was the Post Office not advised of the requirements for expert evidence by its counsel when it was proposed Mr Jenkin’s should be it’s expert witness? Why did defence teams nog challenge the suggestion he should be accorded that status - and why (apparently) did not trial judges spot the problem? Or am I completely missing something?
Icymi Joshua Craig Hassall KC appears on BBC Radio Leeds* in respect of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal [Interview starts at 3hrs 18mins in - just under 10 mins long]. The discussion on *allowing a client who maintains there was no wrongdoing to plead guilty* is something that hasn’t received anything like the attention it warrants… how much sooner would the dots have been connected regarding the unreliable computer system if hundreds of counsel (& those instructing them) had had to declare themselves embarrassed 🤷
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0gz2fz9