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.
You can read my column in today’s Law Society Gazette by clicking here and then navigating to page 13, using the page numbers in the middle of the banner. En route, I recommend you read John Hyde’s news update on page 5. There’s no need to struggle with small print on the screen; you can access an easy-to-read version of any story by simply clicking on the page.