Summary of the day …
Labour’s health spokesperson Wes Streeting has said “Rishi Sunak has failed on the NHS” after new NHS England data showed that despite a slight fall, waiting lists are still higher than when Sunak promised to bring them down in January 2023.
NHS England also missed its target on A&E waiting times, though the target on rapid cancer referrals was met for the first time.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, former Post office boss David Smith acknowledged the “substantial distress” he had caused after telling the Post Office staff the result of Seema Misra’s trial was “brilliant news”. Misra was handed a 15-month prison sentence when pregnant.
Former Post Office chair Sir Michael Hodgkinson also offered an apology, but his words came after a passage in which Sam Stein KC skewered him for his lack of curiosity in the way in which the company he chaired was prosecuting people.
UK taxpayers have paid out more than £34,000 to cover the cost of science secretary Michelle Donelan’s libel case, more than double the sum the government had previously admitted.
The Unite union has announced that about 1,500 steelworkers at Tata based in Port Talbot and Newport Llanwern have voted to take industrial action over plans to close its blast furnaces with the loss of 2,800 jobs.
Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Daisy Cooper has called on the prime minister to kick Nick Fletcher out of the party after he appeared to endorse Reform UK MP Lee Anderson.
Bus drivers will be officially getting younger under government plans to relax laws on 18-year-olds behind the wheel. The news comes on the day Labour’s shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh announced plans to end what she described as the “managed decline” of the deregulated bus network under successive Tory government.
Thank you for your comments today. I will be back with you tomorrow, slightly earlier than I had intended, as the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is going to start earlier than scheduled. I will see you then, have a good evening.
This is a brutal end to Sir Michael Hodgkinson’s appearance at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry today. He has been given the chance to say some words, offering an apology, but the apology comes directly after a passage of questioning which exposed his total failure at the company to understand or show any interest in investigating what was going on.
Hodgkinson said:
I have been saddened and appalled at the evidence that’s come out over the last 15 years since I left, where so many innocent postmasters and mistresses were unfairly prosecuted under the Horizon system, and as a result suffered most dreadful experiences and devastating consequences not just for themselves, but for their families.
And I just want to put on record that I apologise unreservedly for the fact that while I was chairman of the Post Office, I did not discover the problems with the Horizon system. And all I can say is I’m very, very sorry for the misery that subsequently caused, so I apologise again unreservedly.
Asked by Sam Stein KC to what extent he was to blame, Hodgkinson feebly offered “I just don’t really know. I mean, what else could I have done? I mean, I just I tried to make sure the business was run as well as I possibly could.”
All those words followed a summing up Stein, during which Hodgkinson had to meekly concede every point. The KC put it to Hodgkinson:
Sir Michael, it comes to this. You knew that the Horizon system data was being used in the prosecution of subpostmasters.
You knew that there was an investigation department that was investigating subpostmasters.
At some point in your work as chair of the Post Office, you learn that subpostmasters are actually prosecuted by the Post Office.
And at no point did you directly try and find out exactly how the system worked in order to make sure that accurate data was used to prosecute subpostmasters. Is that about it?
During your time, Sir Michael, people were prosecuted. People were told to pay up funding shortfalls, because apparently it was their fault, because the Post Office didn’t look into it. That was during your time, Sir Michael.
Chair Wyn Williams has closed the inquiry for the day, and said they will endeavour to start a little earlier tomorrow at 9.30am as they have a significant amount to get through. Tomorrow it is Alan Cook, former managing director of Post Office Ltd, and Adam Crozier, former CEO of Royal Mail Group Ltd.
