Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
The Post Office’s leadership has been accused of showing contempt for victims after its lawyers told the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal that it was not reasonable to expect them to “leave no stone unturned” in getting to the truth.
Chris Jackson, the lawyer acting for the Post Office, did apologise for delays in the disclosure of documents, at a hearing in London as part of the public inquiry. He also admitted the Post Office’s disclosure of documents to the inquiry had been “sub-optimal” and said the Post Office provided “inaccurate” information to the high court.
Ministers need to “immediately” update the law to acknowledge that computers are fallible or risk a repeat of the Horizon scandal, legal experts say. In English and Welsh law, computers are assumed to be “reliable” unless proven otherwise.
The Post Office threatened and lied to the BBC in 2015 ahead of a Panorama programme with a Horizon whistleblower which exposed the scandal, the public broadcaster said. The BBC said experts who were interviewed for the programme were sent intimidating letters by Post Office lawyers, who also sent letters to the broadcaster threatening to sue Panorama.
Keir Starmer said only a “handful” of prosecutions linked to the Horizon scandal may have been handled by the Crown Prosecution Service during his tenure as director of public prosecutions. The Labour leader said the CPS handled 4m cases and had 7,000 members of staff while he was leading it.
The independent MP Andrew Bridgen has declared receiving £4.4m in loans from the Reclaim party funder Jeremy Hosking. In the register of members’ financial interests, Bridgen said he had received the money between 2020 and 2023 for “legal services provided in relation to a civil case”.
Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, is calling for the UK parliament to be recalled to discuss the strikes in Yemen. Yousaf said it was “pretty frustrating” that he was not briefed in advance of the UK and US strikes carried out last night.
Rishi Sunak made a surprise visit to Ukraine to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as the UK announced it will provide £2.5bn in military aid to the country over the coming year.
Keir Starmer has said Labour will not build the Manchester leg of HS2 if the party gets into power this year. The opposition leader said the current government had “blown the budget” and that “contracts are going to be cancelled”.
We’re closing this liveblog now. Thanks so much for all the emails and comments.
Updated
The Post Office has not disclosed any staff WhatsApp messages to the Horizon IT inquiry because they have not been deemed to be relevant, the inquiry has heard.
Chris Jackson, a partner at the law firm Burges Salmon which represents the Post Office, told the inquiry it was his understanding that “nobody in the Post Office used WhatsApp to discuss issues of substance”.
In communications with the inquiry’s legal team, Jackson’s firm said the Post Office had not identified any collection of WhatsApp messages “reasonably anticipated to be responsive as substantive”, PA news reports.
When questioned on the approach taken to WhatsApp messages earlier today, Jackson said: “That is our understanding but we are keeping it under test.”
In Tuesday’s communications with the inquiry’s legal team about disclosure, the correspondence read:
Post Office wants to ensure that the inquiry is aware of decisions Post Office has made relating to the collection of data.
Accordingly, by way of update, Post Office has not identified ... repositories of WhatsApp messages reasonably anticipated to be responsive as substantive evidence to the inquiry’s terms of reference and completed list of issues so has not collected WhatsApp messages from custodians’ eMedia devices.
Post Office will continue to investigate custodians’ WhatsApp usage and will keep decisions relating to the collection of WhatsApp messages under assessment when considering future requests for documents from the inquiry and in light of knowledge acquired through disclosure and structural review processes.
Asked to explain what the passage meant, Jackson said:
We have tested whether it would be needed to be done by asking them questions as to ... do they use WhatsApp and (what) do they use it for?
The responses, as I understand it, came back effectively that it is administrative ... so not the situation ... where people would be having substantive discussions of the kind that are being canvassed in other inquiries at the moment.
But if that changes, or if we have a reason to believe it changes, then we would revert.
Jason Beer, counsel to the inquiry, asked:
So, if Paula Vennells was intending to attend a meeting and was going to discuss with Angela van den Bogerd beforehand what to say and what not to say, she wouldn’t have used, on your understanding, WhatsApp to do so?
Jackson said:
Based on the information we’ve had, no she wouldn’t.
There may have been liaison in terms of who is free on ... what date but, as we understand it, not substantively.
Beer added:
It may be a surprise to a member of the public that nobody in the Post Office used WhatsApp to discuss issues of substance relating to the Horizon system.
Jackson replied: “That is our understanding but we are keeping it under test.”
Updated
More than 100 deepfake video advertisements impersonating Rishi Sunak were paid to be promoted on Facebook in the last month alone, according to research that has raised alarm about the risk AI poses before the general election.
The adverts may have reached as many as 400,000 people – despite appearing to break several of Facebook’s policies – and mark the first time that the prime minister’s image has been doctored in a systematic way en masse.
More than £12,929 was spent on 143 adverts, originating from 23 countries including the US, Turkey, Malaysia and the Philippines.
They include one with faked footage of a BBC newsreader, Sarah Campbell, appearing to read out breaking news that falsely claims a scandal has erupted around Sunak secretly earning “colossal sums from a project that was initially intended for ordinary citizens”.
Meta, which owns Facebook, has been approached for comment.
A UK government spokesperson said:
We are working extensively across government to ensure we are ready to rapidly respond to any threats to our democratic processes, through our defending democracy taskforce and dedicated government teams.
Our Online Safety Act goes further by putting new requirements on social platforms to swiftly remove illegal misinformation and disinformation – including where it is AI-generated – as soon as they become aware of it.
The government has been holding discussions with regulators including the Electoral Commission, which says new requirements under legislation from 2022 for digital campaign material to include an “imprint” for it will go some way to ensuring voters can see who paid for an ad or is trying to influence them.
Read more here:
Humza Yousaf has told Scots that voting for the SNP in the general election will ensure Scotland is not “ignored” by Keir Starmer when he moves into Downing Street.
With Labour comfortably ahead in the polls, the SNP leader said it is “very clear now” that Starmer will be the next prime minister, PA News reports.
The Scottish first minister said backing his party could make Scotland a “Tory-free zone”, and he stressed the role SNP MPs could seek to have on a future UK Labour government.
He was speaking as he officially launched the SNP campaign for the general election almost certain to take place at some point this year.
Addressing the event in Glasgow, Yousaf said the election is a “huge opportunity for Scotland”.
While declaring “Rishi Sunak is finished as PM”, he focused much of his speech on Starmer’s Labour party.
Yousaf told the audience of SNP MPs and party supporters:
Keir Starmer doesn’t need Scotland to win the election.
Scotland needs SNP MPs to make sure that we are not ignored and that Scotland’s voice is heard.
He said the “fundamental choice before the people of Scotland” was between electing Labour MPs who will “stand up for Keir Starmer and Westminster”, or backing his party to “elect an SNP MP who will stand up for Scotland and ensure we are not ignored”.
Yousaf attacked Labour for its support of Brexit, and warned Starmer’s party could follow Conservative policies on areas such as public spending.
He said:
Time after time, when people are looking for leadership, Labour under Keir Starmer has been posted missing.
With Labour leading the Tories by 20-25 points in the polls, this would be the time for Keir Starmer to be bold and to be radical.
Instead, he spends his time attempting to neutralise Tory attacks by imitating their policies.
Yousaf went on to vow his party’s MPs would seek to “work constructively with a Labour government to introduce measures for a fairer country”.
But he also promised they would look to prevent a future Labour government from “backsliding on green investment” and look to “protect the NHS from creeping privatisation at Westminster”.
Updated
Jeremy Hunt knows there is little to celebrate from modest economic growth during November.
The 0.3% increase in gross domestic product follows a drop of 0.3% in October, and the three-month figure – which is considered a more reliable and certainly less volatile measure of economic growth – showed a 0.2% contraction to the end of November.
The services sector was moribund in the three months to November, while production output fell by 1.5% and construction fell by 0.6% over the same period.
Simon French, the chief economist at the stockbroker Panmure Gordon, said the single-month figure showed there was “a decent chance” the UK had again avoided a recession.
Sandra Horsfield, a UK economist at Investec, was less sure: “It remains touch-and-go whether the economy tipped into a technical recession in the second half of 2023.”
Both were looking through a microscope at small percentage points either side of zero, making it clear that, for the economy and the chancellor, interest rate cuts by the Bank of England cannot come soon enough.
Without lower borrowing costs, a period of zero growth stretching back more than a year is likely to continue well into 2024, and with an election less than a year away, that spells disaster for the Conservative administration.
Read more here:
All major parties face questions about why it took an ITV drama to provoke meaningful political action on the Horizon scandal.
Campaigners have spent decades seeking justice for wronged post office operators, including at least 700 people who were prosecuted by the Post Office and other bodies between 1999 and 2015 based on the botched Horizon IT system.
But progress towards addressing one of Britain’s worst miscarriages of justice and providing compensation has been painfully slow.
“All three political parties had a role to play,” one former postal affairs minister, the Conservative MP Paul Scully, said this week.
We look at the role played by the three main parties:
The Post Office’s leadership has been accused of showing contempt for victims after its lawyers informed a public inquiry into one of the nation’s worst scandals that it was not reasonable to expect them to “leave no stone unturned” in getting to the truth of what happened.
The inquiry into the false convictions of 900 post office operators was further told it was unrealistic for the lawyers representing the Post Office and responsible for handing over internal documents to “continue to work during the evenings and over weekends”.
The latest revelation from the inquiry, chaired by the retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams, emerged out of letters from the Post Office’s lead legal representative, Chris Jackson, a partner at the law firm Burges Salmon LLP.
Jackson said his comments in correspondence sent late last year were part of a request to “please discuss” the future processes for disclosing evidence to the inquiry, which has been repeatedly delayed by the failure of the Post Office to promptly hand over documents.
Asked whether he believed, on reflection, that his position in his letters was flawed, Jackson said: “No.”
The former Conservative cabinet minister David Davis said the attitude of the Post Office and its legal representatives was a “disgrace” and that the organisation’s employment of expensive lawyers to thwart justice was an affront to the victims.
He said:
They should ensure that every effort is made to disclose all the documents. The alternative to their own lawyers doing it is that we impose lawyers upon them to sift through their documents.
Liam Byrne, the chair of the business select committee, which next week will interview the chief executive of the Post Office, Nick Read, said justice required those representing the organisation to work “round the clock”.
He said
This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history, so, bluntly, parliament and the public will expect and demand the Post Office leaves no stone unturned in providing the evidence required so the truth can finally be known. If that requires the Post Office working round the clock to make sure the facts are on the table, then that is what is required. The truth has already taken too long to emerge. There cannot and must not be any further delays.
Read more here:
Updated
Disclosure of Post Office documents has been 'sub-optimal', lawyer admits
Jackson has admitted the Post Office’s disclosure of documents to the public inquiry has been “sub-optimal”.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, the lead counsel Jason Beer has been questioning Chris Jackson, the lawyer acting for the Post Office on disclosures to the panel.
Beer pointed out that on 19 December, the Post Office said the disclosure of documents in relation to investigator Stephen Bradshaw’s evidence was complete, before doing a U-turn last Friday and saying 924 further documents would be disclosed.
Beer said it “doesn’t make for happy reading” that hundreds of new documents were released at the last minute.
It was later found that at least 420 of them were duplicates that had previously been provided.
Beer asked Jackson if he agreed that the chain of correspondence had been “rather chaotic”.
Jackson replied:
You used the phrase before the lunch break sub-optimal, it is clearly that.
It must be frustrating, particularly for the inquiry, and for witnesses and I suspect for those at the other end trying to get it right.
The hearing has ended for the day and the inquiry will resume again next Tuesday.
Updated
There will “definitely be escalation” in the Middle East in light of the US-UK strikes in Yemen, an Iranian professor predicts. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, of the University of Tehran, has told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme:
I think that what the British and American governments have done – and the British government doesn’t really play a role, they just want to be in the good books of Washington – but what they have done is that they have created greater instability in the Red Sea.
Asked whether Iran will ask its other proxies to help the Houthis, he says:
Iran doesn’t dictate terms to any of its allies. The government in Yemen, they make their own decisions. Hezbollah makes its own decision. But Iran will support them.
And he says Iranians see the US-led military action “as support for the genocide in Gaza”.
The United States and the British government want to empower the Israeli regime so that they can carry on with what they’re doing to the people of Gaza.
Updated
Post Office 'understands profound mistrust' after litany of disclosure failings
A Post Office legal representative has said he understands the “profound mistrust in many quarters” following a litany of disclosure failings throughout the Horizon IT inquiry.
A further disclosure setback in November, in which around 363,000 emails were found on a “legacy” mailing system, resulted in witnesses being delayed, PA news reports.
In his witness statement submitted to the inquiry before giving evidence on Friday, Chris Jackson, a partner at the law firm Burges Salmon, said the Post Office sent its apologies for the most recent delay.
In November, Jason Beer KC said the latest disclosure failing added to a long list of further failings which were “etched” in the minds of the inquiry’s counsel.
Before the latest disclosure failings, the inquiry had been delayed by hard copy documents being found in new Post Office locations and the misuse of search terms in the disclosure exercise.
Another failing which previously delayed the inquiry was an improper “de-duplication” exercise, meaning relevant emails were not disclosed.
Other failings have included a failure to consider “families” of documents, not disclosing the names of those blind copied into emails, and the failure to disclose documents held on back-up tapes.
Addressing the disclosure issues in his statement, Jackson said:
The current situation is not one that anyone would wish to see continue.
Post Office has asked me to convey its apologies for the current situation and to assure the inquiry and other core participants that it is a Post Office priority to get to a position where hearings (and planning and preparation for hearings) can take place from a stable basis with the risks of further emerging data source issues minimised and managed so far as is practicable.
He continued:
I am conscious that emerging problems with, and frank updates to the inquiry on, Post Office’s disclosure have been deeply and understandably frustrating to the inquiry, to postmasters and their families … and to those witnesses who have been affected.
I understand fully the reasons for those reactions and for the profound mistrust in many quarters, which is the starting point for any exchanges on disclosure given the underlying earlier events relating to Horizon that the inquiry is charged to investigate.
However, I confirm that all my experience acting for Post Office since May 2023 indicates to me that all the professional advisers working for Post Office on the inquiry … are behaving properly and professionally, working intensively and with significant resource, to provide all requested evidence to the inquiry.
Were it ever to be suggested otherwise, that would be a matter of profound professional concern.
Beer previously told the inquiry it was “the conduct” of the Post Office that was “standing in our way” of calling witnesses.
He told the inquiry in November:
We as your counsel want to get on with the business of calling witnesses.
We as your counsel want to get on with the business of progress in this inquiry.
But the conduct of one of the core participants is presently standing in our way.
This is of course the latest in a series of disclosure failings by the Post Office – they may be forgotten to many, they are etched in the memory of those who sit on this side of the room.
The inquiry is now taking a break for lunch, resuming business in an hour.
Updated
Away from the Post Office inquiry, MPs have declared a number of interesting donations and second jobs on the latest register - aside from Andrew Bridgen’s £4m loan.
Keir Starmer accepted £25,000 of hospitality from the government of Qatar for private jet travel from the Cop summit in Dubai to meet the Emir of Qatar in December.
The chief executive of Palantir in the UK, Louis Mosley, has given £5,000 to the housing minister Lee Rowley. Palantir has been under the spotlight recently after the controversial US-based firm linked to spy agencies won a £380m NHS data contract. It is understood Mosley and Rowley are former colleagues in the financial services industry and the donation was made on a personal basis to support the MP’s work.
Mark Pritchard, a Tory backbencher, has got a new £9,000-a-month job working for an arms company, ATS Group, based in North Macedonia, which specialises in ballistics and ammunition.
Sir Bob Stewart, the MP, raised almost £20,000 in crowdfunding to help cover legal costs and a fine associated with his conviction for racially abusing an activist.
Updated
Post Office provided 'inaccurate and misleading' information to high court, lawyer admits
The Post Office provided “inaccurate and misleading” information to the high court, one its lawyers has admitted to the inquiry into the Horizon scandal.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, the lead counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer referred to an initial witness statement by Chris Jackson, the lawyer acting for the Post Office and asked if it was right to say that “inaccurate and misleading” information was provided in an important disclosure questionnaire.
The questionnaire was initially provided to the high court and later resubmitted to both the court of appeal and the inquiry.
Jackson agrees there was a replication of inaccuracies.
The inaccuracies were to do with email archive data and the transferral of emails.
The public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal has been repeatedly halted by obstacles such as a “series of disclosure failings” and claims of lost emails by the Post Office.
Updated
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, the lead counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer, asked Chris Jackson, the lawyer acting for the Post Office, about the “chance discovery” of a document that has led to questions over whether there is a separate repository of emails that aren’t on the cloud service Mimecast.
Late last year, the company admitted that its auditors had discovered 363,000 emails on an old mailing system that had not been used since 2012. A lawyer for the Post Office said at the time that it “deeply regretted” the delay and blamed, somewhat poignantly, technical faults.
The document came to light during a freedom of information request made in May 2023.
Beer said were it not for the FoI request “the racist and archaic identity code document would not have emerged”.
This is a reference to how that document showed fraud investigators were asked to group suspects based on racial features.
The document, which was published between 2008 and 2011, included the term “negroid types”, along with “Chinese/Japanese types” and “dark-skinned European types”.
In May 2023, the Post Office apologised for using racist terms to describe post office operators wrongly accused as part of the scandal.
Updated
The Post Office’s email systems are being discussed at the hearing today.
Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC issued a warning:
I’m afraid this is super dry.
Beer has been asking Chris Jackson, the lawyer acting for the Post Office, what different systems were used to send emails and when these systems were used.
This is important because previous statements have been made regarding lost emails and the knock-on effect it has had in trying to extract information relevant and of use to the inquiry.
The independent MP Andrew Bridgen has declared receiving £4.4m in loans from the Reclaim party funder Jeremy Hosking.
In the register of members’ financial interests, Bridgen said he had received the money between 2020 and 2023 for “legal services provided in relation to a civil case”.
The Times previously reported the loans were to help Bridgen, who represents North West Leicestershire, fund a legal battle with his brother over the family’s potato farm.
Bridgen had not declared the loan when he joined the Reclaim party and became its first MP in May last year, after being expelled from the Conservatives for comparing Covid vaccine side-effects to the Holocaust.
Reclaim, a rightwing populist party led by Laurence Fox, is almost entirely funded by Hosking, who helped create it in 2020.
The parliamentary code of conduct states MPs must declare any financial interest which might reasonably be thought by others to influence their actions, speeches or votes in parliament, or actions taken in his or her capacity as a MP.
Bridgen quit Reclaim in December citing a “difference in the direction of the party”.
He has been involved in a long-running multimillion-pound legal dispute with his relatives over the family business, the vegetable supplier AB Produce, which the Times reported led to him being evicted from his country house and found by a high court judge to have lied under oath.
Updated
A letter from Chris Jackson’s legal firm which was sent to the inquiry on 16 October 2023 was raised during the morning session of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry.
Lead counsel to the Inquiry, Jason Beer KC said during a review of 402,000 documents – and the production of more than 11,300 documents, just 2.82% were disclosed to the inquiry.
Beer then says: “Looking at this now, does it appear to be a flawed approach?”
“No,” Jackson says.
The letter reads:
The principle of reasonableness in relation to disclosure to the Inquiry - even if operating at the more stringent end of the spectrum - does not, and cannot, require POL to leave every stone unturned. Such a standard is impossible for POL to realistically comply with.
There POL does not intend to adopt a similar approach to future requests having regards to the low rates of relevance.
Post Office apologises over disclosure delays to inquiry into scandal
Chris Jackson, the lawyer acting for the Post Office, has apologised for delays in the disclosure of documents at a hearing in London as part of the inquiry into the Horizon scandal.
He is being questioned by the lead counsel to the Inquiry, Jason Beer KC.
The inquiry is today looking at process failings and potentially “deeper rooted problems” relating to the Post Office’s disclosure.
Late last year, Beer accused the Post Office of “standing in the way of the inquiry and preventing progress”.
During today’s hearing Beer reminded the inquiry that there have not just been problems with disclosure but the Post Office has also been accused, in several court cases, of failing to produce evidence.
In his witness statement, Jackson said:
The Post Office has asked me to convey its apologies for the current situation and to assure the inquiry and other core participants that it is a post office priority to get to a position where hearings (and planning and preparation for hearings) can take place from a stable basis.
Updated
Only a 'handful' of prosecutions linked to Horizon scandal handled by CPS during my tenure, Starmer says
Keir Starmer said only a “handful” of prosecutions linked to the Horizon scandal may have been handled by the Crown Prosecution Service during his tenure as director of public prosecutions.
The Labour leader said the Crown Prosecution Service handled 4 million cases and had 7,000 members of staff while he was leading it.
Speaking to broadcasters during a visit to Bury, he said:
I think it’s very important to be clear that these were, or the vast majority of these were, Post Office prosecutions brought by the Post Office in relation to their cases.
A small number, at the moment it looks like there may have been three or so, a handful of cases, in the five years that I was director of public prosecutions that were handled by the Crown Prosecution Service.
He said it was “not even known what the detail of those cases are and it needs to be put in its context: in the five years I was director of public prosecutions I had 7,000 staff and we handled 4 million cases. So this was a handful, within that.”
More details will emerge no doubt ... it’s not clear whether they’re in the cohort of cases of concern or not.
Updated
My colleague Rob Davies has put together an explainer about why progress in the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal has been repeatedly halted by obstacles, many of them put in place by the Post Office itself.
The company, which is wholly owned by the state and thus the British taxpayer, has been accused of trying to slow down or frustrate attempts to piece together its part in what has been described by the prime minister himself as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.
The inquiry is currently examining this very issue, at a hearing that is taking aim at “deep rooted” problems with the Post Office’s disclosure.
Chris Jackson, a partner at the organisation’s law firm, Burges Salmon, is giving evidence. Burges Salmon replaced the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills as the Post Office’s recognised legal representative from 1 September 2023.
Here are some of the ways the Post Office has appeared to pull the shutters down to protect itself:
The Liberal Democrats have called for a retrospective vote on the military action in the Red Sea and called for MPs to be recalled to parliament.
The party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Layla Moran, said:
Parliament should not be bypassed. Rishi Sunak must announce a retrospective vote in the House of Commons on these strikes, and recall parliament this weekend.
We remain very concerned about the Houthis’ attacks. But that makes it all the more important to ensure that MPs are not silenced on the important issue of military action.
Updated
Ministers need to “immediately” update the law to acknowledge that computers are fallible or risk a repeat of the Horizon scandal, legal experts say.
In English and Welsh law, computers are assumed to be “reliable” unless proven otherwise. But critics of this approach say this reverses the burden of proof normally applied in criminal cases.
Stephen Mason, a barrister and expert on electronic evidence, said: “It says, for the person who’s saying ‘there’s something wrong with this computer’, that they have to prove it. Even if it’s the person accusing them who has the information.”
Mason, along with eight other legal and computer experts, was invited by the government to suggest an update to the law in 2020, following a high court ruling against the Post Office, but the recommendations they submitted were never applied.
He and colleagues had been expressing alarm about the presumption as far back as 2009.
Mason said:
My view is that the Post Office would never have got anywhere near as far as it did if this presumption wasn’t in place.
The legal presumption that computers are reliable stems from an older common law principle that “mechanical instruments” should be presumed to be in working order unless proven otherwise. That assumption means that if, for instance, a police officer quotes the time on their watch, a defendant cannot force the prosecution to call a horologist to explain from first principles how watches work.
For a period, computers lost that protection in England and Wales. 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.
Read the full story here:
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is taking further evidence this morning.
The inquiry was set up in 2020, and upgraded to a statutory inquiry a year later, and has been holding public hearings for almost two years. But the scandal is now getting much more media attention than before as a direct result of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office broadcast after Christmas.
Sir Wyn Williams, chair of the inquiry, announced his intention to hold the hearing after evidence from representatives of the Post Office, Herbert Smith Freehills and KPMG revealed process failings and potentially “deeper rooted problems” relating to the Post Office’s disclosure.
The chair said:
There is a need for close monitoring of the disclosure process during the remainder of the Inquiry especially as it relates to disclosure by the Post Office.
He has therefore called Chris Jackson, partner of Burges Salmon LLP, to give evidence. Burges Salmon replaced Herbert Smith Freehills as the Post Office’s recognised legal representative from 1 September 2023.
You can watch the inquiry here:
Keir Starmer has said Labour will not build the Manchester leg of HS2 if the party gets into power this year.
The opposition leader said the current government had “blown the budget” and that “contracts are going to be cancelled”.
However, speaking on BBC North West Tonight, he said Labour was “committed” to Northern Powerhouse Rail to improve connections in the north.
He added:
I want that designed and built in the North and therefore I’m talking to Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram about what are the needs of the people in the North West so that the plan can actually deliver what works for them.
Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf is calling for parliament to be recalled to discuss the UK action in Yemen.
Yousaf said it was “pretty frustrating” that he was not briefed in advance of the UK and US strikes carried out last night.
He said there was “no equivocation” that the SNP aligns itself with the UN security council resolution calling for an end to Houthi rebel attacks in the Red Sea but that the UK’s record of military intervention in Middle East “is not a good one”.
The correct and appropriate thing to have done would have been to have recalled parliament to have given serious detail about any proposed military action because there are significant questions.
He said that, despite the UK insisting that this has nothing to do with the conflict between Israel and Gaza “that is a complete fallacy and the concern is that there will be a wider regional escalation because of the action taken”
My concern also is that we see thousands of children are dying in Gaza, and I just wish the UK government would care as much about those children that are dying.
You can follow our liveblog on the crisis in the Middle East here:
Rishi Sunak is making a surprise visit to Ukraine to meet Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as the UK announced it will provide £2.5bn in military aid to the country over the coming year.
It comes as the Ukrainian president presses allies in the West to provide the country with more support to fight back against Russian forces, amid fears that interest in the war is flagging among allies as the war drags on.
Sunak said:
For two years, Ukraine has fought with great courage to repel a brutal Russian invasion. They are still fighting, unfaltering in their determination to defend their country and defend the principles of freedom and democracy.
I am here today with one message: the UK will also not falter. We will stand with Ukraine, in their darkest hours and in the better times to come.
The prime minister made his first visit to Ukraine in November 2022, weeks after entering Number 10.
For more on what’s happening in Ukraine, you can follow our liveblog here:
Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Panorama programme exposing scandal, the broadcaster says
The Post Office threatened and lied to the BBC in 2015 ahead of a Panorama programme with a Horizon whistleblower which exposed the scandal, the public broadcaster said.
The BBC said experts who were interviewed for the programme were sent intimidating letters by Post Office lawyers who also sent letters to the broadcaster, threatening to sue Panorama.
According to the BBC, senior Post Office managers also told the broadcaster at the time that no staff or the company who developed Horizon, Fujitsu, could access post office operators accounts, despite being warned four years earlier this was possible.
The BBC says the claims did not stop the programme, titled Trouble at the Post Office, but it did delay the broadcast of the show.
The Post Office has been contacted for comment. It told the BBC it will not comment while the public inquiry continues.
The Post Office scandal has been described without exaggeration by the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history: the hounding and prosecution of thousands of people who owned and ran smaller post offices for alleged fraud between 1999 and 2015, the overwhelming majority of whom were falsely accused.
More than 700 post office operators were handed criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
Victims have described being shunned by their communities, financially ruined and having their families destroyed.
The Post Office public inquiry into the scandal continues in London today.
I will be looking after the politics blog today. If you have any tips or suggestions, please get in touch: nicola.slawson@theguardian.com.
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