Mark Baker

Now retired Branch Secretary for the CWU Postmaster's Branch, the only independent trade union representing postmasters across the UK .

[Nick Wallis @nickwallis]

Jane MacLeod is staying put.

https://t.co/gIUBzoopPh

[Mark Baker @CWUPostmaster]

@Jusmasel2015 @CastletonLee To say nothing about the chaotic flow of data packets over the architecture that Horizon produced

[Dave Ward @DaveWardGS]

Let’s abolish the gig economy.

Public control of Royal Mail.

Bring Royal Mail and the Post Office together to build a service for the whole community.

Make no mistake - if we don’t show real vision for our postal service, Royal Mail will be on the rocks.

[Karl Flinders @Karlfl]

Met Police finally get full government funding for national Post Office investigation #PostOfficeScandal https://t.co/04U4tZfuuc

[Karl Flinders @Karlfl]

Computer Weekly is 60 years old today, (I have been here almost a third of that) please read personal essays written to celebrate the occasion CW@60 https://t.co/kRNwYyuiNL…

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

IS ROBIN GARBUTT INNOCENT?

This looks like one of those cases where a story got invented before anyone did any real investigating, and everything that has surfaced since keeps confirming how flawed that story was from the start.

In March 2010, Diana Garbutt was bludgeoned to death above the small Post Office she ran with her husband Robin Garbutt in Melsonby, North Yorkshire.

Robin Garbutt has spent over 15 years in prison for now. No DNA puts him at the scene. No DNA is on the weapon that killed her.

The only DNA on that weapon belongs to Diana Garbutt and a North Yorkshire Police @NYorksPolice officer, not her husband. Strip away the theories and that is the entire physical evidence trail, and it does not point at Robin Garbutt.

Robin Garbutt told police an armed robber forced him to open the safe, took £16,000, and vanished before he ran upstairs and found his wife dead.

Robin Garbutt called 999 himself.

Prosecutors didn't believe him. They told the jury he staged the whole robbery, that he had been stealing from the branch for months, and that he killed Diana Garbutt the night she found out.

Part of that theft story came straight from the Post Office @PostOffice's own Horizon accounting system, built by Fujitsu @fujitsu_uk, the same software that has already wrecked hundreds of innocent postmasters' lives across the country.

If Post Office lied to hundreds of other people, there is no reason to assume it told the truth about Robin Garbutt.

In April 2011, a Teesside Crown Court jury split 10-2 and convicted Robin Garbutt. Life sentence, 20 years minimum. No DNA linked him to the murder. No DNA linked him to the murder weapon either.

The metal bar used to kill Diana Garbutt was found 2 days later on a wall across the road, and the DNA on it belonged to Diana Garbutt and the North Yorkshire Police @NYorksPolice officer who picked it up.

Read that again. The weapon that ended a woman's life carried the fingerprint of the investigation, not the man accused of swinging it.

Robin Garbutt has applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission @ccrcupdate 3 times. Rejected 3 times. The final rejection, in 2022, said the Horizon figures were not essential to the murder conviction anyway, so it apparently didn't matter that Horizon has been proven wrong in hundreds of other cases.

He is now on his 4th attempt, and this time the CCRC says a review is genuinely underway. A Sky documentary put the case back in front of the public. Lee Castleton, one of the best known victims of the Horizon scandal, publicly backed a retrial and says it deserves to be put in front of a judge again.

Diana Garbutt's own mother still believes Robin Garbutt is guilty, and that is her right as a mother. But belief is not evidence, and the evidence here does not hold up. A man has spent over 15 years in prison on a case with no forensic link to him, built partly on a computer system already proven to lie.

If Post Office investigators, Horizon data or the same discredited processes touched a conviction, theft or murder, that conviction deserves fresh eyes.

Every case where Post Office scandal actors played a part should be re-investigated or quashed, not just the ones tidy enough for a compensation scheme.

Post Office is 100% state owned. So if you're hunting for someone to blame beyond a rusty metal bar, the government owns a share of this one too.

SOURCES
@BBCNews, @yorkshirepost, @LBC, @ccrcupdate

[Monsieur Cholet @stugoo17]

#PostOfficeScandal #NickRead #Bonusgate
The 'Wafflemeister' returns. @PostOffice to join Modella - owners of the failing TG Jones brand. Tally-Ho‼️

[Mark Kleinman @MarkKleinmanSky]

Exclusive: Nick Read, the controversial former Post Office boss accused of being "obsessed" with his pay while he ran the state-owned company, has resurfaced at Modella Capital, the prolific retail investor which owns Flying Tiger Copenhagen and TGJones. https://t.co/0PIvyzuUKz

[Monsieur Cholet @stugoo17]

Seven government compensation schemes. Nearly £15bn committed. £3.5bn actually paid. Six of the seven administered by the bodies that caused the harm. The Public Accounts Committee reported today.

The syllabus: Windrush (Home Office), four Horizon schemes (DBT), LGBT Financial Recognition (MoD), Infected Blood (Cabinet Office). Only the last is independent of the wrongdoer, and even that one — the largest, at an estimated £12.8bn — was designed without the involvement of the infected and the affected.

Windrush launched without caseworking capacity; the Home Office calls its own processing times completely unacceptable and the early scheme a "black box". The MoD launched LGBT redress without the system that would let veterans track claims, promised updates it never sent, and can't write to all eligible veterans because the records are fragmented. It closes in December 2026. Contingency: none.

Then the Post Office.

POL estimated a few hundred applicants to the Historical Shortfall Scheme. 2,417 arrived by the November 2020 deadline, over 10,000 more once it reopened, and, unable to afford what it owed, it stopped processing claims.

Longest claim: 1,395 working days. A fifth of paid claims took over a year. DBT told the Committee it is keen to pay and waiting for full claims — the delay, you see, belongs to the claimants. It now concedes that letting POL run the scheme was, in retrospect, a mistake. Retrospect being a facility that arrives exactly when nothing further can be done with it.

The GLO scheme was co-designed with Sir Alan Bates on the understanding it would not be legalistic. What emerged was unrecognisable. It got "bogged down in lawyers".

Lawyers being the one line item never short of funding.

Post Office billings by Herbert Smith Freehills across all Horizon matters exceed £188m, of which roughly £51m to £72m relates to the Historical Shortfall Scheme alone.

For a body that couldn't afford to pay claimants, the budget was found. Claimants funded their own lawyers, where they could: the Committee heard that awards of around £11,000 without representation rise to around £80,000 with it. Only one side was told the process was too legalistic.

And the rules? The HSS Case Assessment Guidance runs to 218 pages, the Case Assessment Principles to 165. Legal professional privilege claimed over both, in their entirety, and upheld. A state-owned company spent tens of millions on a scheme to compensate people it wrongly pursued, and the principles their claims were judged against remain secret from them. The Tribunal gave "medium weight" to protecting the public purse. Quite.

Of 572 claimants surveyed, 76% found the process distressing or retraumatising, 63% extremely difficult, 53% said the evidence demanded was unreasonable or impossible to obtain — much of it already held by the bodies that harmed them.

Sir Wyn Williams recommended a standing independent redress body. So did the NAO. Government promised a statement by summer 2026. Summer 2026 has been and gone. The Cabinet Office says it would need persuading.

Nothing has been learned. Learning is the output.

Full PAC Report can be found here https://t.co/Dh6Drs3LTQ

@CommonsPAC @andyburnham @liambyrnemp @HouseofCommons @UKHouseofLords @CommonsBTC @CastletonLee @Janetsk20073533 @tim_brentnall @VarchasPatel @ElCShaikh @BBCEmmaSimpson @nickwallis @cabinetofficeuk @PostOffInquiry @ArturNadol7566

[Karl Flinders @Karlfl]

BREAKING: Post Office awards £14m contract to Escher WITHOUT competitive tender — after Escher challenged losing the £169m Horizon replacement bid to OneView Commerce.
Legal expert: "Obviously been a procurement screw-up"
#PostOfficeScandal https://t.co/q3f5f98Cxn

[Mark Baker @CWUPostmaster]

@stugoo17 Once alerted by the postmaster freeze the deposit until the depositor comes forward to prove the deposit is legit. If they can’t the state keeps the money until they can.

[Mark Baker @CWUPostmaster]

@stugoo17 I’m aware of this type of and level of financial crime. It’s a very difficult nut to crack. But a good start is to attack the crime at the point of depositing the cash. Pay the postmaster properly, incentivise the postmaster to report suspicious activity 1/2

[Tim McCormack @Jusmasel2015]

Deja Scandal Vu

[Karl Flinders @Karlfl]

Post Office Finally Signs Horizon Replacement Contract — After 3-Month Delay and Supplier Challenge ✅⏰ #PostOfficeScandal https://t.co/TmEU8veU9U

[Lost Chances (Registered Charity 1213178) @LostChances2024]

#postofficescandal Tax payers- are you happy with this? @andyburnham

[El Shaikh @ElCShaikh]

Nick Wallis reports on two Tribunal decisions which have upheld Post Office’s right to withhold information on the grounds of legal privilege, despite this exemption being qualified by the weight of public interest: https://t.co/2kE7jNPTJi

[Nick Wallis @nickwallis]

My take on the prosecution of two solicitors involved in the Post Office scandal by the Solicitors Regulation Authority:

https://t.co/BGONpjM2n8

[Karl Flinders @Karlfl]

In 2015 Jane MacLeod, then Post Office general counsel, threatened Computer Weekly. When will she face the music? #PostOfficeScandal https://t.co/5HACoYmWM3

[Nick Wallis @nickwallis]

The Post Office has claimed it should not make public crucial documents written six years ago, partly on the grounds doing so could compromise its capacity to receive a fair trial, should it ever face criminal proceedings over the Horizon IT scandal.

https://t.co/dNIrcXi2DF

[Nick Wallis @nickwallis]

Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry report delayed yet again:

https://t.co/7WSn3NAIxH

#PostOfficeScandal