A Post Office Capture victim says delays in the justice system have left him fearing he may never live to see his name cleared.

Steve Marston was convicted in 1998 of stealing nearly £80,000 from his branch, based on faulty computer software called Capture that pre-dated the infamous Horizon scandal.

His case has been with the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) for nearly a year, but has still not been referred to the Court of Appeal.

‘Sleeping isn’t easy’

Mr Marston, who turns 70 in February, told Sky News: “This waiting is just unbearable… the chances of us all (the victims) being there at the endgame are, well, I’d say quite slim to be honest.”

“The last thing I want to do is to not be here when it’s sorted out,” he said.

“I’m praying mine gets sorted while I’m still here to enjoy the benefit of it.

“You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

He describes waiting for the CCRC to make a decision on his case as “soul destroying”.

“Every day you’re thinking about it, talking about it,” he said.

“You’ve always got a permanent knot in the stomach. Sleeping isn’t exactly easy.”

The CCRC announced in July that the case of the late Pat Owen, a sub-postmistress convicted in 1998, would be referred to the Court of Appeal.

On Thursday, her case was formally sent to the court – three months after the decision was made to refer.

‘Special resolution needed’

It comes after a Sky News investigation discovered a long-lost damning report relating to the Owen case, which proved Post Office lawyers knew about Capture errors.

The victims’ lawyer, Neil Hudgell, says there is “no end in sight” for Post Office Capture victims convicted three decades ago, as timelines at the CCRC “keep getting shifted backwards”.

He wants to see a “special resolution” for Capture cases to “shorten the process”.

“I think these cases need to be dealt with in exceptional circumstances,” he said.

“You’ve a cohort of very elderly people who have had a conviction hanging over them for the best part of three decades now and those circumstances are such that I think that they need a special resolution to them.”

Mr Hudgell believes extending the government’s mass exoneration legislation – which currently applies only to Horizon victims – could offer a faster solution.

“You’re talking about a fraction of the number of people,” he said. “It would be an expeditious fix. But it needs political will.”

Read more from Sky News:
Minister pushed on Horizon
Scandal compensation shake-up
Post Office overhaul plans

Chair of the CCRC Dame Vera Baird, who has been tasked with carrying out a “thorough review” of the organisation, told Sky News that Capture cases are being given “what priority we can give them”.

She described the main issue with cases as the fact that for most there is a “real dearth of information” with paperwork evidence not available.

Dame Vera added that staff members, however, will “dig and dig and dig to find what we can”.

A special group of case review managers has also been set up to deal with Capture cases with “experienced commissioners ready to go when cases come through.”

Dame Vera said the CCRC more broadly is “pretty short-staffed” and workers have cases of “about 30 or more”, but they are recruiting.

She also told Sky News the CCRC had put in a special request to “accelerate” the Owen case through the Court of Appeal.

“Once we’ve referred,” she said, “we do ask, where there is somebody who’s not very well perhaps or somebody who is older, we try to accelerate it and the Court of Appeals is good they will accelerate it on our request almost always.”

A Post Office spokesperson said: “We continue to fully co-operate with the CCRC by supplying documents and information, where this is available, that has been requested in relation to pre-Horizon convictions.

“Whilst we can’t comment on individual cases, we continue to support the CCRC in dealing with pre-Horizon convictions.”

From today, digital veteran cards are available for ex-members of the armed services – the first step in the digitisation of almost every form of ID.

No, this isn’t the controversial “mandatory” right to work checks announced recently – more on that later – but it is part of the same programme for pretty much all forms of government identification to be accessible on your phone by the end of 2027.

This will mean passports, driving licences, national insurance cards and many more being virtual instead of – or as well as – being stashed in a shoebox or under socks in a drawer.

At an event at the Tower of London – chosen for its millennia-old juxtaposition with the digital revolution – Beefeaters showed off their shiny new cards and joked of using it to get discounted food.

There was an occasional tech hiccup here and there with getting the cards downloaded, mostly due to dodgy internet, it seemed, but in general it was all smiles.

The minister in charge of the rollout, Ian Murray MP, crowed of the benefits of having documents on your phone and how it will make life easier.

“We all use our smartphones for everyday life,” he explained.

“So it’s about making the relationship with the citizen easier and making their access to government services easier.”

Mr Murray said he is looking forward to the end of “having to continuously fill out my name, my address, my telephone number” and instead just scanning his phone.

How will it work?

Having all government documents accessible in an Apple or Google Wallet-style app is the end goal, and the solution is being built on similar secure technology that underpins storing payment cards on your phone.

The work is being done in house by Government Digital Service, part of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, that houses the digitisation expertise in Whitehall.

Any mention of digitisation of the personal information raises questions around security, but the government insists its solution is safe with a “federated” approach.

To use the example of a veteran’s ID, this would mean that the original data of who is a veteran, where they served, and all other relevant information would remain with the Ministry of Defence.

Once the sign-in and verification with this data has been completed on a phone, this can then be used to prove someone is a veteran, and easily give them access to housing, mental health support, shopping discounts, museum entry and other benefits, the government says.

What about other forms of ID?

For driving licences, the data would stay with DVLA, passports with the passport office, and national insurance with the Department for Work and Pensions.

Those who have worked on the creation of the software say this stops the creation of a single vault of everyone’s personal data in one place.

In order to get the card on your phone, you would need to use the phone’s security – such as a face scan, fingerprint, or pin code.

There is even talk that technology like contactless could be used with the government’s version of the wallet to tap and verify things like age in an off-licence.

The hope from government is that it can speed up tedious paper-based interactions, like house buying, passport control, and the right to work.

It is here where the sticking point on this policy plan becomes apparent.

Papers, please?

Announcing “mandatory” digital ID last month, the prime minister made it clear this was about cracking down on immigration.

Straightaway, concerns were raised about why a compulsory digital ID was needed, who would check it, and what for.

Polling showed – especially among Tory and Reform voters – an opposition to this policy, when it is these people the immigration battle is being fought over.

Tory MP and a stalwart opponent of government overreach David Davis said: “Digital ID gives the state the unchecked power to digitally strip citizens naked.”

He added: “Starmer’s scheme will be even more risky as ransomware criminals, foreign states and other hackers will attack the strategic weak points in the OneLogin architecture.”

Read more:
Do we need digital IDs?
The countries where digital ID already exists

If the government believes digitising identification is so beneficial, and such a win-win, why does it want to force people to use it rather than see the benefits and choose to use it?

Mr Murray said the right to work ID will be mandatory as “it’s mandatory already to be able to prove that you can work in the UK”.

He insists it will make the process for employees easier, and also make it easier for the Home Office to see which employers are not making checks – no more photocopying passports and scanning old phone bills.

The government is adamant this is the only mandatory use case, with the suggestion even that the digital ID could be deleted once employment is confirmed.

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But the flip side is that once this can of worms is opened, this or a future government could change tack and would have the digital infrastructure to do what it wants.

But Mr Murray said: “The principle here is to make the state and the citizen’s relationship much easier – and the power of the data in the hands of the citizen.”

The head of MI5 says he will “never back off” from confronting threats from China as he revealed his officers disrupted a case linked to Beijing in just the past week.

More broadly, Sir Ken McCallum said the number of people in the UK under investigation for “state threat activity” – also including from Russia and Iran – has jumped by 35% in the past year compared with the previous 12 months.

He admitted he felt frustration at the collapse last month of a trial against two British men accused of spying for China, but he stressed that the Security Service had still successfully derailed the alleged espionage operation.

With pressure mounting on Sir Keir Starmer over why the high-profile trial foundered, the director general of MI5 – choosing his words carefully given the controversy – confirmed that “Chinese state actors” pose a threat to UK national security “every day”.

Politics latest: Senior MPs launch ‘formal inquiry’ into China spy case collapse

More broadly, he warned that the threat from states – also including Russia and Iran – are escalating and becoming as ugly as terrorism.

He used an annual speech at MI5’s headquarters in London to say:

• The wider threat from nation states is escalating and becoming as ugly as terrorism

• Attempts by states – principally China, Russia and Iran – to carry out operations involving violence, sabotage, arson or surveillance are “routinely” being uncovered

• MI5 has tracked more than 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran in the past year

• Russia is hatching a “steady stream” of surveillance plots with “hostile intent”, while MI5 officers take it as a working assumption that Russian trolls will attempt to exploit any particular “fissures” in UK society using online posts, though these efforts are largely unsuccessful

• On terrorism, MI5 and the police have disrupted 19 late-stage attack plots since 2020 and have intervened in many hundreds of developing threats

• There is growing concern about children becoming involved in terrorism, with one in five of the 232 terrorism arrests last year involving minors under 17

“MI5 is contending with more volume and more variety of threat from terrorists and state actors than I’ve ever seen,” Sir Ken said.

Declaring a “new era”, the MI5 boss warned of “fast-rising” state threats coupled with a “near record” number of terrorism investigations.

He said this was forcing the biggest shift in MI5’s mission since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

China is a particular challenge as the Starmer government seeks to bolster economic ties with Beijing, while also wary of the security threat posed by Chinese spies.

“The UK-China relationship is by its nature complex, but MI5’s role is not,” Sir Ken said.

“We detect and deal, robustly, with activity threatening UK national security.”

These threats range from cyber espionage; attempts to steal secrets from universities such as by cultivating academics; or efforts to target parliament and other parts of public life.

“MI5 will keep doing what the public would expect of us, preventing, detecting and disrupting activity of national security concern,” said the MI5 chief.

“Our track record is strong. We’ve intervened operationally again just in the last week and we will keep doing so.”

The spy boss continued: “I am MI5 born and bred. I will never back off from confronting threats to the UK wherever they come.”

The speech was delivered amid a growing row around a decision by Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to drop the espionage trial of Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher to two prominent Conservative MPs, and Christopher Berry, a teacher.

Both have denied any wrongdoing.

Read more: Three questions about spy case that need answering

Prosecutors said the government had not provided evidence that China represented a threat to national security, prompting allegations by the Conservatives that the prime minister’s team had interfered with the case to protect the UK’s trading ties with China.

Attempting to push back, ministers on Wednesday released written evidence by Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser, that was given to the CPS. It spelt out the threat posed by China and his assessment of the allegations against the two individuals.

Given the political storm, the MI5 director general was careful when responding to questions on the furore.

But he chose to voice his support for Mr Collins who he has worked with, describing him as a “man of high integrity and a professional of considerable quality”.

Sir Ken was asked by journalists if he had been frustrated at the failure to prosecute.

“Of course I am frustrated when opportunities to prosecute national security threatening activity are not followed through for whatever reason,” he said, though he noted not all cases that involve MI5 lead to prosecution.

“I would remind you all that in the particular case… the activity was disrupted.”

On whether he regarded China to be a threat, the MI5 chief said: “Do Chinese state actors present a UK national security threat? And the answer is of course yes they do every day.”

But he added that UK wider bilateral foreign policy on China is a matter for the government.