Horizon scandal: Former Post Office clerk cleared of fraud linked to Horizon scandal
A former Post Office worker wrongly convicted of fraud during the Horizon scandal has been cleared by the Court of Appeal.
Jacqueline Falcon, 42, was accused of reversing transactions on the faulty accounting software between December 2014 and February 2015 while working at Hadston Post Office in Northumberland.
The former Post Office clerk had been trying to cover up a shortfall of almost £1,000 in the branch’s accounts which she had not taken and could not explain and was worried the missing amount would be deducted from her pay, the court heard.
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Alan Bates: ‘I’m frustrated to put it mildly’
She said: “I tried and I tried and I couldn’t find the £1,000 anywhere. I thought of every scenario possible. It drove me mad, I went nuts thinking about it.”
Ms Falcon knew the Horizon system, which could be accessed remotely, was faulty, as they “had engineers out all the time”, but was unaware it could throw out accounting errors.
She said she was pregnant with her fifth child when she admitted fraud on her barrister’s advice.
Ms Falcon was handed a three-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to pay £933.69 in compensation after pleading guilty to fraud at Newcastle Crown Court in 2015.
In London on Tuesday, senior judges ruled her conviction was unsafe because Post Office failures meant her trial was unfair.
Ms Falcon, from Hadston, watched via videolink as the ruling was made.
The Crown Prosecution Service, which had brought the fraud case against her, did not oppose her appeal.
Ms Falcon, who has suffered from depression for nine years, became almost reclusive after her conviction, unwilling to leave the house in case someone made a nasty remark or gave her a dirty look.
Her children were bullied and “some people have been really nasty to me”, she said.
“It has had a massive effect on me and my family. I don’t feel I have been the best mam to them because I have not been myself for such a long time. I am hoping that a weight will have been lifted and I can gradually get my old self back.”
The scandal, thought to be the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history, saw hundreds of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses wrongly held responsible for accounting errors in the faulty software.
Glitches in the system meant money looked as if it was missing from many branch accounts when in fact it was not.
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‘How do you feel about ruining people’s lives?’
Many more are yet to be cleared and the government has come under fire for the compensation awarded to victims.
Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 were prosecuted, causing many to lose their jobs, livelihoods and reputations.
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Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice
Read more:
Ex Post Office boss to give evidence
Who are key figures in scandal?
Concerns over another Post Office IT system
Post Office chairman ousted amid row
More than 100 sub-postmasters have now had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal.
But the affair had largely faded from public conversation until it was brought back to the fore by the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office.
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Fujitsu, the company behind Horizon, was still winning government-linked business, even after its role in the scandal became clear.
Last weekend, MPs said the company is set to have received more than £3.4bn through contracts from Treasury-linked organisations since 2019.
Zoe Ball is leaving her BBC Radio 2 breakfast show after six years.
The 53-year-old, who recently lost her mother to cancer, will present her last show on Friday, 20 December.
Ball leaves Wogan House with her replacement, Scott Mills. Pic: PA
She said she was leaving to focus on family, but will remain part of the Radio 2 team and will give further details next year.
Announcing the news on her Tuesday show, she said: “After six years of fun times alongside you all on the breakfast show, I’ve decided it’s time to step away from the early alarm call and start a new chapter.
“You know I think the world of you all, listeners, and it truly has been such a privilege to share the mornings with you, to go through life’s little ups and downs, we got through the lockdown together, didn’t we?
“We’ve shared a hell of a lot, the good times, the tough times, there’s been a lot of laughter. And I am going to miss you cats.”
Scott Mills will replace Ball on the breakfast show following her departure next month.
“Zoe and I have been such good friends now for over 25 years and have spent much of that time as part of the same radio family here at Radio 2 and also on Radio 1,” he said.
“She’s done an incredible job on this show over the past six years, and I am beyond excited to be handed the baton.”
Hugging outside the BBC building on the day of the announcement, Ball said she was “really chuffed for my mate and really excited about it”.
Ball was the first female host of both the BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 breakfast shows, starting at the Radio 1 breakfast show in 1998, and taking over her current Radio 2 role from Chris Evans in 2020 after he left the show.
She took a break from hosting her show over the summer, returning in September.
Ahead of her stint in radio, Ball – who is the daughter of children’s presenter Johnny Ball – co-hosted the BBC’s Saturday morning children’s magazine show Live & Kicking alongside Jamie Theakston for three years from 1996.
She has two children, Woody and Nelly, with her ex-husband, DJ and musician Norman Cook, known professionally as Fatboy Slim.
Ball said in her announcement her last show towards the end of December will be “just in time for Christmas with plenty of fun and shenanigans”.
“While I’m stepping away from the Breakfast Show, I’m not disappearing entirely – I’ll still be a part of the Radio 2 family, with more news in the New Year,” she added.
“I’m excited to embrace my next chapter, including being a mum in the mornings, and I can’t wait to tune in on the school run!”
Helen Thomas, head of Radio 2, said: “Zoe has woken up the nation on Radio 2 with incredible warmth, wit and so much joy since January 2019, and I’d like to thank her for approaching each show with as much vim and vigour as if it were her first. I’m thrilled that she’ll remain an important part of the Radio 2 family.”
Mills, 51, got his first presenting role aged just 16 for a local station in Hampshire, and went on to present in Bristol and Manchester, before joining BBC Radio 1 in 1998.
He’s previously worked as a cover presenter on Radio 2, but this is his first permanent role on the station.
UK
More prisoners are being transferred to less secure jails to tackle overcrowding crisis, Sky News understands
The prison service is starting to recategorise the security risk of offenders to ease capacity pressures, Sky News understands.
It involves lowering or reconsidering the threshold of certain offenders to move them from the closed prison estate (category A to C) to the open estate (category D) because there are more free cell spaces there.
Examples of this could include discounting adjudications – formal hearings when a prisoner is accused of breaking the rules – for certain offenders, so they don’t act as official reasons not to transport them to a lower-security jail.
Prisoners are also categorised according to an Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) status. There are different levels – basic, standard and enhanced – based on how they keep to the rules or display a commitment to rehabilitation.
Usually ‘enhanced’ prisoners take part in meaningful activity – employment and training – making them eligible among other factors, to be transferred to the open estate.
Insiders suggest this system in England and Wales is being rejigged so that greater numbers of ‘standard’ prisoners can transfer, whereas before it would more typically be those with ‘enhanced’ status.
Open prisons have minimal security and allow eligible prisoners to spend time on day release away from the prison on license conditions to carry out work or education.
The aim is to help reintegrate them back into society once they leave. As offenders near the end of their sentence, they are housed in open prisons.
Many of those released as part of the early release scheme in October after serving 40% of their sentence were freed from open prisons.
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Overcrowding in UK prisons
They were the second tranche of offenders freed as part of this scheme, and had been sentenced to five years or more.
Despite early release measures, prisons are still battling a chronic overcrowding crisis. The male estate is almost full, operating at around 97% capacity.
Read more from Sky News:
Find out what it’s really like inside prison?
Prison recalls soar as justice system struggles
Campaigners demand IPP sentences are scrapped
Sky News understands there continue to be particular pinch points across the country.
Southwest England struggled over the weekend with three space-related ‘lockouts’ – which means prisoners are held in police suites or transferred to other jails because there is no space.
One inmate is believed to have been transported from Exeter to Cardiff.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The new government inherited a prison system on the point of collapse. We took the necessary action to stop our prisons from overflowing and to protect the public.
“This is not a new scheme. Only less-serious offenders who meet a strict criteria are eligible, and the Prison Service can exclude anyone who can’t be managed safely in a category D prison.”
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