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Post Office Limited
Finsbury Dials
20 Finsbury Street
London
EC2Y 9AQ
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Parliamentary Secretary of State
Department for Business, Innovation & Skills
1 Victoria Street
London
SW1H OET
21 June 2016
As you will be aware, a group of 91 postmasters has filed proceedings in the High Court against
Post Office Limited. I therefore wanted to update you on the impact this has on my review of
Post Office’s handling of postmasters’ complaints.
This update (and the work which underpins it) reports on legal advice provided to Post Office
Limited, including with respect to the High Court litigation, and is therefore confidential and
subject to legal professional privilege. I am sharing this with you given the common interest you
have as our Minister in Post Office’s response to the postmaster complaints and litigation, and in
maintaining the confidentiality of our legally privileged material.
You will recall that following my appointment as Chairman of Post Office Limited, I undertook a
review into POL’s handling of the longstanding complaints from postmasters with a view to
determining, in particular, the question of what more could now reasonably be done to address
these complaints.
In my letter to you of 4 March 2016, I outlined the detailed work being undertaken on the advice
of my legal team. The nature of that work is complex, costly and time consuming. Nonetheless,
good progress has been made in all areas and I had hoped that by now I would be in a position to
draw my investigation to a close.
However, given the High Court proceedings to which I refer above, Post Office Limited has received
very strong advice from Leading Counsel that the work being undertaken under the aegis of my
review should come to an immediate end, and instead address the issues through equivalent work
taken forward in the litigation. Acting in accordance with the duties I owe to Post Office Limited as
a director and its Chairman, I have therefore instructed that the work being undertaken pursuant
to my review should now be stopped.
PostOffice.co.uk
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We have the opportunity to discuss this matter, and others, during the course of our forthcoming
meeting on 19 July. In the meantime, should you have any questions, both myself and our
General Counsel, Jane MacLeod, would be happy to address these.
Tim Parker
Chairman
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