POL00150229
POL00150229
CMS Cameron McKenna LLP
. Mitre House
BBC Programme Legal Advice 160 Aldersgate Street
British Broadcasting Corporation London EC1A 40D
Room WC 2251 Dx [GROJBARBICAN 2
White City
London
W127TS
URGENT bireer
NOT FOR BROADCAST a
15 December 2014
Your ref By Fax - 020 8008 2210
Our ref SCB/SCB/MIT/111850.00038
Dear Sirs
Post Office Limited - The One Show
As you will recall, we act for Post Office Limited. We understand that our client has been contacted by
you in relation to a further piece you are proposing to broadcast this week, again on the One Show.
Our client was first informed by email shortly before midday on Friday 12 December that the story was to
run “at around the same time next week”. Our client was also asked for a substantive response to the
extensive issues raised by noon today, Monday 15 December 2014. From this our client initially
understood that the broadcast was to run on Tuesday this week at the earliest. However, it was then
informed that the broadcast was likely to be today. On querying that, it now appears that broadcast is
scheduled for Wednesday. This lack of clarity over the time of broadcast has complicated our client’s
response. Please would you therefore confirm, as a matter of urgency, the date and time at which you
intend to broadcast this piece.
Your recent communications raise a number of new and serious allegations, and refer to further
contributors, including Geoffrey Sturgess and Sandip Patel QC. Please confirm whether these are the only
new contributors. In any event, if our client is to have a fair opportunity to respond to these serious
allegations, it is essential that our client’s most appropriate spokesperson gives any interview. This is the
busiest time of the year for our client, and our client is also still in the process of conducting mediations
UK - 202683562.2
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POL00150229
POL00150229
under its Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme. The most appropriate spokesperson is engaged in
mediation scheme work today and tomorrow. Nonetheless, our client has made every effort to
accommodate you, and has therefore offered you an interview in the late afternoon tomorrow, Tuesday 16
December (see the email of our client’s Mark Davies to your Ingrid Kelly of 10.28am on 14 December).
Ms Kelly has rejected this out of hand, insisting that the interview must take place today. She has offered
no reason for this. Our client cannot see why an interview conducted a full 24 hours before what we
understand is the intended time of broadcast cannot be included.
Every effort has been made to make our client’s interviewee available, but your insistence on allowing
barely more than one working day for the interview to take place, without giving reasons for the urgency, is
not a fair and appropriate deadline for our client’s response. The alternative of a brief “sofa interview”,
following a film broadcast without a full filmed interview with our client’s proper representative, also does
not represent a fair opportunity to respond to these serious allegations.
We consider that you must have known that you were proposing to run a further story on these issues well
in advance of last Friday and that, in the circumstances, you should have given our client proper notice
before any intended broadcast. In any event, there is no reason why an interview should not have been
conducted tomorrow.
In the circumstances our client requests that the broadcast be postponed until it has had a fair opportunity
to respond to the allegations made. There is no urgency in reporting on this matter such that the broadcast
needs to take place this week. To go ahead with the broadcast without our client having a proper
opportunity to respond, in the light of the serious allegations raised in the email sent to our client, would
run a serious risk of significant inaccuracies and damaging statements, which would be likely to
misrepresent the facts and cause serious harm to our client.
Our client has sent you a detailed response to your email of Friday 12 December. If you do proceed with
the broadcast, this response should be included in full. However, at the very least, we urge you to remind
your viewers that any reference to the Horizon system needs to be seen in the context of the approximately
6 million different transactions conducted through the system every day and the tens of thousands of people
in the different subpostoffices who carry on their business using the system with no difficulty; that only a
tiny proportion of Post Offices have reported problems; and that there is no evidence of any negative
impact on consumers. You must also make clear that Post Office put an interviewee forward to respond to
these allegations in full, but that the BBC refused to accommodate this.
All of our client’s rights remain reserved.
Yours faithfully
CMS Cameron McKenna LLP
UK - 202683562.2
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