12 Dec 2024

UK: Syria asylum claims paused, house build overhaul,

From Nine To Noon, 9:45 am on 12 December 2024
A general view of the exterior of the Village Shop and Post Office in South Warnborough near Odiham, on January 10, 2024. Jo Hamilton, The former postmistress of the village shop was wrongly convicted of theft due to the Post Office Horizon scandal. Her conviction was quashed in 2021 when she was found to be a victim of a faulty accounting system. 
Between 1999 and 2015, some 700 Post Office branch managers were prosecuted, sometimes to the point of having their lives shattered, based on information from accounting software called Horizon, installed by Japanese tech giant Fujitsu at the end of the 1990s. A public inquiry into the scandal opened in February 2022 but has yet to examine who at the top of the Post Office knew what and when. On January 10, 2024, the former boss of the Post Office Paula Vennells said she would return a royal honour received from Queen Elizabeth II, as public anger mounts.

The Post Office in South Warnborough. Its former postmistress was wrongly convicted of theft due to the Post Office Horizon scandal and her conviction was quashed in 2021 when she was found to be a victim of a faulty accounting system. Photo: AFP

He'll look at the UK's resounding welcome to the toppling of Bashar al-Assad, while it assesses the implications of the coup and pauses asylum claims.

The government has announced more details on how it plans to overhaul planning rules to ramp up housebuilding, it's also set out a 10-year prison capacity plan.

And police say they're to pursue dozens of people for prosecution over the Post Office scandal.

Matt Dathan is Home Affairs Editor at The Times

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