We are delighted to invite you to read TGC’s first newsletter on collective redress and business & human rights.

The main aim of this newsletter is to offer practitioners punchy, and hopefully interesting, takes on some topical issues. We want to keep you (and ourselves) up to date with recent developments, where we have identified something interesting to say.

This first edition drops at a moment when collective redress is front page news. ITV’s four-part drama ‘Mr Bates v The Post Office’ has caught fire in the public consciousness, in a way that victims, campaigners, lawyers and the few journalists who had been pursuing these issues for years never managed.

For some, Mr Justice Fraser’s judgment in Alan Bates and others v Post Office Limited (No. 6 – “Horizon Issues”) [2019] EWHC 3408 (QB) is perhaps the best example of the need for, and potential of, collective redress (and litigation funding for that matter). Absent ready access to civil legal aid, or criminal legal aid for that matter, individual sub-postmasters had found it impossibly difficult to break through the mantra that each individual sub-postmaster was “the only one”, about whom the computer said “guilty”.

A funded GLO brought the promise of change on the horizon.

The Post Office scandal is, however, a moment for candid introspection for all who work in the area of collective redress and business and human rights. It cannot be right that our legal system perpetuated (and still perpetuates) such injustices. What are we going to do about it? What about other cases that do not involve people as resourceful and persistent as Mr Bates and his colleagues?

It is, of course, easier to pose questions than provide answers. But it is our sincere hope that this newsletter will be of some interest to you. If you would like to contribute to future editions, please get in touch.

Each post is, of course, the author’s individual view alone and not legal advice.

Russell Hopkins and Paul Erdunast