today's UK story

Report on Post Office scandal lays bare the 'human cost'

What happened
At least 13 people falsely accused of wrongdoing during the Post Office scandal may have taken their own lives due to the claims, the first part of a public inquiry into the Horizon IT failures has found. Others have described considering suicide, suffering relationship breakdowns, poor mental health and alcoholism.

Who said what
The false accusations made against hundreds of postmasters had "disastrous consequences", said inquiry chair Wyn Williams (pictured above). Some senior employees at the Post Office knew that the IT system could produce accounts that were "illusory rather than real", he said, but maintained that they were accurate.

My family were "branded thieves and liars", said Millie Castleton, daughter of Lee Castleton, one of the first postmasters prosecuted. I still "find it so incredibly hard to trust anyone", she told the inquiry.

The report has "emphasised the human cost of the scandal", said ITV, and sets out 19 recommendations, which the government has said it will respond to in Parliament.

What next?
The inquiry's conclusions on "who was at fault" are "expected in the coming months", said London's The Standard. Williams did "tease" what these will be, saying the postmasters were "victims of wholly unacceptable behaviour" from the Post Office and Fujitsu.

Today's POLITICS story

Smartphones to sound alarm in September

What happened
The UK will test its emergency alert system on 7 September. Smartphones on 4G or 5G networks will vibrate, make a siren sound and display a message.

Who said what
"Just like the fire alarm in your house, it's important that we test the system so we know it will work if we need it," said Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden.

This will be only the second national test, said Sky News, but five alerts have been sent out during "real emergencies", including warning of dangerous weather and when "an unexploded Second World War bomb was due to be moved by the military". The last test in 2023 highlighted "technical issues", said the BBC, so this next one will check if the system is working better.

What next?
A public information campaign will run over the summer, with vulnerable groups a particular focus. It comes after domestic abuse charities warned that the system could alert an abuser to a hidden phone. Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney has also cautioned that "millions of people" without phones, signal or battery could miss an emergency alert.

It's not all bad

An aviation ecologist conducting an aerial bird survey in the Florida Everglades has stumbled upon the largest gathering of flamingos seen in the area since 2014. Mark Cook shared pictures of the 125-strong flock – also known as a flamboyance – in a Facebook post. But he was unable to get up close, writing: "Unfortunately, it's almost impossible not to spook a large group of flamingos from a helicopter and they rapidly took flight."

under the radar

Fake will fraudsters are snatching estates

An alarming rise in the number of fake wills is depriving heirs of their rightful inheritance, adding to the pain of grieving loved ones.

The BBC has found "mounting evidence" that a criminal gang is "carrying out systematic will fraud", stealing "millions of pounds" from the estates of dead people who haven't left a will.

In several cases individuals unknown to the deceased have presented wills naming themselves as the sole beneficiary, with clear signs that the documents were forged. The suspicious wills are "strikingly simplistic", said probate experts Fraser and Fraser, often one or two pages long, and lacking the "usual legal phrasing and safeguards".

Entire estates are left to one or two individuals in the dodgy documents, "invariably young Hungarians" with "no prior connection to the deceased".

To identify their targets, the criminals use the Bona Vacantia register, which lists unclaimed estates, and quickly produce fraudulent wills with themselves as the beneficiary. To reduce the chances of scrutiny, they often file the claim just under the inheritance tax threshold, despite the value of the properties being significantly higher.

And it's not just strangers. People "close to the deceased", such as family, friends, neighbours and carers, sometimes commit amateur will fraud, said probate experts Anglia Research. "Social embarrassment" and a "lack of firm evidence" often mean that their deceit goes "undetected and uncorrected".

The Ministry of Justice said it was "working with law enforcement to ensure that criminals feel the full force of the law".

on this day

9 July 2011

South Sudan declared its independence from Sudan after its people overwhelmingly voted for secession in a referendum. The US Department of State advises against travelling to the still war-torn nation – but the Trump administration has just won the right to deport people there.

Today's newspapers

'Blood on its hands'

The Post Office has "blood on its hands", campaigners say in the Daily Mail, after the first report from the official inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal. And the UK faces "daunting" risks to public finances according to a debt warning from the independent budget watchdog, reports the Financial Times.

See the newspaper front pages

tall tale

Around the bend

The Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has sacked seven engineers after a £1.6 million bridge was built with a potentially dangerous right-angle bend. Chief engineer V.D. Verma claimed that the lack of available land on one side of the 646-metre-long bridge near Bhopal meant "there was no other option". But after much ridicule and criticism, the state government said "necessary corrections" would be made to the bridge before it is opened to the public.

Morning Report was written and edited by Hollie Clemence, Chas Newkey-Burden, Elliott Goat, Harriet Marsden and Rebecca Messina, with illustrations from Julia Wytrazek.