A legal academic who has devoted recent years to raising awareness of the Post Office scandal has been made an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours.
Professor Richard Moorhead, who previously practised as a solicitor, was also recognised for his three decades of working to improve legal ethics and the quality and accessibility of lawyers and the courts.
Moorhead, from the University of Exeter, is the principal investigator on the Post Office Project and his early submissions to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry helped to ensure that the role of lawyers in miscarriages of justice will be properly considered. His contribution was praised by the inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams and he has gained a reputation for forensic analysis of lawyers’ role in the scandal and his backing for the sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted or pursued through the courts based on losses shown up through the faulty Horizon system.
Moorhead said: ‘Whilst delighted and not a little proud, it is important to say that a good dollop of luck and the support of those around me is what makes for moments like these.
‘It is particularly sobering that my most important contributions have been built on the Post Office scandal. It has been a galvanising story of human misery and I owe a profound debt to the decency of the victims who are role-models for us all. Working on their experiences has enriched my life immeasurably. Their treatment holds up a mirror to an all-too-common corporate, professional, and legal culture that can ruin lives.’
Moorhead was the first in his family to go to university and qualified as a solicitor doing white collar criminal defence. He enjoyed practice, especially the people, but said he wanted something with wider horizons.
His career has taken him from the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, via Cardiff University and UCL, to the University of Exeter.
The Post Office Project, on which he has worked with Dr Sally Day, Professor Rebecca Helm, Dr Karen Nokes and Paul Gilbert, continues to promote lawyer ethics and work towards a better criminal justice system. Moorhead said there is some way to go to learn the lessons of the Post Office scandal.
‘Many Post Office victims have been compensated but others have not,’ he added. ‘Accountability has yet to come through the courts and the regulators. The profession’s complacency is already rising again and remains to be challenged.’
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