OBE awarded to legal expert working to support Post Office Scandal victims

A legal expert whose pioneering work has helped to support victims of the Post Office Scandal in their quest for justice has been awarded OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours.

Professor Richard Moorhead, from the University of Exeter, has spent three decades working to improve legal ethics and the quality and accessibility of lawyers and courts.

His early submissions to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry helped to ensure the role of lawyers in miscarriages of justice will be properly considered. They were described as powerful, by Chair Sir Wyn Williams, when accepting Professor Moorhead’s recommendation to lift legal professional privilege.

Professor Moorhead is the principal investigator on the Post Office Project, working with Dr Sally Day, Professor Rebecca Helm, Dr Karen Nokes and Paul Gilbert. The team was awarded the ESRC prize for outstanding Societal Impact in 2024 and Professor Moorhead was invited to give the Hamlyn lectures, in 2024. His topic was Frail Professionalism, a topic he returns to in a book due to be published in August which will be open access as a result of ESRC funding.

Professor 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.”

Professor Moorhead was the first in his family to go to university and qualified as a solicitor doing white collar criminal defence. He said: “I loved practice, especially the people, but I wanted something with slightly wider horizons.”

His career has taken him from the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, via Cardiff University and UCL, to the University of Exeter. His international standing was cemented recently by a part-time role at Monash University in Australia where he teaches Masters and JD students on lawyers, business and ethics.

Professor Moorhead spends considerable energy working with practitioners, through workshops and conferences, at home and abroad. His agenda-setting blogs Lawyerwatch and Thoughts on the Post Office Scandal, are much read by lawyers, policymakers, and anyone interested in the Post Office Scandal.

He said: “Lifting privilege has exposed behaviour that has been jaw-dropping. Dozens of lawyers, senior and junior, barrister, solicitors, and in-house lawyers are in the spotlight. The inquiry exposed incompetence, cynicism, and impropriety spanning 20 years. Lawyer regulators and the police are poised to act.”

Professor Moorhead was appointed to the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board in 2023, with Lord Beamish and Lord Arbuthnot, chaired by Professor Chris Hodges. The board, supported by Post Office Project research, have argued for better compensation, a scheme for family members, and unparalleled action to quash criminal convictions en masse.

Paying tribute to his colleagues on the Board and the Post Office Project, as well as the civil servants and politicians who have taken the scandal seriously, Professor Moorhead said: “I am thrilled but it is not false modesty to say others deserve much more credit than I do. And there is a great deal more to do. Many Post Office victims have been compensated but others have not. Accountability has yet to come through the courts and the regulators. The profession’s complacency is already rising again and remains to be challenged. We will shortly be publishing work that reminds us that the Scandal is not a one off, and we are developing practical training tools lawyers as well as suggestions for reform that we hope will make such awful behaviour less likely than it is right now. Work for accountability and reform must gather pace rather than dust.”