Ex-post office operator recognised for exposing Horizon IT scandal, while Tracey Emin becomes a dame and Gordon Brown a companion of honour

The Post Office campaigner Alan Bates has been knighted in the king’s birthday honours in recognition of his role in exposing the Horizon IT scandal, one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history.

The former post office operator and founder of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance said he was accepting the honour “on behalf of the group” of branch operators and the “horrendous things that had happened to them.”

Ravinder Naga, who says he falsely confessed, may be covered by law that came into effect in Scotland on Friday

The son of a post office operator who says he admitted stealing £35,000 to save his mother from prison may be covered by new legislation exonerating those wrongly convicted in the Horizon scandal, a court has heard.

In February 2010, Ravinder Naga was ordered to complete 300 hours of community service and pay compensation of £35,000 after he confessed to stealing the money from the post office where his mother worked in Greenock, Inverclyde.

Bereaved from scandals including tower block fire, infected blood and Covid-19 gather calling for guarantee that recommendations don’t gather dust

Families bereaved by the Grenfell Tower fire, the infected blood scandal and Covid-19 have called on the next prime minister to guarantee that potentially life-saving ideas that emerge from public inquiries and emergency planning exercises are acted upon.

They want a new mechanism to increase public confidence that reports that cost hundreds of millions of pounds to produce won’t gather dust and will instead be followed up. They will issue their joint demand together beneath the ruin of Grenfell Tower after joining hundreds of members of the west London community in a silent march on Friday evening to mark the seventh anniversary of the blaze that killed 72 people, including 18 children.

Fifty-eight people and 19 companies and organisations suspected by police of crimes related to Grenfell brace for the publication of the final public inquiry report into the disaster on 4 September.

The Fire Brigades Union warned Keir Starmer that a Labour government must end the deregulation of building standards, which was a key cause of the Grenfell disaster, to ensure 1.5m new homes it has pledged over the next parliament are safe.

The London Eye will be illuminated in green lights on Friday night in commemoration.

Representatives for thousands of high-rise leaseholders said the pace of making existing homes affected by Grenfell-style fire defects remains “shockingly slow – and at this rate, it could take decades”.

Architects and landscape designers have started putting together competing pitches for a permanent memorial on the site of the west London tower block that is expected to be partially or completely demolished.

External counsel advised in 2013 that accounting errors in Horizon system should be corrected without risking admission of culpability

An external lawyer advised the Post Office to remove apologies from letters sent to post office operators and “maintain a more cold, procedural approach”, a public inquiry has heard.

The inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal was told that Andrew Parsons, a partner at the law firm Womble Bond Dickinson who advised the Post Office for more than seven years, wrote that apologising to the operators would be “admitting some degree of culpability”.

The broadcaster, free of the paralysing attention focused on the BBC, has defined many of the moments on which July’s vote might hinge

ITV is leading the way during this election campaign, producing many of the moments that have defined the contest. Talk to people at the broadcaster and they will tell you it is more confident than the BBC, thanks to a scrappier commercial mindset; it has fewer resources so has to punch harder.

But it is also free of the BBC’s paralysing knowledge that every editorial decision will be scrutinised by rightwing media outlets – and a government that would like to abolish the licence fee. As a result, even in an era when live TV ratings are in steep decline, the channel has succeeded in capturing (and provoking) some of the growing public anger against the Conservative government.