This was ended when Michael Jackson, at the time the channel’s chief executive, decided that the series was a “bit 1980s” and it was axed.Mr Jessel still works for the BBC, but since 2000 he has spent half his time working as a commissioner for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which examines suspected miscarriages of justice. He was given the job at the CCRC on the condition that he cannot oversee or investigate any cases that he has previously worked on.”The new rock ‘n’ roll in television is secret cameras. We always tried to find new evidence that was not available at the time of the conviction. Sometimes you would spend a lot of time investigating cases and discover new information that showed the subject’s guilt. They are more interested in what Mr Jessel calls “secret camera television”, in which reporters use hidden cameras to film illegal or subversive acts.But a decade ago Mr Jessel and a small team of researchers were given the opportunity to scrutinise convictions where there was a whiff of corruption or incompetence.”It was very labour-intensive. But Mr Jessel, the investigative journalist who presented the Channel 4 series throughout the 1990s, and BBC’s Rough Justice, believes that type of campaigning television is a thing of the past.Television executives, he says, are extremely reluctant to invest time and money in examining unglamorous miscarriage of justice cases. Mr Blackburn, who was convicted at the age of 15, was quick to credit the investigative team from Mr Jessel’s Trial and Error television programme for providing the breakthrough in his case.Only one of the convictions in the 1994 book, also called Trial and Error, that was marked out as a miscarriage still stands A success rate of eight out of nine is a remarkable record.

No peerages are included in the list.Among the senior civil servants honoured is Gus O’Donnell, permanent secretary at the Treasury, who is given a knighthood. He is tipped to be the next Cabinet Secretary later this year.The head of MI5, Elizabeth Manningham-Buller is awarded the rare honour of Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath, the second woman to hold the post in its 95-year history.. Eleven years ago David Jessel was dining with his publisher to celebrate his new book, which highlighted nine suspected miscarriages of justice.
“I told my publisher, ‘I bet you within a decade all of these cases come good’ – I think the winner got lunch,” recalled Mr Jessel.Paul Blackburn, who spent 25 years in jail for an attempted murder, became the eighth person to have his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal last month. He announced his departure from Downing Street after the general election.This year’s Birthday Honours are free from the traditional clutch of gongs for politicians.

The architect of Labour’s public sector reforms has been rewarded with a knighthood. Michael Barber, the head of Tony Blair’s Downing Street Delivery Unit, made his name at the Department for Education and Skills.
As head of the DfES’s Standards and Effectiveness Unit, he drove through the introduction of the national literacy and numeracy hour in primary schools. But one source said the UK would settle for nothing less than a blanket commitment to cancel debts.Mr Brown said the US/UK proposal needed approval from all countries to ensure they made up for the shortfall in income for international institutions such as the World Bank.He highlighted Malawi, where one in five people are HIV positive, that spends more on debt interest than health – and Zambia, where 40 per cent of women cannot read or write, but is spending more on debt interest than education.There was no sign the UK had persuaded the US to support a plan to double aid to $100bn a year by borrowing money on capital markets.. He added that 18 countries would have their $40bn debt of wiped out immediately, saving them aid payments of $15bn over the next decade.