The Sub-Postmaster Scandal

 Those who boast that British justice is "the best in the world " and " the envy of the world" and that British enterprise still believes in "fair play" should watch last night's Panorama programme on the sub-postmaster scandal.  I'm told that  present-day Panorama investigative journalism and reporting is but a shadow of its former self, but I found this programme both horrifying and convincing.

Briefly, in the period 2000 to 2014 (that's fourteen years - FOURTEEN YEARS)  a total of 736 sub- postmasters and mistresses were prosecuted for theft, embezzlement or fraud.  Some went to prison (though they were told by the Post Office that they could avoid prison if they admitted to "false accounting,")  Others were fined. 

All were disgraced.  Lots put their own money into the "system"  to avoid prosecution, some selling their houses , even going bankrupt, to finance this. Family lives were disrupted, marriages broken. At least one committed suicide.

The fault, it turns out, was not fraudulent behaviour by the sub-postmasters, but a glitch in the computer system "Horizon," which the Post Office forced them to use.

Two things from the programme stand out to me.

First, when sub-postmasters protested their innocence and said there must be a fault in the system, they were often told by Post Office  officials that they were "the only ones."  Given that there were over 700 prosecutions,  why the the sub-postmasters' union, or similar, did not spot how widespread the accusations were I don't know.  

 What, however, is obvious is that the Post Office officials who  passed on this false information must have known they were lying. Are  they paying the price, with tags round their ankles and spending their days clearing graffiti off the walls, or maybe clearing rubbish from our beaches?  Or are they still in comfortable well-paid jobs?

If the analogy that "fish rot from the head" is valid, them much of the responsibility must lie with the CEO of the Post Office, M/s Paula Vennells, who persisted in pursuing the prosecutions long after it was obvious that the fault lay  "somewhere in the system,"  probably the "Horizon" IT system.  Yet rather than being prosecuted herself, or voluntarily retiring to a nunnery,  she accepted  a CBE and moved into another plum job as Chair of an NHS trust.

We like to tell ourselves that in England  (this precedes the formation of the UK) the "little man" has been protected against the powers of the mighty ever since  Magna Carta was sealed  in 1215.  

We clearly need to take  a long hard look at the might of corporate power in our country, which appears to be as indifferent to justice and fair play as the the mighty in Downing Street.