The Post Office and the government in the dock

 Subject: The Post Office and the government in the dock

How can one of the doyens of British public life, the Post Office which has been shamed by the ITV broadcast drama revealing not only the shortcomings but the shameful disregard by government of the plight of sub postmasters and mistresses wrongly accused of filching money into their own accounts because of the malfunctioning of the Post Office computer which is supposed to account for money transactions. Over two decades this crisis where the sub postmaster/mistress were accused by the post office of being unable to balance their book and being made to find the shortfall out of their own pocket, to the tune of thousands of pounds and in some cases face prison sentences for wrong doing is close to barbaric. It is claimed that this is the greatest travesty of justice ever recorded in Britain and yet it still continues with the post office dragging its feet to remunerate the personal loss never mind the turmoil of being accused when innocent.

The Post Office has a quasi relationship with the government. In an effort to privatise the PO they were set up as a private company with a board chief exec and chairman but the sole shareholder was the government. When it came to judging the people who ran each post office their legal position and their right of an unbiased hearing it seems that the PO executive were judge and jury and the claims that the problems in the book keeping system were due to the Horizon computer system, not the staff in the sub post offices were rubbished. People committed suicide due to the inequity of their position and whilst slowly the picture emerged of a great wrong the post office, to this day fight each claim for compensation as if their flawed system might not be to blame and therefore a legal case is presented by well paid barristers on the basis that you have to prove your innocence and not that you are innocent until proven guilty.

The whole sorry episode reveals a fundamental fault line between the ordinary person in this country when seeking justice and the power of the executive, be it the Post Office or the Government. The scales have been skewed by the removal of legal aid such that expensive defence against litigation is out of reach for the ordinary person and the unnecessary travesty of justice is becoming more the norm.

It's taken a television drama to wake up public sentiment and rough the feathers of our political class who were, as in so many areas of our public life, simply asleep at the wheel. The ministerial avoidance of this problem has been woeful as has the opposition parties reluctance to force the government to take action.