The government must finally take decisive action on the Post Office scandal

It should not have taken the powerful, moving ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, to shame our politicians into giving their attention, long deserved, to the Horizon IT scandal, in which hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly accused of theft and false accounting. It has rightly been called “the most widespread miscarriage of justice” in British history.

More than 700 subpostmasters were convicted before the Post Office stopped taking action against them in 2019, some 10 years after the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance began its campaign. Many were jailed, made bankrupt, lost their homes and shamed in their local communities. At least four died by suicide and about 60 others died while awaiting compensation.

Vested interests in the Post Office management and Fujitsu, the Japanese computer firm that built, installed and ran the faulty Horizon system, did their level best to obfuscate and deny justice at every turn, forcing more than 500 subpostmasters to take High Court action after a mediation scheme collapsed. Although they won their legal battle in 2019, many received only £8,000; these payments should now be enhanced, and people who were bullied into paying money to the Post Office that they did not owe should be recompensed.

It is outrageous that only 83 convictions have so far been overturned. Last week’s ITV programme has already given another 70 wronged subpostmasters the confidence to come forward, and others will surely follow. Until recently, James Arbuthnot, a Conservative peer and former MP, ploughed a lonely parliamentary furrow on the scandal. But the issue has now “cut through”, in the spin doctors’ language, to a much wider audience and it will be firmly on the agenda when the Commons returns from its Christmas break on Monday.

It is welcome that the wheels in Whitehall are finally turning, albeit belatedly. Rishi Sunak confirmed on Sunday that the government is “looking at” the option of exonerating all the subpostmasters affected. This should be done without delay through emergency legislation.

Whatever the legal obstacles, the government must find a way to ensure all the victims receive speedy, automatic and generous compensation, cutting through the red tape tying up three separate compensation schemes.

The Post Office should lose its power to make private prosecutions and its role in the appeal process; it cannot be judge and jury when it should be in the dock. The government should consider trying to recoup money from Fujitsu, which has won almost 200 public sector contracts worth an estimated £6.7bn in the past decade, to help fund compensation payments.

The subpostmasters rightly describe themselves as “little people” battling against an unsympathetic Post Office management and an IT giant. The Post Office is state-owned, and so serious questions should be asked at the public inquiry now underway of the ministers and civil servants who failed in their duty to hold the business to account. They include Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, who was postal affairs minister in the coalition government from 2010-12 and, rarely for a Lib Dem, had an opportunity to put right the wrongs. His spokesperson says he now “bitterly regrets that the Post Office was not honest with him” and that it “was lying on an industrial scale”.

Paula Vennells, the company’s chief executive from 2010-19, was paid more than £4.5m, including bonuses of £2.2m. She should relinquish the CBE she was awarded in 2019 for services to the Post Office – if she does not, the Cabinet Office should rescind the honour. Ms Vennells has said she is “truly sorry for the suffering caused”. There has been no word from Adam Crozier, who was chief executive of Royal Mail from 2003-10, when the Post Office was still part of it. He should be called before the inquiry.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Mr Sunak and his ministers must ensure not only that the subpostmasters receive belated justice, but also that those guilty of wrongdoing are held responsible. The Metropolitan Police’s investigation is another welcome sign the affair is finally being taken seriously.

Although the initial failures did not happen on the Sunak government’s watch, and concerns were first raised in 2009 when Labour was in power, it falls to today’s ministers to speedily put right the mistakes of their predecessors and a woeful Post Office management. If they do not, now that this scandal is on the public’s radar, the current government will deserve to pay a price.