There are few more telling testimonies to the power of a good drama than the extraordinary effect of ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office which has galvanised securing justice for the 700-odd sub-postmasters who were wrongly accused of fraud and dishonesty as a result of the flaws in the Post Office computer sytem. The wrongful prosecutions happened in 1999 but it was only 20 years later than the Post Office acknowledged problems with the Horizon system and another two years after that when a public inquiry began.
The PM is looking at ways of expediting matters through the legal process; belatedly, ministers are examining whether simply to quash the convictions of all those found guilty rather than examining the cases one by one. Indeed, it was the inability of anyone in power to deal with the scandal as one phenomenon rather than as 700 disparate cases that was so toxic. Ed Davey, the Lib Dem minister with responsibility for the Post Office at the time, is now trying to explain his unquestioning acceptance of the Post Office case. A petition calling for Paula Vennells, the former Post Office boss, to lose her CBE has attracted more than a million signatures.
