Falsely accused postmasters need answers for their plight

IN a list of most respected individuals in any tight-knit community there is no question that the postmaster or postmistress would come very high up the rankings.

Despite the decline of village shops and post offices and the sad fact that too many have been lost, there are still villages across our region and beyond where the post office plays a vital part in life, whether in a village, city suburb or small town.

So when the Horizon scandal broke, suggesting scores of these erstwhile pillars of the community had all apparently turned to crime, alarm bells should have been sounding. Instead, it seems, from the bosses at the Post Office to many politicians and prosecutors, the idea that there could have been a catastrophic mistake failed to gain traction.

As a result blameless individuals either found themselves forced to use their own money to balance the accounts in their Post Office businesses or were arrested, charged and, in some appalling cases, sent to jail. The impact on a group of people who had deservedly earned the highest possible reputation for their intregrity, was devastating.

Yesterday 39 of those individuals who still had a stain on their character had it, belatedly, removed. The Court of Appeal cleared the names of the former subpostmasters who had been convicted and even jailed for theft, fraud and false accounting. The nightmare for them is over.

But what a nightmare. There can be few more terrifying things in a democratic society where the rule of law provides the bedrock by which most people live, to be falsely accused of a crime you did not commit and then find it impossible to persuade your accusers of your innocence.

At the heart of this scandal was the Horizon computer system and its unreliability. At the appeal hearing yesterday Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Picken and Mrs Justice Farbey, said the Post Office “knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon” and had a “clear duty to investigate” the system’s defects.

But, the judge went on, the Post Office “consistently asserted that Horizon was robust and reliable”, and “effectively steamrolled over any subpostmaster who sought to challenge its accuracy.”

The resulting impact on people’s lives and the damage done is almost incalculable. As Lord Justice Holroyde said: “Post Office Limited’s failures of investigation and disclosure were so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ‘Horizon cases’ an affront to the conscience of the court.”

But if the reputation of those individuals who ran Post Offices has now been restored, the reputation of the organisation for which they once worked and which was once also held in high esteem by the British people remains badly damaged. Only when the victims have been compensated and those who pursued them through the courts, even when their innocence seemed undeniable have been punished, can that reputation begin to be repaired.

This story is not over. A full investigation is required to find out where mistakes were made and who by. Those who have lived with this stigma deserve nothing less.