A year after the Horizon Post Office scandal was exposed, victims are still waiting for justice

Editorial: After the initial prosecutions and the cover-ups, these wronged subpostmasters – their lives ruined, mental and physical health fractured, reputations shattered – are having to endure a third circle of hell

It is almost a year on from the broadcast of the ITV dramatisation Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which triggered an almost unprecedented wave of national outrage. Many of the victims of the scandal remain unpaid – and those criminally implicated in the cover-up are years from facing justice.

Since New Year’s Day 2024 – when Toby Jones, Monica Dolan, Julie Hesmondhalgh and the other members of the cast injected life and emotion into what had been a shamefully neglected episode in our national life – it seems the bureaucratic resistance and political inertia is almost as bad as it ever was.

After the initial prosecutions and the cover-ups, these wronged subpostmasters – their lives ruined, mental and physical health fractured, reputations shattered – are having to endure a third circle of hell. Even after all the publicity and a change of government, justice is still delayed and thus, as the adage goes, denied. For some of those older people affected by the scandal, it is too late; for others, it is distressing to see their exoneration and compensation come to pass – and to witness those who were responsible for their suffering continue to get away with it.

Entirely consistent with this official torpor, only now is a concerted police inquiry underway into the crimes of perjury and perversion of the course of justice. Many misdeeds must have been committed by various figures in the Post Office, Fujitsu and various legal firms who tried to deny, obfuscate and generally deceive their way out of trouble when the truth about the Horizon system began to emerge, now more than a decade ago.

Not a single person has yet been arraigned on such charges – and the prospects for swift justice are, sadly, poor. The police are devoting 100 officers from across the country to investigate those responsible for wrongful prosecutions of subpostmasters and the continuing deception about the reliability of the disastrous Horizon IT systems that lay behind their actions.

It should be a matter for the courts, not the media, to determine culpability – and to make a sound judgement about how far people did not know the actual truth at the time. That includes all those concerned, from the Post Office fraud investigators to IT specialists to board members.

From what can be discerned from the evidence given at the comprehensive public inquiry chaired by Sir Wyn Williams, some people – those working at Horizon, at Fujitsu, or in a legal capacity – certainly have a case to answer. Suspects have already been identified. Yet the inquiry itself is now an unwilling impediment to securing justice.

The senior police officer in charge of the criminal investigations, Commander Stephen Clayman, concedes: “I cannot make promises that this will be a fast process. An investigation of this size must continue to be undertaken meticulously and methodically and will take time.”

The vast web of public and private prosecutions – involving at least 1,500 victims and a million and a half documents – hugely complicates proceedings, but there seems no good reason to have to wait for the public inquiry to publish its findings before charges are levelled and potential criminals put on trial. As things stand, that may not happen until 2027, almost two decades since the first inklings that there was something very wrong with the software the Post Office insisted its subpostmasters adopted.

Meanwhile, whatever the logistics of prosecuting those involved in the cover-up, hundreds of post office managers are still awaiting compensation – despite the previous government saying that those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts. As Sir Alan Bates himself told the Commons business select committee as recently as last month: “There are people well into their eighties now that are still suffering.”

He complained that, despite Sir Keir Starmer’s public concern, he had written twice to the prime minister but received no response – which has since been rectified. It seems that March next year is the current deadline to deliver “substantial redress”, but even then there will be more waiting. That feels wrong.

The Post Office Horizon scandal is the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history. It is time justice was delivered – with some sense of urgency. Perhaps ITV might consider screening a repeat of its award-winning drama.