It is for the courts to quash the Post Office convictions – and then prosecute the guilty

Editorial: Rather than rushing through an act of parliament to clear the names of those wrongly convicted of theft – which would set a dangerous legal precedent – there is a better way for justice to be done

(Dave Brown)

Bowing to intense political and public pressure, and perhaps pre-empting any forcible forfeiture, the former chief executive of the Post Office, Paula Vennells, has handed back her CBE with immediate effect. Though late in coming, this gesture represents another small step forward in the subpostmasters’ long walk to justice.

Ms Vennells has done the right thing, and said she is “truly sorry for the devastation caused to the subpostmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system”.

She knows better than most that she still has many questions to answer about her role in the scandal, and about the decisions she made as head of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019. So, too, do her predecessors in charge, Adam Crozier and Dame Moya Greene. They have provided witness evidence to the current judge-led public inquiry, but that is unlikely to be the end of the matter.

How was it that no one in the Post Office paused to consider why there was such a sudden epidemic of supposed dishonesty at the turn of the millennium? Why were individual Post Office branch managers informed that they were the only ones whose accounts didn’t add up? Who told the various chief executives that Horizon didn’t work, and when?

The public, let alone the wronged branch managers, are rightly puzzled as to why, in the context of the greatest mass miscarriage of justice in British history, not one single Post Office executive has received so much as a fixed penalty notice. Two decades on from when the problems emerged – and five years after the High Court ruled that the Fujitsu Horizon software was indeed faulty – unbelievably, there has been no accountability.

For now, the quest for exoneration and compensation for the subpostmasters remains the priority. In a sometimes almost panicky rush to make up for neglecting the scandal for so many years, the politicians are now trying to outdo each other in the rush to put things right. An observer could almost hear the clatter of a bandwagon during the debate in a crowded Commons chamber during the debate on Monday evening.

The latest suggestion is for a special act of parliament to be rushed through, which would summarily quash all of the relevant wrongful convictions resulting from the malign workings of the Horizon software. This has been put forward by two former lord chancellors – Robert Buckland, a Tory, and Labour’s Charlie Falconer – as an “exceptional” measure in the circumstances.

There is a lot to be said, after a decade of delay and obfuscation, for delivering a clean break without further ado – but it would set a dangerous precedent, and, in effect, replace one subversion of the justice system with another. It cannot sit right that any parliamentary majority, however well intentioned, is able to override the judgment of an independent judiciary. Indeed, it is most likely, for that reason, that it would be unconstitutional, as a form of retrospective legislation notwithstanding the sovereignty of parliament.

The idea of a succession of royal pardons is also unsuitable: they do not reverse or quash a conviction, but merely forgive it, which would be wrong. Fortunately, there is a better way to achieve the same ends, and without any unnecessary stalling.

As Dominic Grieve, another former lord chancellor and justice secretary, has advised, the Criminal Cases Review Commission could be given an enhanced remit to review the outstanding and indeed fresh cases, and, once referred to the Court of Appeal, the convictions could be quashed rapidly. This would protect the checks and balances in the constitution, and would formally restore the reputation of each survivor in the most authoritative manner – as an independent judicial assessment rather than a political act.

The justice system has to be made to work with unaccustomed pace, even if it will be a struggle. Differences in the legal framework in both Scotland and Northern Ireland make it more difficult to do this, but a similar procedure could still be applied. The justice secretary, Alex Chalk, alongside his counterparts and his colleagues in the courts, should simply get on with it – and then pursue those in the Post Office who did the wrong thing for so long.