Post Office Scandal-- a " totally historic " first !

Let’s first note the failure of the UK #criminaljustice system in matters relating to #PostofficeScandal, now accepted as the biggest ever miscarriage of justice in UK legal history and spanning more than 20 years. In a unprecedented move (totally “historic”, it should be said) , the government will introduce legislation later today (as below) to quash sub postmasters’ convictions. ?As a result of the Scandal and its effects,?including a failure of the system of criminal justice , people got sick , many died. More will get sick and more will die. That is the reality. Ignore the spin

The proposed Post Office (Horizon?System) Offences Bill "marks an important step forward in finally clearing" the names of hundreds of wronged branch managers who have had their lives "callously torn apart", Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said

The Bill, which it is hoped will become law before the summer, will quash convictions of nearly 1,000 sub postmasters who were prosecuted wrongly using evidence from the discredited #Horizon #IT system supplied and still operated by #Fujitsu. Of course it was much worse than that as readers will know , but that is how the media is describing. Better perhaps to say, “ Brand protection art all costs and never mind all of the collateral damage.”

Downing Street said that under the law, convictions will be automatically quashed if they meet the following criteria:

? The convictions were prosecuted by the Post Office or Crown Prosecution Service

? They were for offences carried out in connection with Post Office business between 1996 and 2018

? They were for relevant offences such as theft, fraud and false accounting

? They were against sub-postmasters, their employees, officers, family members or direct employees of the Post Office working in a Post Office that used the Horizon system software.

The judiciary is concerned because it feels the government is interfering in its role.?The criminal justice system has failed 00s of sub postmasters and their families " big time" since before 2000. To hear the chief justice suggest these 00s of sub postmasters should use the same discredited system for their appeals, shows, to my mind an arrogance and a lack of understanding of what the postmaster have gone through / are still going through. And if a few of the wrongly convicted are in fact guilty, so what. Listen to their stories ( they are everywhere), then make up your own minds).

The Post Office has told ministers it would have opposed appeals by nearly half of the?sub-postmasters convicted, arguing that non-Horizon evidence supported the convictions.?

I am not sure many people in the real world, (not the fantasy world in which Post Office and its advisors seem to operate) , have any faith in utterances from that organisation – particularly after the “show “ put on by its CEO, #NickRead, in front of a Commons Select Committee the other week. When a government owned organisation is accused openly of perverting the course of justice and corruption, it and its board and its sole shareholder, have nowhere much left to hide.

Yet even now, those who destroyed so many lives, including #directors and senior #management of #PostOffice, internal and external #lawyers, #PostOffice #Investigators, #ministers and #civilservants, sit smirking while they play "pass the blame"?or the “don’t ask me , I just can’t remember”, game.

Post Office legal fees in the last five years exceed ￡200,000,000. How "marvellous" to be able to use taxpayers’ money to keep on denying the facts.

I don’t always agree with her , but I do with this short statement from Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch : "It is absolutely right that we sweep away the convictions wrongly given to postmasters on the basis of bad evidence, and it is a disgrace that they were ever pursued by the Post Office."