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.
This is all to the credit of the producers and indeed of Toby Jones who plays postmaster Alan Bates. But it should not have taken a docu-drama to galvanise matters, to alert us to the single biggest scandal in public affairs in a generation. We knew that lives were ruined — some postmasters killed themselves — and that innocent people lost their good name and livelihoods. But however we got to this point it’s time to listen to their demand: that individuals, not institutions, should be accountable for what happened, and should face the consequences.
No strike, for now
The good news is that we’ve been spared a Tube strike, 20 minutes away from what promised to be a week of disruption and immeasurable damage to the London economy. The less good news is that it seems to have come about by the Mayor finding funds, £30 million, for a settlement apparently down the back of a sofa. That elusive plant, the Magic Money Tree, is, it seems, alive in City Hall. The settlement is not conclusive, but it buys time, a useful commodity in an election year. Well done to the Mayor, but now that the unions have discovered that there’s spare cash squirrelled away for the asking, how long before they try the same thing again?
Let it snow
The old gag, that everyone complains about the weather but no one does anything about it, has been confounded by news that London may be due some snow quite soon. Hurrah. Actually, it may be sleet, but fingers crossed.
