The welcome but belated recognition by MPs of the terrible injustice done to subpostmasters needs reflection after more urgent issues are addressed (Horizon scandal: hundreds of post office operators to have convictions quashed, 10 January).
We should accept that failures will happen, but our political institutions are poorly suited to handling this inevitability. Instead, trivial party point-scoring takes precedence over serious scrutiny. Two decades ago, this resulted in Labour boasting of the speed with which it was introducing Horizon.
On 15 February 2001, the then competitiveness minister, Alan Johnson, told the Commons: “Horizon is not outdated technology. We are wiring up 40,000 serving positions at 18,500 post offices at a rate of 300 a week. It has been extremely successful … Number of post offices computerised under the previous government – nil. Number of post office computerised under this government so far – 17,560.”
On 24 March 2004, the then secretary of state for trade and industry, Patricia Hewitt, said: “We decided that there was no point in rescuing that absurd out-of-date Conservative proposition for a benefit payment card. Instead, we invested the best part of £500m in the Horizon platform ... Thanks to the investment and the decisions that we have made, the Horizon platform and the automation of the post offices have now modernised post offices.”
These claims were not made because Johnson and Hewitt were bad people or mendacious. Speed of progress was mistaken for effectiveness and, as today’s politicians, they worked in a culture in which transparency and accountability for public contracts was absent.
Mike Sheaff
Plymouth
• Gaby Hinsliff (A TV drama is finally triggering action for Post Office victims. Why did it take so long?, 8 January) and your editorial (8 January) make valid points in relation to the underlying issues in the scandal. What seems to have been missing from the commentaries is an exploration of the wider context of new computer systems in the 1990s.
A lot of organisations were switching to large-scale computer systems during this decade and many of them were not fit for purpose. Wessex Health Authority and the London Stock Exchange come to mind. Unfortunately, the scapegoating nature of our society makes it difficult for individuals to own up to mistakes and put their reputations and jobs on the line. The public sector department I worked in had a similar problem, introducing a complex system that had already failed in a neighbouring local authority. Due diligence often gave way to glib sales pitches and the political desire to be seen to be ahead of the game.
Fortunately, common sense prevailed in our case because of management’s willingness to listen and learn, and a corporate approach was adopted with the in-house development of a replacement system, which was publicised as an updated version of the original rather than a completely new system. Reputations and jobs saved, as well as a much-improved service.
Name and address supplied
• One aspect of this appalling saga that deserves highlighting is the fact that these were private prosecutions. Having spent a career working within the criminal justice system, I recognise that alleged offences investigated by the police and prosecuted independently by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are far from immune to miscarriages of justice. But when the powerful claim to be financially wronged and can then investigate and prosecute ordinary people in the criminal courts with no equality of arms, the chances of a miscarriage increase significantly.
Only the mega wealthy and organisations with deep pockets can afford private prosecutions. They should be scrapped, and the police and CPS (Serious Fraud Office, etc) properly resourced to investigate alleged fraud. The police investigation into individuals within the Post Office and Fujitsu and their lawyers must leave no stone unturned. All prosecutors, public and private, including the Post Office, have clear duties to disclose materials to the defence which undermine their case. Did that happen here?
Alan Fox
Northop Hall, Flintshire
• Paula Vennells is indeed heavily implicated in the Post Office scandal (Former Post Office chief hands back CBE as Horizon scandal intensifies, 9 January), but it is worth noting that the first prosecutions of postmasters occurred long before she joined the Post Office, and the aggressive denials of wrongdoing continued well after she had left.
This is a case of corporate and government lies and corruption, and should uncover guilty people all the way from Fujitsu and the cover-up of the faults in the Horizon system, through to the managers and auditors who failed to investigate any of the software problems reported by hundreds of users, the directors and CEOs of the Post Office who continued to take, collectively, huge sums from their defenceless staff, and the government officials and MPs who turned a blind eye to the devastating consequences for their constituents.
It’s not easy to feel sorry for Vennells, but so far she seems to have been the only person to have suffered any consequences at all for a scandal which was perpetrated by very many people over many years.
Hilary Lang
Frome, Somerset
• If any good can come out of the Post Office/Horizon IT scandal, besides the exoneration of and compensation to the many victims, it will be in the end of “new managerialism”. This system, inspired by neoliberalism (Thatcher et al), sees individuals as in need of management, surveillance and control. However, this performance management has clearly shown itself to have devastating consequences.
The collective stories of the many victims can lead to new cultural narratives with the potential to reform and recuperate the resources currently ploughed into surveillance and control in so many of our public and private organisations.
David White
Reading
• Jobs, homes, savings and reputations lost over more than a decade. People wrongly detained and worse. Unaffordable legal costs. Crucial evidence missing. Unfulfilled assurances to both parliament and an independent investigation. Hundreds still waiting for proper compensation and justice. Many have died before getting either. I look forward to the next ITV series, about the Windrush victims (Letters, 9 January).
John Rhodes
London
• It has taken an ITV drama, watched by 9 million people to get government action on the Post Office scandal. This illustrates the power of drama to engage public opinion. It also indicates that nothing is as effective in galvanising politicians as embarrassment.
Frances Davies
Thirsk, North Yorkshire
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