The Post Office injustice injures us all
What is new about the Post Office scandal? Not much. We have known the full scale of the UK’s greatest miscarriage of justice for at least the last two years. The cases of the postmasters and mistresses wrongly convicted for fraud because of a faulty computer system have been well documented in our media. And yet it has taken a television drama (ITV’s Mr Bates Versus the Post Office) to make the government act. This is not how justice should work.
Undoubtedly it is very difficult to work out how to overturn 900 convictions in our clogged criminal justice system. The government’s solution is to legislate to clear those convicted; this one-time fix for an unprecedented situation must not get in the way of due legal process in future cases. The separation of powers is a fundamental tenet of our democracy: the principal that the government does not interfere in the courts. One can argue that this is a special case. It needs to stay that way.
Television drama has a very different impact from stories in the news. It can be hard to grasp the effect of arrest, business failure, court cases and imprisonment on a small business owner, but TV brings it into millions of living rooms in a very human way. Here are people just like us who have suffered a terrible injustice. It continues to blight their lives and will do long after compensation is paid. It affects local communities all over our country, including here in Woking where one postmistress lost everything after being falsely accused.
One alarming feature of the scandal is how few people have taken responsibility for what happened. Faced with software errors, both Fujitsu and the Post Office insisted that nothing was wrong with their system; it must be the people using it. The more evidence that came to light, the more they doubled down on the lies. If the public inquiry is to have any effect, there must be proper accountability for these terrible actions and the consequences.
Over the 25 years since the Horizon software was introduced, honesty and accountability have become degraded more generally in our public life. We have seen the consequences, for example, in the way our government misled us over Covid parties in Downing Street. Before we howl too loudly about the Post Office or the government, Jesus encourages us to look at the plank in our own eye. The Church of England is not immune to scandal and cover-up. When the Church first employed safeguarding officers in the early 2000s, a few of them faced huge obstacles in bringing child abusers to account. The lies and cover-ups became a huge stain and the Church’s reputation has not recovered. Support for victims of abuse continues to be patchy and a report on abuse at church youth camps is three years overdue.
This election year, our politicians are listening. They knock on doors and take account what we say. Christians can influence every political party by insisting on restoring values like integrity, responsibility and honesty. We can demand that injustice is made right as an urgent priority, not lazily picked up only when it’s on the telly. Our politicians know that our political culture needs cleaning up. When Sajid Javid resigned as Chancellor in Boris Johnson’s government, it was after hearing a talk at the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast urging politicians to call out the sleaze and dishonesty which had become endemic in government. The chain of events his resignation set up brought down the Prime Minister. Jesus reserved his strongest criticism for those who misused power. Christians need clean our own houses first, but we can bring Christ’s values to bear as we engage with policy.