Justice is at last catching up with real villains of Post Office scandal - Brian Wilson

The computer was wrong - and will be again

Like millions of others, I watched the ITV drama ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’ with a sense of outrage and bewilderment about how this could not only happen but go on for so long.

By dramatising an evolving scandal, the programme brings its human realities to a far wider audience than cruel facts alone. It is a rare example of television at its best, with the power to force change.

Justice is slowly catching up with the real villains. While not a retributionist by nature, I sincerely hope every individual who bears responsibility – starting at the top – will be called to account in courts of law. Let them have a taste of their own medicine.

The ongoing public inquiry seems to be heading firmly in the right direction and there are also fundamental implications to ponder. These include the challenges faced in fighting injustices, large and small, in an increasingly depersonalised world.

Try arguing with a computer or a call centre that never answers, or any of the other interfaces created by corporate entities to make challenge as difficult as possible, backed up by the force of law. Just as with the Post Office, the balance of power lies overwhelmingly with the pursuer rather than the pursued, no matter how vulnerable.

That is an area of law ripe for review. The Horizon scandal proves beyond doubt that the computer can get it very wrong – which should be the starting point in any legal process, rather than a reluctant conclusion that must be fought for on highly unequal terms.

For dramatic purposes, the timescale in ‘Mr Bates’ has been compressed. Years went by while nothing much happened except a relentless pursuit by the Post Office of allegations which many within it must have known to be dubious or downright false.

Yet twisted logic drove it on. To call halt would have amounted to an admission of gross error for which responsibility must be taken and prices paid. The alternative was to keep doubling down and concealing reality.

It was not “the Post Office” which took these decisions but people within it. It was not “the Post Office” that raided businesses built by innocent people, but human beings who must have sensed something amiss about this plague of wrongdoing by hitherto blameless individuals.

Doubts about the Horizon computer system started to surface within weeks of it being installed in 1999. The “helpline” repeatedly lied to those who reported errors by telling them nobody else was having the same problems.

Then Horizon-based convictions started to pile up – 41 in 2001 and 64 the following year. Even at that stage, it is scary that nobody noticed – or admitted to – a pattern which raised doubts. It is then monstrous that the Post Office did not stop prosecuting sub-postmasters on Horizon evidence until 2015.

Sir Ed Davey, now Liberal Democrat leader, was in the dock of public opinion this week for failure to act while he had Ministerial responsibility for the Post Office between 2010 and 2012. He claimed to have been “deeply misled by Post Office executives” and presumably his own officials, as intermediaries.

That should be tested not only in the case of Ed Davey but every Minister who had the same responsibility as the scandal developed. To what extent, and at what level, were civil servants colluding with Post Office top brass to keep politicians in ignorance, for fear of the grisly truth being uncovered?

That said, there is also a lesson for any Minister which chimes with my own experience. Relying solely on official advice is a mug’s game. In an area of such obvious potential controversy, any Minister should be listening to constituents, talking to fellow MPs and looking closely at correspondence.

More than 120 MPs raised concerns about Horizon, based on representations made to them. Any Minister who did not notice a pattern, or any civil servant who failed to draw that pattern to the attention of the Minister, should be high on the list of those required to answer for these omissions.

For years, the powerlessness of decent people facing false allegations was exacerbated by isolation from each other; it was a scatter of cases across the country and the Post Office’s vested interest was in preventing them from joining up. But did the courts never notice – or were they just instinctively, as portrayed in ‘Mr Bates’, on the side of authority?

In England and Wales, the Post Office itself has the role of prosecutor. That was not the case in Scotland where the Post Office investigates but the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal service decide on whether to prosecute. It seems surprising that 73 Scottish prosecutions relying on Horizon evidence were not enough to suggest something might be amiss.

Two of these convictions have now finally been quashed on the recommendation of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. One of them involved Bill Quarm, a sub-postmaster in North Uist and pillar of the community who accepted advice to plead guilty, to avoid going to prison.

Within two years, he died “a broken man”, in his widow’s words. The Commission found that his plea was in “clearly prejudicial circumstances” and “the process was an affront to justice”. I recall the same informal verdict being delivered a decade ago by a friend who said simply: “Everyone in Uist knew that Bill Quarm wasn’t a thief”.

In the same way, everyone in Llandudno knew that Alan Bates wasn’t a thief and so on round the country. Yet for 15 long years, the system and the powerful people who controlled it said otherwise, because they could not afford to admit that the computer might be wrong.

But let it never be forgotten. The computer was wrong - and will be again.