Post Office Horizon scandal: Scotland must not be slow to clear wrongly convicted sub-postmasters – Scotsman comment

Scottish Government and Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain should be clear that a lack of urgency in clearing the Post Office scandal’s victims would be unacceptable

The apology by Scotland’s Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, to Scottish sub-postmasters wrongly convicted in the Horizon IT scandal is welcome. However, the tone of her remarks suggests she has not yet grasped the overwhelming need for an urgent remedy of this historic injustice.

In normal circumstances, Bain’s statement that “each case must be considered carefully and with regard to the law” would be uncontroversial. The problem is that the authorities have delayed justice for so long that it has effectively been denied and the time left for further consideration is all but up.

The Lord Advocate also blamed the Post Office for the failings without accepting that the Crown Office, which brought the prosecutions in Scotland, was partly responsible. It may well be true that the Post Office provided the flawed evidence and that it is, therefore, primarily to blame. But Bain’s admission that Scottish prosecutors “accepted evidence and explanations at face value” suggests they acted as little more than an extension of the state-owned company.

Shouldn’t the Crown Office have scrutinised the evidence more closely? And why did prosecutors not immediately take decisive action when they were made aware of the problems with the Horizon system? If they knew cases they brought were unsafe, they should have done something about it, whether or not they had a specific duty to do so.

It is estimated that around 100 sub-postmasters in Scotland were wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting, yet just four have had their convictions overturned. With the UK Government planning a law to exonerate sub-postmasters south of the Border – despite the risk that this may clear some people who were guilty – a prolonged re-examination of cases in Scotland will only add to this travesty of justice.

Perhaps a team of senior prosecutors and judges, retired or otherwise, could urgently re-examine the cases and make recommendations about which convictions were potentially unsafe. But, whatever mechanism is used, Bain and the Scottish Government must realise that a ‘business as usual’ approach to undoing this profound wrong that could drag on for years would be completely unacceptable.