The Scandal that Keeps Giving
ROD WEBB
We have an ambivalent attitude to scandals. On the one hand we might be shocked by the emerging details, but on the other feel some kind of voyeuristic pleasure. And so it is with the Post Office sub-postmaster scandal, laid bare in all its gory details at a talk at The Pig ten days ago by journalist Nick Wallis.
After court cases, civil and criminal, internal and external investigations, a parliamentary enquiry and an ongoing public enquiry, the scandal continues with the devastation of hundreds of lives.
It all started with sub-postmasters being wrongly accused by Post Office Ltd of false accounting. The Post Office has now been caught lying in its 2021-22 Annual Report & Accounts, published on 1 March 2023, enabling executives of the Post Office to be paid large bonuses. This is genuine false accounting, something the Post Office had wrongly accusing sub-postmasters of since 1999.
Paul Gilbert, a legal expert who advises in-house lawyers on ethics is quoted by Nick Wallis as saying: “What an utterly bankrupt culture. Irredeemably rotten. For someone to even have the idea of monetising the Inquiry is shocking, … My goodness me, what a contemptible way to be.”
In his blog, Nick Read explains how the scandal has played out: “We are now in the third phase of this scandal. The first was the wrongful prosecutions of hundreds of people over the years 2000 to 2013. Then we had the cover-up: 2013 to 2019. Now we are in the Post Office’s third phase: screw the victims a second time whilst rewarding ourselves bonuses for tolerating something we don’t particularly care for, but are forced to participate in.”
Nick interviewed Katy Crane, the daughter of one of the victims. Katy trained as a children’s nurse at the Conquest Hospital but was only 15 when Post Office investigators barged into her parents’ house looking for ‘stolen’ money. She and her mother only recently knew of the victories achieved in the courts on behalf of sub-postmasters. She was put in touch with Rosie Brocklehurst, the organiser of the talk, by fellow nurse, Antonia Berelson. Nick has now put Katy in touch with an experienced barrister, and the fight for justice continues.
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