SUB-postmasters and postmistresses are seeing justice done at last.
“Mafia” bosses who fitted them up could go to jail. And gullible Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, postal affairs minister during the Horizon scandal, is a dead man walking.
We must use Post Office scandal as opportunity to stop corporate and state thuggery
But the Government cannot simply draw a line and move on.
Fujitsu must be made to pay for this hideous blot on corporate Britain.
The once-proud Post Office, now a smouldering ruin, might as well be sold to the highest bidder.
But this is still not enough.
Whichever party is in power must use this crisis as an opportunity to stop such corporate thuggery happening again.
The PO is not a rogue offender. A whole gang of Whitehall officials, unelected quangos, charities, councils and corporations are a law unto themselves, with their own private police and prosecutors.
The right to launch a private prosecution is open to us all. But many big operations have turned it into a draconian and secretive form of coercion.
In one spectacular case, the RSPCA’s uniformed police were deployed for years as storm troopers to impose, often unjustly, the charity’s “woke” interpretation of animal cruelty.
After an explosion of public protest, the charity abandoned its policing powers in 2021 and handed the role to crown prosecutors.
Still, the taxman, big banks, the DVLA, Department for Work and Pensions and the BBC, to name only a few, continue to abuse their power and put us behind bars.
Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake insists the time has come for heads to roll and warns punitive action is long overdue.
Obeying orders
“People must be held to account,” he said. “This is the best opportunity we will have to get this right. Criminal prosecution is the ultimate deterrent.
“We should have done it with the banking scandals 15 years ago. The Post Office must never be allowed to carry out another private prosecution.”
Even after ITV’s ground- breaking drama, Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, lurid details of the state-owned giant’s Gestapo tactics continue to spill out in public.
Last week we saw PO enforcer Stephen Bradshaw, resentfully denying stark evidence he acted like a “Mafia gangster”. He said he had no idea about computers and was only obeying orders.
Tory MP David Davis, a veteran civil rights campaigner, last night called for action to bring this abuse of power to a halt.
“Our big mistake is to assume public bodies are there to serve the public,” he said.
“We think they are benign when if fact they can be malevolent.
“They have their own police, their own prosecuting lawyers and bottomless funds to hound victims until they surrender.”
Abuse of power, foot-dragging and secrecy spreads far and wide.
Victims of the notorious 1970s contaminated blood scandal fear a callous HM Treasury is simply kicking its heels until more have died before settling claims.
And as TV broadcaster and Sun columnist Jane Moore revealed last week, the mighty HMRC uses its army of lawyers to hound freelances like herself for thousands in undue tax.
The Government’s tax-gatherers have spent £250,000 of our money fighting Jane’s colleague, TV broadcaster Kaye Adams, over a disputed claim for £70,000.
Even after winning her case at tribunal, the taxman returns like a dog to its vomit with a new loophole, forcing Kaye to pay both their legal costs and her own.
“It’s not always just the state,” says David Davis. “Big companies too have a set of reflexes designed to protect their reputation and their bonuses and avoiding blame.
“It’s a David and Goliath battle every time one of these big corporations or bureau- cracies get involved.”
Untrammelled power
The former Brexit minister wants a simple new law setting limits on private prosecutions.
Once legal costs reach half the disputed claim, he says, the prosecutor should throw in the towel.
So instead of having to fork out £200,000 in combined costs, Kaye Adams would have seen her case halted once they reached £35,000.
“This would apply to all the state and corporate bodies who now enjoy untrammelled power to grind innocent citizens into submission,” he said.
“The Treasury would go up the wall.
“But it would have been enough to stop the bullying Post Office in its tracks.”
Outnumbered police
PRO-Palestinian protests are now a “for ever” fixture in London and an ominous show of strength.
Anti-Israel placards feature alongside slogans supporting Hamas and, now, Yemen’s Houthis killers – both trained by Iran, which is hostile to the Britain these protesters call home.
It may be pointless to ask whose side they will be on if things turn really ugly in the Red Sea and the wider Middle East.
But our outnumbered police must be praying they remain “mostly peaceful”.
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