It isn’t quite fair to suggest, as some have, that the only reason the Post Office Horizon scandal is finally being dealt with is because ITV decided to produce Mr Bates v the Post Office.
After all, as our editor noted yesterday, the role of MPs in bringing it to light and forcing the enquiry forward was a notable feature of the show. How often does a sitting MP get invited to play themselves, as was Nadhim Zahawi?
Nonetheless, it is certainly true that the programme has thrust it to the top of the political agenda. This morning’s papers included reports that ministers are preparing “emergency laws” to clear postmasters; that Fujitsu be made to pay compensation and blocked from government contracts; and that Rishi Sunak backs a review into the CBE given to Paula Vennells, the ex-Post Office boss at the centre of the scandal.
Nor has every politician come out of the story as well as Zahawi and James (now Lord) Arbuthnot. Whilst the bulk of the blame must rest with the leaders of the Post Office and Fujitsu, hard questions are rightly being asked about why the sorry saga was allowed to go on as long as it did.
There is, after all, a Post Office minister; the postmasters’ call for justice ought, to borrow from Aneurin Bevan, to have reverberated around the Palace of Westminster. Yet for a long time, they did not. Why?
Ed Davey has come in for the lion’s share of the scrutiny. This is primarily because he held the brief during the coalition and refused to meet Alan Bates, the campaigning postmaster, although he also made a rod for his own back with his now much-chronicled penchant for demanding the resignations of others.
Yet concerns about the Horizon software were apparently raised before it was even rolled out, and a number of Conservatives – George Freeman, Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Margot James, Andrew Griffiths, and Kelly Tolhurst – who held the Post Office portfolio after the Coalition now face press scrutiny too. James’ explanation is telling:
“I was only in that role for 18 months and unfortunately I had responsibility for both the Post Office and Royal Mail but that was in a myriad of many other responsibilities and because Post Office was an arms length organisation with an autonomous board and it functions independent of government there was less we could really do than would have been the case had it been wholly publicly owned and controlled by my department.”
This touches on a couple of points. First, as we have written before, the modern tendency to devolve administration to quangos creates real difficulties for the principle of ministerial accountability. This is compounded if the minister in question held a particular brief only as part of a large and disparate bundle of responsibilities.
Second, reshuffling ministers too frequently limits their effectiveness. It takes time to get to grips with any brief, let alone drive forward policy effectively or, in this case, tune one’s political radar for potential dangers. Without that experience, ministers are inevitably more likely to rely on advice from the Civil Service or third-party reports, as did Freeman.
Explanation is not excuse, however. Even without firm evidence, the Horizon problem ought to have failed the smell test. Which is more likely: that a government IT project has gone wrong, or that there has suddenly been a vast increase in larceny amongst postal workers?
One postmaster pleading computer error against charges of theft, a minister can safely ignore. A handful of postmasters, and there ought to at least be a flashing light on the political dashboard. Hundreds of them? Sirens.
By the time the issue crossed Paul Scully’s desk, many postmasters had already reached a court settlement with the Post Office. This didn’t equate to justice done (after costs, they received very little), but it did give the minister something to get their teeth into, and cause to push back against bureaucratic inertia.
Right now, the focus is rightly on ensuring a full and just settlement for all those affected, and appropriate sanction for the guilty parties. But if the Government wants to avoid the next Horizon scandal, whatever it is, they need to do more than merely strip the Post Office of its power to prosecute, as David Davis suggests. They need find ways to make ministers better able to spot the danger signs, and act on them – before hundreds of lives are ruined.