The Post Office Scandal: who’s to blame for Britain’s greatest miscarriage of justice?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why are more than 700 postmasters still trying to clear their names and access even the most basic compensation more than two decades after they were falsely accused of theft?
On today's episode Adeep Sethi tells us how his family warned the Post Office in 2002 about Horizon's problems - he has the proof in a newspaper article. Twenty two years on, and torn apart, they are still fighting for justice.
We ask Tory MP and campaigner David Davis whether British justice has failed.
A spokesperson for Fujitsu - who rolled out the Horizon system - said: "Fujitsu has apologised for its role in their suffering. Fujitsu is fully committed to supporting the Post Office Horizon IT statutory Inquiry in order to understand what happened and to learn from it. Out of respect for the Inquiry process, it would be inappropriate for Fujitsu to comment further at this time.”
And how did Helen Harrison - partner of disgraced Tory MP Peter Bone - get selected as the candidate for his newly vacated seat of Wellingborough? It's a News Agents mystery.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Senior Producer: Gabriel Radus
Producer: Laura FitzPatrick
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Production: Shane Fennelly & Arvind Badewal
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.8 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.3 | The post office told every single one of us sat here today. |
| 0:20.3 | Told us over and over you're the only one and that was wrong that was a lie actually |
| 0:32.6 | because well look at us. |
| 0:39.9 | Here we all are. |
| 0:42.9 | And from this moment forwards, none of us will be the only one ever again. |
| 0:54.7 | That was Toby Jones, playing the unassuming but terrier-like Alan Bates |
| 1:00.6 | in the ITV drama so many of us have now seen Alan Bates versus the post office. |
| 1:06.2 | And it tells the story of the widest miscarriage of justice in Britain's history, |
| 1:11.7 | where more than 700 postmasters, men and women, |
| 1:15.6 | were convicted of crimes that they never committed. |
| 1:19.8 | 93 convictions have been overturned, |
| 1:23.0 | but so many more have not even appealed, |
| 1:25.8 | and some, as we now know, have lost their lives |
| 1:29.7 | trying to fight a system that simply didn't want to hear. |
| 1:33.6 | And this is the story of the heroes of small local communities who run everything. |
| 1:41.1 | The sub-postmaster, the sub-postmistress, a cornerstone of British society. |
| 1:46.9 | And yet it also shows the power of big organisations and the power of the state to crush people |
| 1:54.2 | and then cover it up when it turns up. There is still a long way to go before there is justice. |
| 2:04.8 | But it feels finally that that day might be nearing. |
| 2:07.0 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
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