What is being done to deliver justice for victims of the Post Office scandal?

As the affair continues to provoke outrage, Sean O’Grady asks what the government is doing – and what it should be doing – to bring this matter finally to rest

Toby Jones as Alan Bates in the ITV drama ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’, which has brought the scandal back into the public eye (ITV)

The ITV drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office has provoked a further wave of public outrage about the original Horizon scandal and the slow and unsatisfactory way in which it was subsequently managed by the authorities, including by the Post Office itself.

Politicians from all parties have called for rapid compensation and exoneration for post office managers wrongly convicted of fraud or false accounting. Former cabinet minister David Davis, for example, has said that the convictions were based on the fact that the “Post Office lied”, that every single one is “unsafe”, and that this information should be used to “turn them all over”. He also called for a criminal investigation into the Post Office as well as Fujitsu, which provided the faulty software.

A petition calling for the former chief executive of the Post Office, Paula Vennells, to return her CBE or else be stripped of it has accumulated a million signatures. The Horizon affair is becoming an unexpectedly potent party political issue...