Post Office scandal is 'deeply instructive' about how the UK works | LBC debate 

'We stand up for the little guys,' she said. Coming from a member of a party that continues to behave in the most corrupt way, in order to further the interests and the fortunes of their wealthy friends and supporters, I'm afraid that the crocodile tears don't wash.

She has returned the CBE NOW return the £5m u took in salary’s and bonus, whilst presiding over this scandal. 💩

The little guys were bankrupted, jailed and have taken their own lives but still winners in the eyes of Ian Dale. The man is deluded 🤷‍♂️

The evidence of a 2 tiered system is that no one will go to prison for this.

There's an old poem from the 1600's about this "The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from off the goose. The law demands that we atone When we take things we do not own But leaves the lords and ladies fine Who take things that are yours and mine. The poor and wretched don't escape If they conspire the law to break; This must be so but they endure Those who conspire to make the law. The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common And geese will still a common lack Till they go and steal it back." Anon, sometime in the 1600's In this case the law locked up the men and women who didn't even steal anything, but the people responsible got promoted, extra government contracts, and even medals.

Just absolutely no compassion from the tory. She sat there and made an election speech.

Did i really just hear a Tory MP claim 'We stand up for the little guys'. It's like she isn't aware her party has a track record of doing the exact opposite.

Why is she trying to point score when 4 people killed themselves...disgusting behaviour

How did Johnson manage to gain access to taxpayer money to defend the indefensible at Partygate ???? Rubs salt in a very deep wound

Only Ian Dale could try to paint this story as the little guy winning…

When a population loses faith in the Justice system, society is on a knife edge..the UK is in a very dodgy position now..

When you pay some attention: "The system is broken and needs to be fixed." When you pay enough attention: "The system is working exactly as intended and needs to be destroyed."

Post Office should be stripped of its ability to prosecute as they appear to have ignored CPIA 1996. When I say ignored they have deliberately circumvented it. The decision to prosecute will have been made by identifiable individuals who should be held accountable. Heads must roll.

Politics has become a popularity contest and the TV program was the only thing that made them take any action.

In UK, the legal aid budget has been cut to the bone by successive governments. And you only have to look at any civil or criminal cases, and know that the deeper your pocket, the better lawyer or lawyers you can have, and at the very least, drag the case on and on.

Alan Bates managed to get justice because he found 500 people. What if he'd only found 450? It takes 500 little people to equal one rich person, aparently.

oh my this Tory woman is talking absolute tripe, complete deluded word salad. She talks about not rushing to assumptions , but that’s exactly what the post office did you silly woman. These people are unbelievable. It’s been going on for 20 years ffs.

Cameron's removal of legal aid for civil cases has fuelled this

We stand up for the little guys" - this has dragged on for more than a decade with initial reports of problems 'appearing in computer magazines since 2009 and the scandal appearing in Private eye since 2013. It's been discussed in parliament since 2015..... and yet that woman, sitting at the head of this corruption, was given an honour in 2019

Can see where this is going, a horrendous scandal committed by a known, named organisation where many people were affected and nobody is responsible.

Ian Dale making out this is the little guy beating the big guy… really??? How has the big guy been beaten? One person has given up their CBE whilst on the other side people have lost their lives, their freedom, their livelihoods etc etc. What a strange way to see the situation

The courts and lawyers are used to threaten people who are not wealthy. The costs are incredible.

The best quote I have heard is “the law courts are like the Ritz open to anyone but it’s only the rich that can afford it”. Anything involving the government there’s always an enquiry never a criminal investigation. If it wasn’t for ITV the Post Office scandal would just be swept under the carpet and forgotten about. I very much doubt if those involved in the scandal will be prosecuted. What normally happen in situations like this the corporation will be fined,or in other words the public will be made to pay for the crime. In fact taxpayers money was being used to prosecute the Postmasters.

I love the way the Tory MP pretends to be an interested outsider. You wouldn’t know they have been in power for most of the time.

This is definitely not a case of the little man triumphing over the big corporate institutions. It’s 500 little guys, 25 years and a ITV1 prime time TV series with massive viewing ratings that finally shamed the government into talking about this. Despite this they still haven’t got proper compensation for ruined lives. Tell me, how can anybody see this as a triumph for the little man over big corporate institutions Iain ‘Tory’ Dale?. The British justice system is stacked against ordinary people towards the rich and powerful. I always say that you shouldn’t think law and justice are the same thing in this country because they are not.

Is this woman already taking her own personal "victory-lap" over this ongoing travesty?!?

"Rushing to assumptions" after 20 odd years 😂!

Just a thought on the Post Office scandal. In 2010 an average of 2 post offices were being closed each week and thousands have been shut down since the Horizon scandal started. Could this have been done intentionally to speed up the closures and avoid paying out redundancies? It would be interesting to see if any post offices run by convicted subpostmasters are still up and running. I can't find any details on these online!

The fact that it has taken this long and needed a tv drama to bring this story to the front pages where now mps are falling over themselves to berate the post office for a little reflected glory tells you all you need to know about justice in the uk.

Absolutely spot on Oli Dugmore👍

We're through it at the moment. Having to go to court to get justice for my son, who was negligently treated, and suffered enormously because of it when he was 14.. Facing denial and delay, hoping we will be intimidated and/or run out of money. Disgrace but symptomatic of all these public and private bodies. They say they listen and learn, but from my experience, they do not and aim to cover up and protect each other. Our case has been ongoing for nearly 7 years.

It is now imperative that those that allowed the worst case of a miscarriage of Justice in British history now be arrested under caution, charged and imprisoned. There can be no excuses.

The current Tories don't stand up for the little guys. They have broken Britain. The gap between the rich and poor has grown under the Tories!

What really annoys me is the post office and the computer company knew there were faults in the system before it was launched,it was decided to continue with the roll out of the system and try to sort out the bugs whilst it was being used.This was never going to work correctly,seeing as this system is still being used I wonder what the postmaster’s contracts have now been rewritten to exclude the responsibility for paying back shortfalls.

Mims is horrendous with her “I’m so normal I watch Netflix like you” and “Governments of all sides” interjections.

I was just wishing the Tory would just stop rattling her gums, all she did was say all the things that should happen but never did. Darren is an excellent MP who if you go and watch some of his committee work actually cares about how the working class are treated by those in power.

People are told to protect that name (business/organisation) at all costs but when it comes down to it a name can’t be prosecuted because it has no face. My child with Sen needs was let down by his school he is now 15 and will not be able to do his exams due to unmet disability. The school lied in professional meetings about how he was coping because they wanted to protect the school at the cost over my child’s mental health. Where is the logic in putting a organisation over the lives of people.

I'll be proved wrong about agreeing there's a 2-tier justice system in this country, when I see real consequences for those corporate and government bullies who abuse their power and privileges. This is only one case we're aware of. It's terrifying to think what other scandals are out there or simply been forgotten over time. If I were a betting man, I'd put money on nobody getting the punishment deserved here, relative to their appalling behaviour and destruction of people's lives.

The Tory MP larping as a hero for the little guy, come on!? 😂

Nailed. If you move in the correct circles then you get to do whatever you want while always failing upwards. We the working class dont get the luxury. One mistake and you get sacked, one late appointment to the Job Centre and you get sanctioned.

Why do they keep calling it compensation, it was their own money they are not giving them anything that doesn't already belong to them

If only RIshi took as much interest in this as Nigel Farages bank account

The little guy got one back how cliche that opinion. The UK government gave the post office way too much autonomy in investigating the horizon debacle. Hundreds of people’s lives were destroyed and no government watchdog had the insight to overlook how the Post Office was operating with their investigation. I have so much destain for the entire post office board and the government they never questioned anything the little guy was hung out to dry it’s disgraceful 25 years this has been going on.😡🤬😤😤😡🤬

I’m a Canadian railway worker. Here, I am embroiled in a similar situation as the Post Office within the industry which operates on a business model called Precision Scheduled Railway, a comical oxymoron for the ‘precision’ and ‘scheduled’ components. By any other name, this is pure corruption that has contributed to vast destruction and the loss of many lives since its inception. I watch the Post Office scandal with much interest as I correlate many of the same issues here with railways. In North America, these are private companies given an appalling carte blanch by government regulatory agencies to operate completely outside of the law, which is sickening. It strikes me, like the managerial class here, that it is very easy to accuse others of one him or herself is doing, aka gaslighting. Post Office leadership should be investigated for corruption where it accused its subpostmasters. My instinct is that something deeper than malicious incompetence is at play here. The personalities at the head of the Post Office need to be named and shamed as is about to happen with North American rail executives.

Well said Ollie

If this wasn't a GE year would Sunak be so keen to bring this scandal to a close ?

"You can look at it that way, but you can also look at it as the little guy winning over the corporate power". Ian is truly shameful. "The little guy"... 700 of them! 30 years later, multiple suicides later, after destroying their lifes (job, reputation, employability, loans, ...). And only when another corporation decided to profit from it.

Dodgey computer system exist in all government departments. In HMRC they introduced an auto reconciliation process which makes obvious mistakes, often doubling periods of benefits and sending out letters asking for money that staff know are not accurate. "The onus is on them to check' they say, "you have to let the system do it's thing" they say.

I think we also need to take a look at the judges in these cases too. They seem to have assumed guilt based entirely on the word of the plaintiff.

The same applies to local councils ie developers, with large pockets, taking councils to court when councils object to their applications eg when challenging reducing the number of social housing built. The councils cannot afford to defend these cases. Result: the big pockets win every time.

Mims Davies is having a laugh when she says they (politicians) stand up for the little people. It is exactly because a succession of ministers from all parties clearly didn`t stand up for the little people that we have this scandal. Politicians from all sides have been in the pockets of big business for decades now and up till now the PO and Fujitsu executives are unaccountable. We still have the ongoing scandal of the water companies routinely polluting our waterways with raw sewage but the executives of these companies face no punishment and regularly award themselves massive bonuses. We need the government to start holding these criminal companies to account.

I wouldn't say the little guy "triumphed" when they all lost their livelihoods and some went to prison. They just got some semblance of justice.

The way things are in this country I would doubt if any Lawyer, boss, government official or any person that was in a position of power will ever be brought to justice. How can you say that the little guy won, people committed suicide and they all had their and their families lives ruined. This is disgusting and unacceptable but it doesn’t surprise me.

What should have been a massive red flag when the Post Office scandal occurred was the fact that over 700 people were supposedly stealing money at the same time. Surely that should have made someone question that, and investigate other possibilities such as software fault. Had it been just a few individuals then I could understand the Post Office assuming they were possibly on the take and stealing money, but not over 700 people, that's just a massive red flag that there were other issues, one being a software glitch.

Darren Jones for PM. Seems like a genuine stand up guy who wants to hold people to account.

How many government scandals do we need to hear before people stop believing a single word these clowns say to us

Of course there are two sets of rules. Always has been, always will be. Our masters will prevail.

Darren Jones is always on the mark....a fantastic speaker...

We need honest people running our country, The problem is we haven't. There's probably a Law out there somewhere that says If you are an MP you will be exempt from prosecution.

Darren Jones nails it when he says that this was a fundamental human failure.

The Post Office were high minded and aggressive, They can't say we made a mistake were sorry .

So the majority of SPMs decided to commit fraud when the PO introduced a computer system to detect that fraud. The amount of individuals highlighted would have been known to PO. This should have raised a red flag that had to be investigated & not from a presumption of guilt on the part of the SPMs.

The establishment has dragged this out for as long as possible in the callous hope that many of the 732 victims will have died off by the time any resolution happens. The same happened with the tainted blood scandal; forty years on and it still hasn’t been satisfactorily resolved.

And once again, a Tory speaks empty words, offering nothing of worth to the discussion.

Let's get one thing straight here. There is one reason and one reason only why she handed it back, she was shamed into it by 1.2 million people. How to go from nearly commiting the perfect crime to being the most despised person in the country.

Oli Dugmore is increasing the voice of reason. PoliticsJOE is excellent as is his work on LBC. He has both youthful energy and knowledge on his side. Hats off big style.

First caller was spot on. Whoever has more money is most likely to win in a court. Not exactly what you call justice is it. Also, the postmasters may be winning in the end but it should never have got to that should it.

This seems to be a common problem everywhere... I live in the US and took "mandatory training" at my company yesterday where I learned (again since I have to take it EVERY YEAR) that things like insider trading and bribery are illegal and I'll go to jail if I engage in them... yet in Washington the politicians fight anything that might limit their ability to use insider trading to profit off their elected seats... and we have leaders openly in the news pitching quid pro quo's as a way to advance their personal or political positions. And apparently we're all supposed to just shrug and say "oh well".

At its peak there were over 9,000 Post Office Local branches being operated as franchises of sorts by private retailers. The new owners (post 2011 privatisation) ended the franchise arrangement because they hoped that people would just travel further and use official post offices, internalising the small profits previously made by corner shops and mini markets. Just another case of privatisation gone wrong. Still waiting for a successful example because it can't be just ravenous shareholders, could it?

Every conviction that used the computer system as evidence, is unsafe. They should all be released and the evidence re-evaluated, which should squash 99.9% of them. Investigations should also be made into what the post office knew, when and why it went through unlawful prosecutions when they knew the evidence was faulty.

Piper Alpha, Hillsborough, Grenfell, The Post Office…all examples of those without power having to fight with everything they have over DECADES to get a semblance of justice.

This is nothing new and will always be. Very sad situation and totally agree this is symptomatic and instructive of the UK.

SMH The tory is just doing damage control - the "little guy" clearly has not been listened to and is still suffering.

There’s always been one rule for the rich and another for the poor, where’s that caller been living all his life? 😳

Always has been one law for the little people and one for the elites. Nothing has changed.

I lost against a Big Pharma company because I didn't have the money to take a case to court. You have to have as much money as the other side in a lot of cases, else there is no justice for you.

Nobody answered what would have been the outcome if the 500 cases could not have been found and the civil case had not gone ahead. What other course would have been open to these victims? Also it seems that we shall very soon find out who recommended the CBE and in the same way Vennells pre-empted being stripped of it maybe the misguided person/people would do well to own up now?

The issue here is that the Uk legal system is now PAID for Justice. Not justice, but paid for justice. The parking tickets that go straight to fines, all private prosecutions, without in person hearings, instantly favouring the private parking companies and you have to prove your innocence in their chosen time frame. The super injunctions for privacy for the mega rich, whilst the post office innocents had their names all over the press. The Post office straight to fines and court and imprisonment. Oh yes, British justice is now corporation paid for, backed by the government, with their favourite companies.

Of course they have different rules always have Not rocket science.

If it’s OK for postmasters to go to jail over this then let’s have the real culprits doing time. Purjury alone will Do for starters and the barristers investigated that represented to PO too.

The bulk of the compensation, such as it is and for those who've got it so far, is being swallowed up in legal fees. The "little people" may have been vindicated reputationally, but only partly, and they are not being anything like adequately compensated, most of them not yet at all.

There are innumerable scandals in the UK. This country is finished. We can't build scholls, railways, roads without it taking years but the big business people get millions. The little guy hardly ever wins as he or she is poorly educated, misdirected and diverted from getting into politics. We live under Capitalism, a system of rich getting richer and foreign wars being essential. And this is what we see. Politicians only show concern when a disaster happens or when they get caught out.

What was that opening take Iain? 20 years of fighting to get next to nothing in terms of compensation but now MP's have noticed it while its the hot story this week somehow they've won and beaten the big corporation? Noone responsible is going to jail for this. There is no way to look at the struggle these people are still going through and say "yay they won, lets change the story."

It is the most OBVIOUS statement on the planet. Of course justice and peoples rights depends on how big your pockets are. As Ollie listed all of those disasters from Piper Alpha to Grenfell to now the Post Office even if people get a judgement in their favour it still takes years to receive any money !!

Well said Oli

"We stand up for the little guys" - and yet this has been going on for 24 years and something is only happening now because of the negative publicity via the TV series.

I have been told that I may have been betrayed and in the right but I couldn’t afford the legal charges to win any litigation so Lies led to me becoming homeless My mother lost her home due to a £25 Debt that Sue Essex and Clare Short tried to get the scandal sorted out that made my mother homeless but couldn’t If we had been able to afford legal charges the outcome would have been different sadly the legal profession are not concerned with justice only their fees

Re imbalanced accountability - it took the tory govt; via Gove, a week approx to give £69M to Michelle Mone for her useless PPE, which she still has. The inquiry into the 'post office scandal' is now over 3 years old & has yet to be resolved

The Labour government were informed of this issue many years ago and ignored it.

After twenty years of known issues with Horizon and years of reporting, I've found the fact that now people are very concerned is a bit of a joke. But "Or you can look at it well this was the little guy actually triumphing in the end it's taken a long time but triumphing over the big corporate institution"? Really? A handful of cases addressed, pitiful compensation, people dying before having their names cleared and the only reason there's any movement now is they've lucked out that ITV has decided to make a series. The police have had years to do something, so has the government. If this is the speed the little guy gets action when dozens of people have been unjustly incarcerated imagine what's happening when your fight isn't being turned into a drama. And even now, with all the newly outraged reporters people still don't seem to understand how this destroyed lives. That's years of living with a record. Being exonerated doesn't get back the money you lost because of that record and those sentences. It's a moral victory but you've still been financially damaged meaning the government should be talking about compensation. A process that May and Gavin Williamson made virtually impossible for the average wrongfully convicted citizen incidentally. That's why the numbers of people receiving compensation for false imprisonment has functionally stopped over the last few years but that's not an ITV drama yet so no one cares about that. It's also not even addressing the people who went into their own pockets to make up non existent shortfalls to avoid prison. The post office essentially extorted citizens, pay us money or we'll destroy your life. How many people haven't come forward yet to talk about those years of being ostracized or living abroad to avoid the scandal? Then they took that ill gotten wealth, knowing full well the software didn't work, and aren't just keeping it. No they're using those resources to fight their victims so lawyers are seeing the bulk of the compensation. And it's likely the remaining sub post-masters and post-mistresses, who have possibly already been required to make up shortfalls, will end up footing part of the bill if an actual compensation scheme starts running. And Dale thinks this is what "the little guy actually triumphing in the end" should look like?

inquiry will drag out so the story goes off the boild l/....

I think there should be a drama done to show how thr withdrawal of legal aid has affected little people. They could pick 6 different cases where you now cant get legal aid and do a 6 part series.

Whats frightening is that the postmasters were prosecuted outside of the CPS, by their own team. Likewise TV licencing, RSPCA, DWP and many others are able to bring their prosecutions. Archaic!!!

A question that needs answering is were the Horizon Shortfalls deliberately targeted at certain Post Offices using Fujitsu's back door access. It seems quite a coincidence that Michael Rudkin from the Federation of SubPostmasters should visit Fujitsu and find out about this back door only the Post Office run by his wife to suffer such a shortfall the next day. It's almost as if he was targeted! I wonder how many of the Post Offices that suffered a shortfall were on the Post Offices closure list, or were run by Sub Postmasters who were regarded as being trouble makers by the Contracts Manager. In other words the shortfalls were created deliberately for Corporate gain in many cases.

If non of this had happened, would we all be paying only 5pence for 1st class letter. This has impacted everyone in the UK…

Another point logic dictates all of a sudden from a certain period to a certain period you’ve got 1000 people trying to defraud an institution, just out of the blue, any body with intelligence thought for others would realise there was something wrong here

Frustrating that a lot of MPs are talking about any of this like it's new information to them. This has been known about for nigh on 10 years now.

The scandal arose because of blind faith in computers and is symptomatic of the world we live in .Greater reliance on technology means less accountability .The usual " I was only following orders " has a friend " the computer is always right ".

Sunak , amongst other things promised integrity and honesty, so much for Tory promises , whichever Party is in power we must have more openness , transparency they call it, far far too many things are decided without proper consultation , Laws should not be imposed to suit the up ruling classes , like justice , Governance should be not only done but must be seen to be done.

How is it that Fujitsu are allowed to install back doors in their software, allowing them access to and the ability to alter highly sensitive and supposedly confidential data?