Who Guards the Post Office?

The Romans had a phrase for it: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Roughly, who guards the guards?

The Post Office scandal is not just about the Post Office. It goes far deeper than that; it goes to the very heart of our Constitution; and it isn’t a pretty sight. The Government owns the Post Office; 100%. The Post Office has Crown powers, and private prosecution powers in England where they have proved lethal to the victims of the cataclysmic miscarriage of justice that has now been exposed to the public in plain, understandable terms; but the same method was not used in Scotland, where private prosecutions are not possible; but victims were still prosecuted here, in the tangled web that is British Government and the administration of supposed justice.

Oddly, Anneleise Dodds, Labour MP, and a Scot seems completely unaware of this important Scottish precedent when asked a general question on private prosecutions in England, following from the PO scandal (BBC, Radio 5 live). Quaintly, the Post Office Minster, Kevin Hollinrake seems to know it is different, here but also appears to think this is a “devolved” Scottish power; but it isn’t. It is not part of the Devolution Act. Scottish law and its processes predate the Union, and are part of the foundation of the modern British state. No British government will issue a Section 35 to remove the general jurisdiction of Scottish law in Scotland. He has only just begun consulting with the Lord Chancellor, to liaise with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal’s Service, in Scotland. Nobody in any political party in Westminster seems completely free of the tangled webs of confusion and inertia that have been sown in profusion; and it seems have become the substance of the acrid, calculated, obsolescent, toxic nature of our politics, government, and even the administration of justice in the British State. We seem to have descended into an insidious form of constitutional catalepsy.

This scandal thus goes much deeper than government and Westminster wishes fervently to suppose. Why did it need a TV drama to transform the politics of the scandal, and its resolution? The media are inclined to frame this in terms of the failure of Government to act promptly over 20+ years, even after it became clear something was badly wrong in the Post Office; but I suspect it is far more personal, and more important still. The public watched a well crafted human drama that portrayed graphically, precisely what level of hell was visited on the victims by a corporate institution, backed by the Government and Crown; with no way out. The viewers suddenly realised, for the first time; that if the Crown, Government, Post Office and even the Law can do this with impunity over more than twenty years, on an industrial scale to hundreds of well vetted, generally unimpeachable ordinary people – like them – why would they would not deduce, that if it could happen to them, why should they suppose this could never happen to me and mine? It has been transformational. A beacon was lit; under the government.

At a stroke the actual nature of Britain’s natural process of government administration and the supposed checks and balances we have, were all revealed for what they are; a ritual performance more honoured in the breach than the observance; behind which reclines on green or red benches, a casually vindictive system, noticeably stained by countless recent lurid examples of bullying, harassment or the intimidating threats of a Whip’s office more redolent of the seventeenth century than modern democracy; a Parliamentary system that is arrogant, condescending, vain and above all indifferent to wrongdoing in its dispositions; but perfectly reflecting our antiquated, obsolete constitution and system of government that provides the ordinary person with virtually no protection at all from the tyranny of the relentless grinding of the machinery of administration, over which no central control effectively functions. Kafka never dreamed of anything like this; a democracy that celebrates the exceptionalism of the freedoms that it trashes, at will. Even the KCs are now flapping around in a panic about our justice system, and the damage that has been inflicted on it by the Post Office scandal. This, all of it goes to the heart of Britain’s utter failure of character in Government.

At the heart, of this constitutional squalor is not the Post Office, but the government and Parliament itself. Stephen Flynn made the point in the House of Commons, at PMQs (10th January); and for Sunak, following an all too typical, dismal, pantomime exchange with Starmer at the Despatch Box, proving only there is indeed an endemic, suppurating problem with Parliament and its pointless workings; allowed the mask of concern to slip, and reacted, simply to politicise Flynn’s acute point; by accusing Flynn of politicising the issue (the Trumpian mode of accusing the accuser of being the culprit). The last thing Sunak wants is for the ‘Buck ‘(the ultimate responsibility for the mess he is sinking under), to end pointing at him, with Government, the Political Parties (notably the Conservatives for fourteen years); and with Parliament left to take the blame. But if it wasn’t for government ineptitude – at best – but certainly negligence in their prime political responsibility to the public; the Post Office could not have gone on for over twenty years, with the problem still not fixed, people in their hundreds still suffering, still other uncounted, or an adequate plan fully in place yet, to fix it; and still no definitive timescale adopted. Indeed, The Government stripped the Post Office of most of its huge public responsibilities long ago, in order to feed the profit motive of yet more phoney markets run by private corporate interests; but simply forgot, or didn’t care to divest the Post Office of the influence of the potentially lethal Crown powers granted in the nineteenth century or later, to run and to protect a national service monolith, for a far different age. Thus are we governed today, in an intellectually bankrupt country, given over to corporate greed, and not much else.

Government itself requires to be brought to account; and not solely through an election; by a thorough, independent investigation of Government and Parliamentary responsibility for the scandal. It is simply unforgivable; and all those who failed, including those in Government must be brought to account, and pay the consequences. No special privileges for politicians; and no immunity. We do not have a presidential system. Government is desperate to keep the guilt exclusively fixed on the Post Office alone. Not good enough. Meanwhile, Kevin Hollinrake MP, the Post Office Minister, is floundering, because too little has been achieved by government, for too long. The solutions he wishes to bring forward, even now are constitutionally problematic; and he knows it. His problem is Government and Parliament have wasted 20+ years, and have run out of time, and exhausted public patience. The game is up; but the pretence of effectiveness isn’t.

Allow me to close by examining just one of the many problems outstanding. In order to expedite compensation Hollinrake in his announcement in Parliament today said there was a target for initial compensation offers to (known) victims in 90% of cases, within 40 days of receiving a completed application, with a compensation offer of £600,000 available in one scheme (he admitted yesterday that the three scheme solution was not “ideal” but seems unable to do anything about it). 30 cases only are finalised, with £75,000 upfront to those in the group litigation scheme; however, they may yet continue with the full assessment. He said the Government was in a dilemma about the conviction problem, and how to fix it; because there is an unknown number of people who have genuinely stolen from their Post Office, who might be exonerated. This is an extraordinary proposition, given the circumstances, and the mess he is in; because he goes on to find a solution that is, at best bizarre.

Anyone in receipt of compensation will, it now seems; “have to sign a statement to the effect that they did not commit the crime of which they are accused”. Where did this new principle of law emerge? What are the implications? Does it set a precedent for the future (it would be only too typical of government that in a few years time they are applying it to everyone, over everything). This is exactly the predicament, the mess our Government has made of this appalling tragedy; now being repeated.

It has always seemed to me a first principle, in the case of a crime; that an accused person did not require to sign a statement of innocence. It was for the prosecution alone to prove it, i.e, provide evidence (corroborated evidence in Scotland) that they were guilty. Why should any innocent victim (quite possibly of a crime against them, including stealing their money), have to sign a document declaring their innocence; that will hang over them, carrying perhaps  a risk of further prosecution, throwing them back into a nightmare from which they have not yet emerged; given that their confidence in the Government, Post Office, and even the Law is quite rightly very low. It will not encourage others to come forward.

It will not do. It is too late for declarations, except by Government; and here it is action alone that counts. It is an outrageous condition to set for victims. Worse, there are two other principles Hollinrake ignores. First, justice delayed is justice denied. Justice delayed for decades is already justice denied. This avenue of government condition making for compensation should be time barred (actually it should be financial redress, not just compensation, i.e., damages – the government does not even express that properly); and all this is for a cataclysmic problem through the Government’s own iniquitous delay and prevarication over twenty years, before taking charge of the mess and overruling the Post Office; an institution which is nothing more that the Government’s creature.

Second, is the principle that the individual is innocent, until proved guilty. The problem the government is facing here is that the convictions are all effectively considered unsafe, and the Government is in no position to show otherwise. The idea that someone nevertheless requires to sign a declaration of innocence seems to me outrageous. Who else in this debacle wishes to sign a declaration of innocence; anyone in Parliament?

There is much more that is profoundly wrong, and the government is in no position to defend it’s conduct (or predecessor governments – hence confirmation that Flynn is right); but this article began with a question, that deserves an answer.

Who Guards the Post Office? For the last twenty years, the Government, Parliament and too often, the law; but not to any good effect. Who guards the guards? Nobody. The government is asleep on the job. Not just the Post Office Scandal; nothing is ever finally resolved or reaches a just conclusion in Britain. Hillsborough; blood contamination; Grenfell; Windrush; Orgreave; on and on. Nothing ever ends, until the victims are all dead. Then it goes away, quietly into the night. The list is endless. Nobody anymore should believe that all that is some form of accident, or coincidence.

The Government is in a state of existential panic now, only because a TV drama outraged the public, and it is an election year. That should tell you all you need to know about politicians, and most of all the self-interest that is all that matters to the political parties that direct our dysfunctional, broken political system.

Do not think anything much that comes out of the Post Office scandal will fix anything of enduring substance in our political system either; other than to extricate Government and Parliament from the electoral jam they are all now in. After the General Election this year? Back to Business as Usual.