Government to overturn Post Office convictions

Merrykoala said:
Being announced now

Of course Tory shills are out there pointing fingers at End Davey and Keir Srarmer
Click to expand...

Ed Davey was responsible for the Post Office during his time in government and refused to meet with Alan Bates. He has also publicly called for Ministers to resign on over 30 occasions in recent times. He was also a consultant to the Post Office before he became an MP- whether he had any part in planning the software/systems that became Horizon I dont know.

If boot was on the other foot - you can bet Mr Davey would be pointing fingers and demanding resignations in his loudest voice!

Starmer I'm less sure about - I suspect these prosecutions were too low level for him to be aware of.

Lastly, Sunak being portrayed as riding to the rescue is awful. These postmasters had been trying toclear their names for years. Its been well publicised. Why should it take a TV drama toget things really moving?
 
Gordy1000 said:
Ed Davey was responsible for the Post Office during his time in government and refused to meet with Alan Bates. He has also publicly called for Ministers to resign on over 30 occasions in recent times. He was also a consultant to the Post Office before he became an MP- whether he had any part in planning the software/systems that became Horizon I dont know.

If boot was on the other foot - you can bet Mr Davey would be pointing fingers and demanding resignations in his loudest voice!

Starmer I'm less sure about - I suspect these prosecutions were too low level for him to be aware of.

Lastly, Sunak being portrayed as riding to the rescue is awful. These postmasters had been trying toclear their names for years. Its been well publicised. Why should it take a TV drama toget things really moving?
Click to expand...

Alan Bates has said that Ed Davey was the first post office minister to meet with them and did as much as he could in his opinion

Just the Tories trying to spread the blame around
 
Merrykoala said:
www.libdems.org.uk

The Post Office Horizon Scandal

The Post Office Horizon scandal is an appalling miscarriage of justice. Ed Davey was the first Minister on record meeting with Alan Bates, just five months after becoming a Minister.
www.libdems.org.uk www.libdems.org.uk
Click to expand...
The fact that the Tory Party propoganda machine is doing what its doing is because people like to have a scapegoat and they want Davey to be it. The policy seems to work with some (as above).
 
Gordy1000 said:
Ed Davey was responsible for the Post Office during his time in government and refused to meet with Alan Bates. He has also publicly called for Ministers to resign on over 30 occasions in recent times. He was also a consultant to the Post Office before he became an MP- whether he had any part in planning the software/systems that became Horizon I dont know.

If boot was on the other foot - you can bet Mr Davey would be pointing fingers and demanding resignations in his loudest voice!

Starmer I'm less sure about - I suspect these prosecutions were too low level for him to be aware of.

Lastly, Sunak being portrayed as riding to the rescue is awful. These postmasters had been trying toclear their names for years. Its been well publicised. Why should it take a TV drama toget things really moving?
Click to expand...

I think this is just the Tory spin machine trotting this stuff out, to be honest, as it's both politically opportune for them and deflects from the fact that the last 14 years of this saga has happened on their watch.

The facts are that there were 15 (I think) different postal affairs ministers whilst this scandal played out. The last half a dozen of those were Conservatives. Ed Davey had ministerial responsibility for this for a total of 19 months, right at the start of the coalition government.

Whilst he was advised not to meet Alan Bates in May 2010 (and therefore didn't), by October that year he did meet with him. He was the first such minister to do so. No Tory minister met with him until 2020.

Davey did not undertake any consultancy work for the Post Office. He did advise a large firm of city lawyers (who ended up representing the Post Office) on climate change policy though.

The Starmer stuff is pure deflection too. He was Director of Public Prosecutions, but one of the problems with this saga is that the Post Office brought these prosecutions itself. Had there been any involvement by the CPS, I'm pretty certain they would have dropped most of the charges due to lack of evidence.
 
LessoftheLip said:
Not sure about this to be honest. The Government is essentially overriding the Judiciary by introducing an Act of Parliament to quash the convictions of Postmasters. The Government should be nowhere the Justice system.
Click to expand...
The Justice system is one of the reasons we are in this mess. It is far too expensive to get proper Justice. The Post Office knew this so just kept fighting knowing the postmasters would run out of money fighting the case. Even when a lawyer managed to get a consortium together to raise the money to take the Post Office to court the settlement in 2019 of £57.75M was reduced to about £12M for the postmasters after Lawyers Fees and the money payed back to the consortium! £40M taken out!
 
sambaDTR said:
The Justice system is one of the reasons we are in this mess. It is far too expensive to get proper Justice. The Post Office knew this so just kept fighting knowing the postmasters would run out of money fighting the case. Even when a lawyer managed to get a consortium together to raise the money to take the Post Office to court the settlement in 2019 of £57.75M was reduced to about £12M for the postmasters after Lawyers Fees and the money payed back to the consortium! £40M taken out!
Click to expand...
I'm all for reform of the judiciary but if the Government is going to be able to quash convictions on their own say-so then I'd be worried about what else they could do with that power.
 
Stephen Bradshaw Senior Post Office Investigator is gonna get grilled.

They'll all be stabbing each other in the back as the penny drops that they might be in trouble.

How the tables have turned and when they bullied and lied to the Sub-Postmasters they would never have imagined that 20 years down the line they'd be brought to account.

This whole awful episode will run and run.
 
F*cking brilliant - convictions quashed in 2024.

It will come as a huge relief to those Sub-Postmasters who had their lives completely ruined by this (in some cases cost lives), unable to get rightful justice.

The government, to get ANY credit out of this has to start a full and thorough investigation into the whole sh*tshow......but we know they won't and their token gesture will be just that. They will be hoping that the matter will now be put to bed, everything sorted.........

Huge PR exercise for them, no more no less.
 
h_m_boro said:
F*cking brilliant - convictions quashed in 2024.

It will come as a huge relief to those Sub-Postmasters who had their lives completely ruined by this (in some cases cost lives), unable to get rightful justice.

The government, to get ANY credit out of this has to start a full and thorough investigation into the whole sh*tshow......but we know they won't and their token gesture will be just that. They will be hoping that the matter will now be put to bed, everything sorted.........

Huge PR exercise for them, no more no less.
Click to expand...

There is already a Public Enquiry, we don’t need another investigation. They need to crack on with the action against Fujitsu though. The Tories say they can’t do that until the Public Enquiry has concluded but according to Ian Hislop last night on Peston that is a load of BS. They could do it now. I think Sunak has something to do with Fujitsu through Infosis, wife will have a load of shares no doubt, so I wonder if that is why he is reluctant.
 
MolteniArcore said:
There is already a Public Enquiry, we don’t need another investigation. They need to crack on with the action against Fujitsu though. The Tories say they can’t do that until the Public Enquiry has concluded but according to Ian Hislop last night on Peston that is a load of BS. They could do it now. I think Sunak has something to do with Fujitsu through Infosis, wife will have a load of shares no doubt, so I wonder if that is why he is reluctant.
Click to expand...
IMG_0415.png

His father in law
 
MolteniArcore said:
There is already a Public Enquiry, we don’t need another investigation. They need to crack on with the action against Fujitsu though. The Tories say they can’t do that until the Public Enquiry has concluded but according to Ian Hislop last night on Peston that is a load of BS. They could do it now. I think Sunak has something to do with Fujitsu through Infosis, wife will have a load of shares no doubt, so I wonder if that is why he is reluctant.
Click to expand...
Apologies, I was meaning an investigation as to why we are where we are now, why has it dragged on.....and who is involved. And you have made the exact point I was getting at (badly!) Sunak/his missus/Fujitsu/Infosys.
 
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that no one of any power or significance is ever going to be held to account for this disgraceful miscarriage of justice.

Sure there will be much wringing of government hands and idle promises, and maybe even a couple of low level schills will take the fall in the short term, but ultimately once the news cycle has moved on and the general election is not the most important thing, everyone in government will stop caring, or rather will stop pretending to care.
 
h_m_boro said:
Apologies, I was meaning an investigation as to why we are where we are now, why has it dragged on.....and who is involved. And you have made the exact point I was getting at (badly!) Sunak/his missus/Fujitsu/Infosys.
Click to expand...

I’m not sure we need one TBH. It’s a problem with the mechanisms of Government. Look at all the scandals - Infected Blood, Hilsborough etc - they just get kicked down the road. The only way thins will change is if we get decent people who care into politics. The Tories are not this. Not saying that another Government would have done better but anyone with more compassion might have done something.

The system needs to change but sadly this won’t happen with Conservatives. They are not a compassionate party.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top