After years of indifference and torpor concerning the improper prosecutions by the Post Office of its staff for theft, fraud and false accounting based on the defective Horizon IT system, rightly described by the Prime Minister as the worst miscarriage of justice scandal in British legal history, along comes a television drama (Mr Bates vs The Post Office), which overnight provoked the government into frenetic hyperactivity.
It all began promisingly enough, with the Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk stating that exceptional methods would be invoked only once it had been concluded that all other possibilities had been exhausted, and the senior judges would of course be consulted. Within a day or so, however, the government had nailed its colours to the mast of exceptionality, committing itself to a blanket quashing of the convictions by legislation—an unprecedented and unconstitutional process that is misguided, unnecessary and problematic.
If only it had drawn breath,
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