TV drama puts pressure on politicians over Post Office scandal

Some numbers to conjure with: 700, 60 and four. The first is the number of UK Post Office operators convicted of fraud, theft and false accounting between 1998 and 2015 after a faulty Horizon IT system made it look as though money had gone missing. Since then, about 60 people have died waiting for justice. But a four-part ITV drama series has put the scandal back on newspaper front pages and at the top of politicians’ to-do lists – after years of being “too boring” to fix, writes Isabel Hardman. Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, is meeting the minister for the Post Office today to discuss ways to free victims, including a mass exoneration and removing the Post Office’s ability to prosecute its own criminal cases. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader who was postal affairs minister between 2010 and 2012, also has “serious questions to answer”, victims told the Times. A petition calling for Paula Vennells, former Post Office chief, to lose her CBE has received more than one million signatures.