This book chronicles the worst miscarriage of justice in Britain in this century. Flaws in a computer system installed for the Post Office by Fujitsu led to 700 sub-postmasters being accused wrongly of theft or false accounting. Some were convicted in court and even sent to prison; others were dismissed or paid up money of their own to avoid disgrace.
A group of dismissed sub-postmasters mounted a legal action. They persevered despite being rebuffed by their union; it had a cosy relationship with the Post Office, which subsidised it.
Lucky to be alerted by a whistleblower, they discovered that defects in the computer system had been detected within Fujitsu and that executives in the Post Office were not unaware of this. Financed by a legal expenses funder, the sub-postmasters won a bruising battle in the High Court; the trial judge accused Post Office executives and computer operatives of covering up the truth and even lying.
Convictions are now being set aside. A statutory enquiry is being launched with a view to providing full recompense to all the surviving victims.
It is a chilling tale of the helplessness of isolated individuals victimised by a well-funded organisation, and of the lengths to which those running such organisations go to cover up their mistakes.
Campaigning journalist Nick Wallis tells the tale well, revealing the suffering inflicted on blameless individuals seeking to make an honest living in their small shops as sub-postmasters. One detail the author misses is that there were 20 convictions in Northern Ireland.
A similar miscarriage of justice could happen here.
The Criminal Justice Act, 1992, which made business and administrative records generally admissible in criminal proceedings, has no provision requiring proof of their reliability. This Act did not give effect to the recommendation in a Law Reform Commission report that evidence establishing the reliability of such records should be required and should be furnished for examination to an accused in advance of trial.
We have not in this country any provision for class actions or third-party funding of litigation, without which the sub-postmasters in Britain would not have been able to pursue the legal challenge that has brought them vindication.
Charles Lysaght was counsellor to the Law Reform Commission, 1978- 1988
