At the time it was written, in May 2010, Mr Bates — along with six other former sub-postmasters who had lost their livelihoods, their savings and their reputations thanks to the Post Office’s malfunctioning Horizon computer system — had already featured in an article in Computer Weekly.

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Mr Bates had written to Davey, who was postal affairs minister in the new Coalition Government, outlining the true scale of the scandal.

His campaign group had grown to more than 100 members, each with a similar tale to tell.

The Post Office’s computer system had shown mysterious losses which they knew to be false.

Yet when they reported the problem, the Post Office threw the book at them, forcing them to make good their “losses” and prosecuting them.

Each of them had been falsely told that they were the only ones who had experienced such problems with the system.

Did something click in Davey’s head to make him ask: “Is it really likely there are 100 corrupt sub-postmasters and ones so brazenly corrupt that they are still protesting their innocence even after being caught with their fingers in the till?”

Did it heck.

He wrote back and said that the integrity of the Horizon system “is an operational and contractual matter” for the Post Office, adding that the Post Office had an “arm’s length” relationship with the Government and therefore a meeting with Mr Bates would not serve “any useful purpose”.

For goodness sake, Davey was the very minister who was supposed to be responsible for the Post Office.

What was the point of him if he was going to wash his hands of an issue as seismic as this?

Lib Dem leader Davey now says he regrets not doing more to help the sub-postmasters.

As well he might, given that at the General Election later this year he is going to be appealing to us to make him Prime Minister — thankfully a remote possibility.

Davey has made a name for himself by demanding that others face the music for their failures — tweeting calls for 31 resignations in the past four years, by some counts.

But if he had any self-awareness he would not still be leading the Lib Dems.

By the way, Davey was succeeded as postal affairs minister first by Norman Lamb and then by Jo Swinson, who also went on to become Lib Dem leader.

She, too, tried to hide from her responsibility, denying there was any systemic problem with the Horizon system.

She added that she could not possibly intervene — even though a forensic accountant’s report had already uncovered bugs in the system causing apparent losses in Post Office branches.

Wash his hands

Scandals like the Post Office do not just occur because one or two rogues have managed to climb into powerful positions.

They are allowed to happen because the people around them fail to show sufficient curiosity as to what is going on.

If Davey refused to get involved, the record of Paula Vennells, former chief executive of the Post Office, is even more miserable.

Good people were ruined because she appeared to refuse to countenance the possibility that her organisation’s computer system could possibly be at fault.

She seemed simply to swallow every reassurance from her minions that nothing was amiss and just waved through the mountain of prosecutions.

But here is something even more depressing.

When the courts began to catch up with the Post Office, and the organisation was forced to cough up £58million in compensation for some of the victims in December 2019, Vennells was suddenly no longer around to face the music.

Eight months earlier she had retired from the Post Office and instead taken up a job as chair of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

Unbelievably, she was awarded a CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours List, in spite of the court cases gathering over the Post Office.

That, sadly, tells you all you need to know about public life in Britain.

Fail at your job, evade responsibility at every turn and you will still manage to be kicked upstairs and showered with honours.

We are led by a small elite that protects itself while quite happily throwing lesser mortals to the wall.

No more foot-dragging

With any luck it will not be Paula Vennells CBE for much longer — a petition to strip her of the honour has already attracted more than a million signatures.

But the fallout must not stop there.

It should be quite clear that every prosecution of a sub-postmaster for theft or false accounting involving the Horizon system is now unsafe.

There should be no more foot-dragging, no more wriggling out of responsibility.

Every one of those 700 who were convicted must now be exonerated and properly compensated — and that should preferably come out of the gold-plated pensions of every Post Office executive who was in a position to stop the injustice but who failed to do so.

Moreover, never again should the Post Office be allowed to conduct its own prosecutions.

For once, can somebody in government please take responsibility — and get on and put this wretched business right.