Every penny bullied out of subpostmasters should be repaid along with Horizon compensation

After years of damning newspaper reports the government was finally shamed into action over the Post Office scandal by a TV drama.

Better late than never, and now ministers are falling over each other to express their outrage and make clear wrongly prosecuted subpostmasters will be compensated.

That is all well and good, but what about the hundreds of victims who were not prosecuted, but whose lives were ruined nonetheless, and currently have no recourse to justice?

There can be no more harrowing case than of Fiona McGowan who died of an accidental overdose, alone and penniless in a homeless hostel five years after she was charged with false accounting.

Her family have described how the Post Office scandal killed their mum after she was wrongly accused of stealing £30,000.

Former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells

Once a respected and outgoing pillar of her Edinburgh community, Fiona lost her job, her children, her health and eventually her life.

But as things stand they have no recourse to seek compensation or justice of any kind for their mum because she was ultimately never prosecuted and is now dead.

Her truly shocking case highlights the fact that there must be a full review of everyone who was accused of stealing money, whether they were ever prosecuted or not.

Along with convictions being quashed, every penny that was bullied out of loyal subpostmasters should be repaid to them or their families, and compensation paid for the trauma caused.

Rather than those affected having to prove their innocence, everyone impacted by this horrendous miscarriage of justice should be treated as a victim.

There also remains serious questions for Scotland’s Crown Office who went ahead with around 100 prosecutions based on evidence handed to them by the Post Office.

It appears that at least one brave Procurator Fiscal spotted as early as January 2013 that it was the Horizon IT system that was at fault rather than a subpostmaster accused of stealing money.

Alarm Bells should have been ringing in the ears of then Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland.

Amid the political blame game the truth is that nobody in authority is coming out of this well.

And the only people who should have ever been prosecuted are the senior executives who executed and covered up this incompetence releasing hell on decent, law-abiding, hard-working people.

It’s high time it is them in the dock of a court.

Tragic Katie’s Allan case highlights prison failures

Katie Allan’s heartbreaking final letter to her mum and dad will be almost impossible for any parent to read without welling up.

Before taking her own life in her Polmont prison cell the 21-year-old apologised for letting them down and spoke of the horrific bullying that had left her feeling she had no hope left.

Katie had injured a pedestrian while drink driving and deserved to be punished.

She didn’t deserve to lose her life and the Scottish Prison Service – who had a duty of care – failed her and countless other young people.

Family solicitor Aamer Anwar is correct to argue that the prison service’s immunity from prosecution is a license to kill, and that nothing will change until it is revoked.

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