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BBC explains why it’s hard to overturn the convictions: The scale of the Post Office scandal means that there are no easy and quick solutions for the governmen

BBC explains why it’s hard to overturn the convictions: The scale of the Post Office scandal means that there are no easy and quick solutions for the government. Ministers could advise the King to grant Royal Pardons, once reserved for the condemned as they faced the gallows. But these would be largely symbolic acts because the government can't, at the stroke of a pen, quash a conviction. That’s because the courts are constitutionally independent - and that means a second option could be difficult too. Parliament could pass an act declaring that all the Horizon convictions be quashed, but that would be an unprecedented meddling in the work of judges - and it would pave the way for politicians to do it again. The third option is a mass appeal with a crystal clear submission to Court of Appeal judges that the state no longer believes the convictions should stand. There’s a precedent for this - 39 post office cases were overturned in one go in 2021. But running such a case would not be easy - and it could still take years to resolve.

prof-dr-ir 3y ago
This explanation may be correct but happens to also fit the pattern of the BBC carrying, perhaps unintentionally, the water for the government. The more important factoid is that, until the renewed outrage this week, no one in the current UK government was seriously pushing to fix anything whatsoever.
- makomk 3y ago
  One of the big problems with British politics at the moment is that lots of people seem to think that if the BBC is less willing to pretend there are easy solutions with no downsides the government is ignoring than other parts of the media this is seen as them being in the government's pocket. Which isn't the same as not willing at all, they pretty systematically focus only on the downsides of government policies already - one of the examples that made HN was the UK Covid app, where the BBC treated using Google and Apple's framework as obviously better right up until the point the government launched a new app that did, when they immediately switched and focused only on the advantages of the old app due to it not doing so. They just don't do this as consistently as some other outlets. That is, the minimum standard they need to meet in order not to be perceived as carrying water for the government is not just lying and misleading the public in order to get the ruling party kicked out, but doing so as aggressively and shamelessly as the most aggressive and shameless of their competitors (which includes social media to some extent).
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > s less willing to pretend there are easy solutions with no downsides the government is ignoring than other parts of the media this is seen as them being in the government's pocket I really cannot parse all the double negatives in this. Is this an allegation relating to the BBC's ties with the ruling party? https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approvin...
    - makomk 3y ago
      If there's any policy which people are calling for but which the government doesn't currently support - for example, passing a law that blanket overturns all of these convictions - it tends to get portrayed as an obvious win with no downsides by much of the British press. If there's something which is currently government policy or effectively so, like leaving this to the courts, we hear about only the downsides of that policy. The BBC does this too, but not quite to the same extent, and they get a lot of flack for it as in this case. Actually, the government has just announced that they are going to pass such a law, and this helps further demonstrate what I mean. After they announced this, the Guardian ran an analysis piece pointing out all the same reasons why this is potentially a bad idea that the BBC talked about before: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/no-precedent-why-commons-approach-to-post-office-scandal-has-lawyers-nervous https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/no-precedent... Their top headline article is also about this announcement and leads by pointing out the same problems: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/rishi-sunak-announces-plan-to-pass-law-quashing-horizon-post-office-scandal-convictions https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/rishi-sunak-... The way in which the BBC is more pro-Tory than publications like the Guardian is that they're less likely to ignore these problems when talking about activists calling for this prior to it becoming government policy. That is, in order for a British media publication to be adequately anti-Tory in the eyes of the press, whether they treat a proposal as bad or good has to depend on whether it's coming from the Tories.
planede 3y ago
Couldn't the parliament pass some generic law that could make the work easier? It's clear that many people are convicted on the basis of evidence coming from the same faulty source, yet the convictions need to be reviewed case-by-case. The goal could be to reduce this friction for similar scenarios, not just for the Horizon convictions.
- jack_riminton 3y ago
  Seems that's what they've done now
shrikant 3y ago
If the government could find a way to make it work for the homosexual activity convictions, I'm sure they can find a way for this miscarriage of justice as well. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/past-convictions-for-homosexual-activity-to-be-wiped-from-records-patel-to-announce https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/past-convictio...
- razakel 3y ago
  The difference being we decided that being gay shouldn't be a crime and never should have been. Defrauding public institutions is quite a different kettle of fish. There will be people convicted who really did have their hands in the till.
  - Karellen 3y ago
    > There will be people convicted who really did have their hands in the till. Maybe, but if any of the evidence used to convict them came from the Horizon system, which has been proven to be flawed and unreliable, then IMO the verdict is still unsupportable. If there is any reason to suspect someone of actually having their hands in the till over the Horizon period, I would still be entirely in favour of requiring that they be immediately set free, and for prosecutors to have to bring an entirely new trial, from scratch. And any jail time resulting from new guilty verdicts to be reduced by time served from the original conviction.
- pipes 3y ago
  That's a very good point.
- makomk 3y ago
  I don't think that poses the same problems for judicial independence because the courts were correctly applying the law at the time - it's just that we've now decided that law was morally wrong - and of course it's always been Parliament's job to set the laws. However, in this case there's no dispute that defraudingg the Post Office out of large sums of money should be a crime, the problem is the courts' factual findings that lead them to rule that specific people had done so.
abigail95 3y ago
Why does an appeal require government support? There's no way reasonable doubt remains, what is the legal barrier that an appeal court is trying to deal with? > But these would be largely symbolic acts because the government can't, at the stroke of a pen, quash a conviction This is untrue. Judges may not like it but I don't really care. The parliament is legally soverign and the courts are subservient to interpret and apply the laws as written in the legislation. If they write a law that says these convictions mean nothing, then they mean nothing. Common law constitutionalism is based on the fact that individual rights exist - not the right of a judiciary to have separate powers.
- TechnicalVault 3y ago
  Indeed, the quirk of the Westminster system is that parliament can indeed legislate whatever it likes. Parliament can pass a law that the colour orange is now legally the new black. There is however one detail, what is passed must be internally consistent with other legislation otherwise it will fall at Judicial Review. For example if you want to pass legislation that contravenes the UK's Human Rights Act, you need to include a "notwithstanding" clause to show the courts you intended to override that law. They could pass a bill to vacate these convictions quite easily but unlike the Buggery Act and Offences Against the Person Act 1828, they still want to be able to prosecute and protect the convictions of a subset of these people who actually did commit false accounting so the legislation is going to need to be more complex.
  - neilwilson 3y ago
    "There is however one detail, what is passed must be internally consistent with other legislation otherwise it will fall at Judicial Review." Only certain legislation, and that is in doubt after the Act of Union with Ireland case. Generally the rule of Implied Repeal applies. Later statutes trump earlier ones.
  - hermitcrab 3y ago
    >Parliament can pass a law that the colour orange is now legally the new black. Or that Rwanda is a safe country for migrants?
di4na 3y ago
It happens to be even worse. Because we have no way to detect all the cases. A lot of the cases were handled in the "Post Office courts" (I don't remember the correct name, not a British), and there are more or less no records of them. So you need to ask people affected to come up and find ways to validate them, then create a case for quashing it. It is a total FUBAR mess.
- leg100 3y ago
  That's not true. They were handled by normal courts and of course there are records. The post office merely prosecuted the cases.

prof-dr-ir 3y ago

This explanation may be correct but happens to also fit the pattern of the BBC carrying, perhaps unintentionally, the water for the government. The more important factoid is that, until the renewed outrage this week, no one in the current UK government was seriously pushing to fix anything whatsoever.

makomk 3y ago
One of the big problems with British politics at the moment is that lots of people seem to think that if the BBC is less willing to pretend there are easy solutions with no downsides the government is ignoring than other parts of the media this is seen as them being in the government's pocket. Which isn't the same as not willing at all, they pretty systematically focus only on the downsides of government policies already - one of the examples that made HN was the UK Covid app, where the BBC treated using Google and Apple's framework as obviously better right up until the point the government launched a new app that did, when they immediately switched and focused only on the advantages of the old app due to it not doing so. They just don't do this as consistently as some other outlets. That is, the minimum standard they need to meet in order not to be perceived as carrying water for the government is not just lying and misleading the public in order to get the ruling party kicked out, but doing so as aggressively and shamelessly as the most aggressive and shameless of their competitors (which includes social media to some extent).
- pjc50 3y ago
  > s less willing to pretend there are easy solutions with no downsides the government is ignoring than other parts of the media this is seen as them being in the government's pocket I really cannot parse all the double negatives in this. Is this an allegation relating to the BBC's ties with the ruling party? https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approvin...
  - makomk 3y ago
    If there's any policy which people are calling for but which the government doesn't currently support - for example, passing a law that blanket overturns all of these convictions - it tends to get portrayed as an obvious win with no downsides by much of the British press. If there's something which is currently government policy or effectively so, like leaving this to the courts, we hear about only the downsides of that policy. The BBC does this too, but not quite to the same extent, and they get a lot of flack for it as in this case. Actually, the government has just announced that they are going to pass such a law, and this helps further demonstrate what I mean. After they announced this, the Guardian ran an analysis piece pointing out all the same reasons why this is potentially a bad idea that the BBC talked about before: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/no-precedent-why-commons-approach-to-post-office-scandal-has-lawyers-nervous https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/no-precedent... Their top headline article is also about this announcement and leads by pointing out the same problems: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/rishi-sunak-announces-plan-to-pass-law-quashing-horizon-post-office-scandal-convictions https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/rishi-sunak-... The way in which the BBC is more pro-Tory than publications like the Guardian is that they're less likely to ignore these problems when talking about activists calling for this prior to it becoming government policy. That is, in order for a British media publication to be adequately anti-Tory in the eyes of the press, whether they treat a proposal as bad or good has to depend on whether it's coming from the Tories.

planede 3y ago

Couldn't the parliament pass some generic law that could make the work easier? It's clear that many people are convicted on the basis of evidence coming from the same faulty source, yet the convictions need to be reviewed case-by-case. The goal could be to reduce this friction for similar scenarios, not just for the Horizon convictions.

jack_riminton 3y ago
Seems that's what they've done now

shrikant 3y ago

If the government could find a way to make it work for the homosexual activity convictions, I'm sure they can find a way for this miscarriage of justice as well. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/past-convictions-for-homosexual-activity-to-be-wiped-from-records-patel-to-announce https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/past-convictio...

razakel 3y ago
The difference being we decided that being gay shouldn't be a crime and never should have been. Defrauding public institutions is quite a different kettle of fish. There will be people convicted who really did have their hands in the till.
- Karellen 3y ago
  > There will be people convicted who really did have their hands in the till. Maybe, but if any of the evidence used to convict them came from the Horizon system, which has been proven to be flawed and unreliable, then IMO the verdict is still unsupportable. If there is any reason to suspect someone of actually having their hands in the till over the Horizon period, I would still be entirely in favour of requiring that they be immediately set free, and for prosecutors to have to bring an entirely new trial, from scratch. And any jail time resulting from new guilty verdicts to be reduced by time served from the original conviction.
pipes 3y ago
That's a very good point.
makomk 3y ago
I don't think that poses the same problems for judicial independence because the courts were correctly applying the law at the time - it's just that we've now decided that law was morally wrong - and of course it's always been Parliament's job to set the laws. However, in this case there's no dispute that defraudingg the Post Office out of large sums of money should be a crime, the problem is the courts' factual findings that lead them to rule that specific people had done so.

abigail95 3y ago

Why does an appeal require government support? There's no way reasonable doubt remains, what is the legal barrier that an appeal court is trying to deal with? > But these would be largely symbolic acts because the government can't, at the stroke of a pen, quash a conviction This is untrue. Judges may not like it but I don't really care. The parliament is legally soverign and the courts are subservient to interpret and apply the laws as written in the legislation. If they write a law that says these convictions mean nothing, then they mean nothing. Common law constitutionalism is based on the fact that individual rights exist - not the right of a judiciary to have separate powers.

TechnicalVault 3y ago
Indeed, the quirk of the Westminster system is that parliament can indeed legislate whatever it likes. Parliament can pass a law that the colour orange is now legally the new black. There is however one detail, what is passed must be internally consistent with other legislation otherwise it will fall at Judicial Review. For example if you want to pass legislation that contravenes the UK's Human Rights Act, you need to include a "notwithstanding" clause to show the courts you intended to override that law. They could pass a bill to vacate these convictions quite easily but unlike the Buggery Act and Offences Against the Person Act 1828, they still want to be able to prosecute and protect the convictions of a subset of these people who actually did commit false accounting so the legislation is going to need to be more complex.
- neilwilson 3y ago
  "There is however one detail, what is passed must be internally consistent with other legislation otherwise it will fall at Judicial Review." Only certain legislation, and that is in doubt after the Act of Union with Ireland case. Generally the rule of Implied Repeal applies. Later statutes trump earlier ones.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  >Parliament can pass a law that the colour orange is now legally the new black. Or that Rwanda is a safe country for migrants?

di4na 3y ago

It happens to be even worse. Because we have no way to detect all the cases. A lot of the cases were handled in the "Post Office courts" (I don't remember the correct name, not a British), and there are more or less no records of them. So you need to ask people affected to come up and find ways to validate them, then create a case for quashing it. It is a total FUBAR mess.

leg100 3y ago
That's not true. They were handled by normal courts and of course there are records. The post office merely prosecuted the cases.