British journalist and satirist, Ian Hislop, has lambasted Rossendale and Lancashire MP Sir Jake Berry over the Post Office scandal.

The former Conservative Party chair appeared alongside the long-standing Have I Got News For You team captain, and editor of Private Eye magazine, during an episode of Robert Peston’s ITV political show on Wednesday night (January 10).

Towards the end of the programme, Mr Hislop, whose publication has long covered the Horizon scandal, and Sir Jake, who represents Dawen, became embroiled in a heated discussion about new legislation announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government yesterday, which will exonerate victims of the Post Office scandal.

The legislation comes five years after a court judgement ruled in their favour.

 

Mr Hislop was keen to discover why Sir Jake, and the Conservative party, took “so long” to take action on the scandal, and in a clip from the show, which has gone viral on X (formerly known as Twitter), Mr Hislop said the government, “did nothing, did nothing the whole time”.

During the discussion, Sir Jake suggested the government could take control of Post Office chief executive's tax-payer funded pensions, and pass a piece of emergency legislation or parliamentary pardon.

But Mr Hislop reacted by saying: “But why couldn’t you do it so long ago?

"The fact that it takes an ITV drama and suddenly, having been told their entire campaigning lives ‘this is very difficult you’ll have to go in front of a judge, this is very, very, expensive’, to be told this morning, ‘oh it isn’t, tomorrow we’ll pass legislation and you’re all exonerated’.

“I mean, it is absolutely fatuous for this government to claim, ‘hey, we’re really acting now’.”

Sir Jake responded by saying Mr Hislop’s suggestion was “complete and utter nonsense” and between 2019 and the present day more than £100m had been paid out by the government to sub-postmasters affected by the scandal.

Before the conversation could descend further into chaos, Mr Peston announced the programme was “over”, and the credits began to roll.

Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office scandal saw hundreds of sub-postmasters (managers at Post Office branches across Britain) wrongly prosecuted or convicted of stealing money, due to a glitch in a software system called Horizon, provided by Fujitsu.

Many were sent to prison, with others losing their livelihoods, homes and marriages. Some even died before they had chance to clear their names.

The Post Office spent years maintaining the Horizon software was reliable and continued to accuse the sub-postmasters of theft and fraud.

However, flaws in the software came to light in 2009, but it took until 2015 before the Post Office began to investigate.

Post Office boss at the time, Paula Vennells CBE, maintained her stance that there had been no miscarriage of justice.

Four years later, in 2019, the Post Office agreed to settle the claims of 555 sub-postmasters, following a campaign led by former sub-postmaster Alan Bates.

Despite receiving compensation, some of the victims were left out of pocket, due to astronomical legal fee costs.

The scandal exploded into the public domain following a recent ITV drama starring Accrington’s Julie Hesmondhalgh called Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which triggered demands for justice.

This included a petition, signed by more than a million people, calling for the former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells be stripped of her CBE.

Since the show aired, Vennells has handed back her honour, an empty gesture as she still retains the CBE moniker.

Spurred on by these demands, Rishi Sunak yesterday (January 10) promised to introduce new legislation to overturn the wrongful convictions.

Downing Street said the Bill would be introduced within weeks with the ambition of clearing people’s names by the end of the year.

An independent inquiry as well as a police investigation into the scandal are now being carried out, with ministers facing scrutiny.

Even though millions have pounds have been paid out so far to the wrongly accused, many Post Office managers are still to receive compensation.