This post first appeared in The DIstinctive Dispatch newsletter on 12 January.

As I write, Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw’s evidence to the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal is leading the news.  

Mr Bradshaw investigated and helped convict some sub-postmasters wrongly accused of false accounting and fraud.

Terse, evasive, and lacking contrition, his testimony encapsulated the failings consistently writ large across this scandal.

It came a day after the government took the extraordinary step of confirming its intention to pass legislation to exonerate hundreds of sub-postmasters whose lives were trashed by a once-treasured institution. This is because the outcry following ITV’s four-part dramatisation of the scandal in Mr Bates vs The Post Office bounced the government into responding.

The inquiry will take until next year to get to the bottom of the issues that created this disaster. But it’s already clear that ethical, leadership and governance failings played a part alongside dodgy tech. And it’s troubling to hear about PR executives’ role in working with lawyers to create a ‘narrative’ and lines to rebut concerns, as evidence about problems with the IT system piled high.

Even today, with the scandal leading the news for more than a week, the Post Office has offered little more to address the public concerns than a limp statement saying it’s ‘very sorry’. BBC radio journalists sounded almost apologetic reading it out. Postmasters in the studio sounded incredulous hearing it.