Media can't blame SNP for Post Office Horizon scandal

Today the Scottish Parliament saw the first First Minister's Questions of 2024.

Proceedings were dominated by the story which has pushed all other UK political stories out of the top of the news agenda, the Horizon software scandal which resulted in hundreds of subpostmasters and mistresses being wrongly convicted of fraud and false accounting. 

This story has rumbled on for many years – issues with the software first became apparent within weeks of the software being installed in 1999. 

Senior managers within the Post Office allegedly covered up the problems and continued to vigorously pursue subpostmasters who it accused of fraud on the basis of incorrect information supplied by the faulty software. 

The Post Office resisted the reports of faults in the system, insisting that the subpostmasters make up any shortfall of money, and in many cases untruthfully denied that any other subpostmasters had reported problems. 

When subpostmasters were unable to pay the thousands of pounds in supposed shortfalls which did not in fact exist, the Post Office adopted an aggressive policy of pursuing criminal charges. 

Due to pressure from campaigners and MPs, in 2012 the Post Office appointed forensic accountants Second Sight to investigate Horizon. The investigation concluded that the software contained faults which could result in accounting discrepancies, but the Post Office continued to insist that there were no system-wide problems with the software system. 

In 2019, a group of 555 sub postmasters won a group action brought in court against the Post Office, with the judge ruling that the Horizon software contained bugs, errors and defects which caused it to be unreliable. The Post Office agreed to settle out of court. 

Many convictions were then quashed by the Court of Appeal, and in April 2021 the Court ruled that a fair trial was not possible in cases that relied on Horizon data. 

Further convictions were quashed and in September 2020, the UK government established the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. However, only a minority of those wrongly convicted had successfully completed the tortuous appeals process by December last year when ITV broadcast a dramatisation of the scandal, Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, which catapulted the story to the top of the political agenda. 

As a result of widespread public outrage, the UK Government hurriedly announced that it would bring in a new law to fast track the exoneration of those falsely convicted and to pay compensation to victims of the scandal. 

Control of the Post Office is reserved to Westminster, and successive UK Governments have been accused of failing to oversee the actions of the Post Office even when evidence of faulty software was overwhelming. These are ministers from all three main UK parties. 

In England and Wales, the Post Office has the power of prosecution, yet in Scotland the prosecutions were brought by the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal (COPFS) Service acting on information supplied to it by the Post Office. 

Scotland has its own unique legal system and at FMQs the First Minister said that after speaking with the Lord Advocate, the quickest way to achieve justice for victims of the scandal in Scotland would be for Holyrood to adopt the new law being put forward by the UK Government.

He added that "there are a number of complexities" to navigate, but that the Scottish Government would engage immediately and urgently with the UK Government. 

The COPFS first became aware of issues with the Post Office software in 2013. The COPFS acts entirely independently of Scottish Government ministers, which alongside the fact that control of the Post Office is entirely reserved to Westminster, leaves the anti-independence parties and their friends in the media desperately short of any angles which allow them to deflect blame from the British Government and the Tories and Labour on to the SNP. But that won't stop them trying. 

Scotland to ‘replicate’ XL bully dog law

The First Minister announced that Scotland will soon adopt measures to control XL bully dogs. Following the banning of the breed in England without a licence, there has been a flow of the animals into Scotland.

Poorly trained and controlled XL bullies, a larger and more powerful version of the more familiar pit bull terrier have recently been linked to a number of attacks, one of which resulted in a death. 

The First Minister said: "What has become clear, I'm afraid in the last few weeks, is we have seen a flow of XL bully dogs coming to Scotland, a number of people coming to Scotland to bring XL bully dogs here to the country." 

He added: "We will, in essence, replicate the legislation that is in England and Wales here in Scotland because, ultimately, although we do have a very good system of dog control notice schemes, and we do take the approach indeed not to breed, we have to respond to the situation as it currently stands and therefore we will do what we need to do to ensure public safety." 

Israel genocide case heard in the Hague 

The International Court of Justice in the Hague is hearing a case brought by the government of South Africa which accuses the government of Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. around 24,000 people have died in Gaza since Israel launched its assault on the territory following the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October last year.

Israel has been accused of inflicting collective punishment upon the civilian population of Gaza in retribution for the Hamas attacks, destroying schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure and forcing 85% of the population of the territory to flee. 

Large areas of Gaza have been razed to the ground and the situation has been described as catastrophic. 

Some far-right figures within the Israeli government have openly called for the expulsion of Palestinians from the territory.