Ian Hislop: look at the disdain on his face as he addresses the claims flowing from Jake Berry.

Here’s something that is a joy to see: Ian Hislop giving Tory Party chairman Jake Berry the verbal kicking of his life on Robert Peston’s politics show.

Hislop was there to talk about the Post Office Scandal and the fact that only now – five years after the court judgment dramatised in Mr Bates vs The Post Office – the Conservative government has been bothered to lift a finger to exonerate and compensate the sub-postmasters who were falsely accused of theft.

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He explained his opinion here:

“The judicial system and the government preferred to listen to corporate bodies than to ordinary people.”

For This Writer – and I’ve been in a court case in which the judge preferred to listen to a so-called pillar of the Establishment rather than the ordinary person – this suggests that justice is deeply compromised.

Judges should not be swayed by the position in society of the people on two different sides of a court case. Their only concern should be the evidence. If they cannot detach themselves from such considerations, then they should not put themselves in a position to judge other people; their judgement would be impaired from the outset.

Also: “Two things tipped this – this drama, and the fact that there is an election.” Yes. Politicians are concerned that they need to be seen to be helping ordinary people because there will be a general election this year.

The implication is that, if there wasn’t an election this year and there was likely to be time for the public to forget about this issue, the politicians wouldn’t give two hoots about the injustice done to hundreds of sub-postmasters. Remember that when you’re deciding to vote Labour or Tory or for someone else!

Hislop then went on to the main event – verbally tearing strips off of Berry before our eyes. Watch:

The first point he makes is a bombshell: for the first time, someone is giving us a reason the Post Office ignored the sub-postmasters and insisted that there was nothing wrong with the faulty Horizon software provided by Fujitsu. “They were incentivised to make money for the Post Office.” Was that really Paula Vennells’s reason for ruining the lives of hundreds – thousands – of people?

“That led to ignoring what was going on in the hope of … better remuneration.” So the sub-postmasters were thrown under a bus so Vennells and her fellows could take home a better paycheque at the end of the month? If this is true, then not only are the government of the day (which goes right up to now) at fault for hiring people who thought that way but the Church of England as well, for taking Vennells on as a vicar (and is it true she was considered for promotion to be a bishop?)

“All of them should have to pay those bonuses back.” Unquestionably. Who are these people? Should we just target everybody at the Post Office who was paid a bonus related to this matter? Can that be tracked? What about Fujitsu staff who worked on it?

Host Robert Peston points out that there is no mechanism for such clawback in UK law, and Berry suggests taking back “their massive taxpayer-funded pensions”. Hislop then wants to know why Berry and the Tories couldn’t do it “so long ago?” Having been told for their entire campaigning life that it’s a difficult, time-consuming and expensive matter, the sub-postmasters were told yesterday (January 10) that suddenly it isn’t.

As Hislop says: “It is absolutely fatuous for this government to claim, ‘Hey, we’re really acting now.’ Did nothing!”

Berry tried to claim that Hislop was talking nonsense (but this is clearly untrue. We know the government did nothing until yesterday).

As the programme’s theme tune started playing, Berry was trying to claim that £130 million had been paid out to the victims of the scandal since 2019 – but was this due to government action or was the government forced to pay because it is the sole shareholder in the post office?

Whatever the facts, it was a joy to watch – and we already know from Alan Bates (the Mr Bates in the title of Mr Bates vs The Post Office) that many victims will not be satisfied with the compensation plans announced yesterday.

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