Politics: Several long-running issues appear to be reaching a long-awaited and much-delayed conclusion
Firstly, may I wish all constituents reading this column a very Guid New Year and every good wish for 2024.
This year will almost certainly see a UK General Election being held.
The latest possible time the current Parliament could run to is January 2025 but I think it’s highly unlikely that even this Westminster Government would hold off that long and inflict an election campaign on both public and political campaigners alike over the Christmas period.
For such small mercies we are grateful.
In terms of the political scene more generally, there are several long-running issues which do, finally, appear to be reaching a long-awaited and much-delayed conclusion as we enter 2024.
The first of these is the injustice done to the WASPI women; that is, those who were born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1960.
Significant changes to the age at which they receive their state pension have been imposed upon them with a lack of appropriate notifications, with little or no notice and much faster than was promised, with some being hit by more than one increase. In short, this meant that those affected had their retirement plans effectively ripped-up and had to continue working further into what should have been their retirement.
The Parliamentary Ombudsman has already concluded there was maladministration on the part of the UK Government. It has, in the past few weeks, sent its preliminary findings as to what should happen next to those involved in the ‘test cases’ it has been investigating. My hope is that the Ombudsman will recommend the UK Government should compensate those affected quickly and appropriately.
The second of these scandals involves the Post Office and their Fujitsu ‘Horizon’ computer system – something which readers may be more familiar with following the airing of the excellent ITV drama over the holidays based on how a conspiracy of silence on the part of Post Office management tore apart the lives of those who they were supposed to help and support.
Between 2000 and 2014, over 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted based on information from the Horizon system, which saw staff wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting.
However, in December 2019 a High Court judge ruled that the system contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were in fact caused by the Horizon system.
Since then, many sub-postmasters have had their criminal convictions overturned, although not before some were sent to prison for crimes they never committed.
A Public Inquiry is currently ongoing and the shocking evidence it has turned up should leave no room to escape the conclusion that Post Office management must be held to account for their decisions over many years which cost not only livelihoods but also, in some cases, lives as sub-postmasters could not face the ignominy of being branded as thieves and fraudsters when they had done nothing wrong.
The fact the UK Government is already putting in place the mechanisms to compensate those affected is welcome but plainly this should never have happened in the first place and many questions still remain to be answered.
My hope, as we go forward into 2024, is that those who have been affected by both these scandals get the answers they seek and the compensation they deserve.