Behind the scenes

The Post Office scandal has reached the mainstream, thanks to ITV’s dramatisation, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, broadcast earlier this month. The political response to the harms done to sub-postmasters due to problems with the Post Office’s Horizon system has rightly focused on correcting miscarriages of justice and providing compensation to the people affected. But there are other lessons to learn from this scandal: about how technology can go wrong and the implications for how it’s developed and embedded within wider processes; and about the rights we need to bring such errors to light, correct decisions made about us, and hold organisations accountable.

But even as the government congratulates itself on finally acting to compensate victims and quash convictions, its own Data Protection and Digital Information Bill is laying the groundwork for both making similar scandals more likely in the future, and making it even harder for campaigners to achieve justice.

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