09 Jan Urgent justice needed for Post Office victims, says Labour’s Catherine McKinnell
JUSTICE for the victims of the Post Office IT scandal needs to be delivered urgently by the Government, Labour’s shadow schools minister Catherine McKinnell MP has said.
She told GB News: “The discussion today is rightly around how that justice is delivered as quickly as possible to the people that are waiting for it and, unfortunately, people who have already died waiting for it, and that is one of the most horrifying aspects of this.
“But I think as well there does need to be a good hard look at how we got to this situation of it taking so long. There’s an independent inquiry underway and it’s right that it looks at all of these issues, at the stages at which information came to light, what was known, and what decisions were taken at which points and that we get to the bottom of this and learn lessons.
“Any government needs to learn the lessons of what went wrong here but I think the current government needs to focus on delivering justice urgently to these victims.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Stephen Dixon and Isabel Webster, she continued: “Everybody needs to look hard at who knew what, when, and what decisions were taken and what could have been done to deliver justice more swiftly for the victims of this egregious miscarriage of justice.
“But ultimately, we know one of the issues that is being looked at is the system that the Post Office has been using to prosecute these convictions and making sure that that is reviewed and perhaps brought under a different system to make sure this doesn’t happen again, but I think it’s right that all of this is looked at.
“But right now, I think it shouldn’t distract from the fact that the priority has to be ensuring justice for the victims as quickly as possible. And I think that has to be the focus and the priority today.”
She added: “It’s sad that it is has come to be a priority as a result of this finally, being so keenly felt by the public and it’s right that it is but we do need to look at why it took so long to get to this point, but we need to focus on delivering that justice or just as quickly as possible.”
