Technically Minded

Stephen Bradshaw, it is harassment if the complainant says that it is. The magistrates will convict you. What matters is that she is well enough connected for the Crown Prosecution Service to charge you, and the CPS has an awful lot to prove here, so you are screwed.

Although it is now a dead letter in that it has become impossible to imagine a future conviction, the triple status of the Post Office as complainant, investigator and prosecutor is genuinely astonishing, and Bradshaw embodies the people who seek Police-like powers without having to join the Force. Once possessed of those powers, or even before that, then they always think that they are Gene Hunt.

The legislation exonerating and compensating the Post Office's victims should also formally abolish its powers, as well as providing for further compensation out of the seized assets of those who had knowingly perpetrated the injustice. And the odd exoneration and compensation of guilty people who had in any case already been punished, would be a small price to pay for this measure as a whole.