James Grundy MP: Post Office scandal is a gross miscarriage of justice

​The new Parliamentary year started eventfully, with a debate in Parliament regarding the long standing issues around the Horizon Post Office scandal, in which over 700 postmasters were convicted after being accused of fraudulently siphoning off funds from their local post offices in the early 2000s.

Evidence has since emerged that these postmasters were not responsible and that the problems were caused by a faulty computer system employed by the Post Office.

Those wrongly convicted lost their livelihoods, reputations, homes and savings in the legal battles that followed, and the recent ITV drama, Mr Bates versus The Post Office set out the details of this gross miscarriage of justice.

In 2019, the High Court found that the Horizon accounting system employed by the Post Office was faulty and in 2020 the Government established a public inquiry to investigate the affair.

In April 2021 the Court of Appeal quashed 39 convictions, but many postmasters are still fighting to clear their names and restore their reputations.

The public inquiry is still ongoing and a political consensus is emerging that this is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.

Obviously, the inquiry must be allowed to complete its investigations, but significant changes must be made to ensure that such a scandal cannot happen again.

To report more positive news, I recently attended a public meeting in Golborne with the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to discuss progress on the delivery of Golborne railway station.

I was pleased to see the full designs be presented to a largely positive audience of local people in Golborne, although discussions were had concerning the impact on local residents adjacent to the station site, as well as the need for adequate bus provision and parking provision to prevent surrounding streets being impacted by commuter parking.

The latest timetable for the delivery of Golborne station is for construction to begin in 2026, with services to begin operating from 2027.

The mayor and I will be presenting the final proposals to Rail Minister Huw Merriman later this month.

I am very pleased we have been able to secure cross-party agreement on this important piece of local infrastructure and I believe Golborne station will serve as a template for a future new railway station in the town of Leigh itself.