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There must be no hiding place for scandal-hit Post Office bosses, food workers demand
A post office van in Aldwych, central London, January 11, 2024

THERE must be no hiding place for scandal-hit Post Office bosses who “destroyed lives and then lied about it,” food workers demanded today.

Bakers’ union delegates gathered in Staffordshire for the union’s 2024 conference unanimously backed calls for those responsible for a huge miscarriage of justice to receive “no protection from the Establishment.”

The damning intervention comes amid growing demands for criminal prosecutions of those in charge during the Horizon IT system scandal, in which hundreds of innocent subpostmasters were wrongly accused of theft and endured prison terms and bankruptcy.

The Post Office has been accused of knowing that the Fujitsu accounting system had serious flaws even as it took its own workers to court. The organisation has denied any allegations of a cover-up.

Food worker Joanne Henderson, whose own mother worked for the Post Office, told delegates in Stone: “Luckily Horizon didn’t affect the branch she worked at, but she knows a lot of people where it did.

“It was horrendous. People had their windows put out, the community turned on them, people lost their livelihoods, their families, they were put in jail.

“I could have lost my mum over a computer glitch, and [bosses] knew there was something wrong. They destroyed lives and they lied about it.”

Fellow Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union member Doughie Johnston slammed management for “doing nothing,” even after the suicide of former subpostmaster Martin Griffiths, who was fired from his Hope Farm branch in Cheshire in 2013.

And delegate Andy Moorhouse accused bosses of attempting to use “incompetence as a defence,” adding: “Support the Post Office workers and get these bad bosses in jail.”

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