The Know Daily - Tuesday 9 April 2024

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Canada is embarking on the biggest expansion of its publicly-funded healthcare system in decades, with around nine million women soon set to benefit from free contraception. The cost of diabetes medication will also be covered under the new system, with more drugs set to become available for free at a later date.

📮 Horizon latest

The next phase of the public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal begins today. 

What’s the scandal about?
Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting relying on data from the faulty Horizon software, developed by Japanese company Fujitsu.

In what is widely regarded as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history, glitches in the Horizon system meant money looked as if it were missing from many branch accounts, when in fact it was not, explained The Independent. 

What’s happening today?
25 years after the first post office operators were wrongly convicted, former subpostmasters’ stories will be heard at the public inquiry, which launched in September 2020. Alan Bates - subject of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office - is set to take to the stand this morning.

Next month, former Post Office boss Paula Vennells - who handed back her CBE in January following public pressure - is set to give evidence under oath.

What’s the government doing to help? 
On 13 March, the government introduced new legislation to “swiftly exonerate and compensate” all victims, with the majority expected to have their names cleared by the end of July. But as The Guardian’s Jane Croft pointed out, lives have been “ruined” by the scandal. “You can’t compensate for lost time, you can’t buy back time,” she said.

So what do victims want from the inquiry?
“For the truth to come out,” says Croft. Key questions remain about what Post Office bosses, Fujitsu executives and government ministers knew about the faulty Horizon system - and when.

In 2017, 555 subpostmasters took legal action against the Post Office - and while it eventually agreed to pay them £58m in compensation, a draft report uncovered by the BBC shows the Post Office spent £100m fighting the group in court despite knowing its defence was untrue. 

Calls have also been growing for a police investigation into the scandal, with Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake recently saying that those responsible “should go to jail”.