Following the airing of ITV’s dramatization of events surrounding the Post Office Horizon scandal last week, many people have rightly shared in the anger at this terrible injustice.

It is a scandal I have been aware of for some years, since an affected Postmistress living in South Shropshire came to one of my regular advice surgeries. Her tale was terrible – she had been accused of thievery, and ended up wrongfully convicted of stealing £40,000 from the Post Office, serving 12 months in jail in 2000. She also lost her job, her savings, her home, her reputation and any chance of restoring livelihood, despite her total innocence - all due to a faulty computer system that for years was never properly recognised by the Post Office.

I first spoke in Parliament on this topic three years ago, just after my constituent first came to see me, in a debate organised by my parliamentary neighbour, Lucy Allan, MP for Telford. Having co-founded a retail business before becoming an MP, I believe any corporate directorship or management team worth its salt would have identified there was a fundamental problem, given the volume of similar allegations being made across the country.

Unfortunately, corporate blindness to this issue extended into government. Campaigners were desperate to get their point across to successive governments, but the then Minister responsible for the Post Office, now Sir Ed Davey, refused even to meet with them, writing: “I do not believe a meeting would serve any useful purpose.” 

In recent years, I have supported calls for full compensation for victims – including reimbursement of sums wrongly claimed by the Post Office and loss of earnings.

The government had already committed to securing justice for those affected, and has put in place interim compensation schemes for those affected, including introducing legislation for a further scheme before Christmas. So far £138m has been paid out to over 2,700 claimants across the three Post Office compensation schemes. But sometimes it takes the media shining a light on an issue to build substantial public awareness, and momentum to resolve the longstanding injustice.

Focus has rightly been brought to the Post Office leadership at the time, and the former Chief Executive is handing back her CBE, as many have called for. But it is not enough to seek answers only from the Post Office. Fujitsu designed the software that ended up jailing so many innocents, and they have serious questions to answer as the public inquiry progresses. 

I shall continue to press for answers on this issue, for the sake of my constituent and all those affected by the Post Office undermining trust in this great British institution.