​Justice has been a long time coming - Ian Murray

​What processes will be put in place to compensate sub-postmasters and former sub-postmasters who have been disadvantaged, fined, lost their businesses, homes or even jailed, as a result of the problems with the Horizon system?

Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which exposed the Horizon scandal in which 700 postmasters and mistresses were wrongly prosecuted, has been watched by more than nine million viewers

This is the precise question that I asked in Parliament in July 2013 as the Shadow Minister for Postal Services– more than a decade ago.

At the time, the question was addressed by Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson, who was the relevant minister in the Tory/Lib coalition government led by David Cameron.

Her response, in a reply that has not stood the test of time, was to warn that I should “not talk the Post Office down”.

It’s fair to say a lot has happened since then, which justifies why I – and many fellow MPs at the time – initially raised concerns in the Commons.

Throughout the intervening years we continued to campaign for justice for those affected by the Post Office scandal.

So I’m delighted that a proposal has finally been put forward this week to exonerate and compensate victims, as announced by the Prime Minister. But it should never have taken this long.

In 2020, seven years after first raising it in parliament, I worked with the media to raise further awareness of the impact on sub-postmasters – including several harrowing cases in Edinburgh.

By this point, I had seen how lives had been ruined and I continued to demand a compensation system for those who had been disadvantaged.

Fewer than 100 people have had their convictions quashed – yet more than 700 branch managers were convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud.

The scandal has now been depicted in the ITV drama ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’, which has sparked the renewed action to address this injustice.

I also want to praise all the newspaper journalists who have never stopped raising the issue and seeking answers as well.

Pressure from MPs and the media has got us to this stage.

We now eagerly await the detail of how the government’s promise will be delivered.

But let’s not pretend that Rishi Sunak has somehow ridden to the rescue of victims; he has been forced to do so by external pressure.

Granted, he wasn’t an MP in 2013, but his current Foreign Secretary was PM at the time – and for years, the Tory administration kept sweeping injustice under the carpet.

And the SNP administration in Holyrood also failed to act, prosecuting hundreds of Scottish sub postmasters too.

It wasn’t just opposition MPs like me calling for action over a decade ago – Tory MP James Arbuthnot, now in the House of Lords, was among those back then to demand redress.

It has taken far too long for this government, which has been in power now for nearly 14 years, to act.

These kind of delays – which we have seen in devolved politics as well – cause untold anguish for victims.

We simply cannot have a situation where other injustices, like the failings of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde management at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, take a similar amount of time before justice starts to be delivered.

The people in the post office network are the lifeblood of our communities and must be supported in every way possible.

The campaign for justice is not over.