THE Post Office scandal gets murkier by the day. This week, two truly shocking revelations have emerged.

Firstly, subpostmasters who were victims of armed robberies – had knives held against their throats as their tills were rifled – were pursued by the Post Office in a bid to recoup the money which was stolen. Rather than showing any sympathy, the Post Office said the subpostmasters were responsible for making up the missing money – what sort of hideous contracts had the Post Office forced on its people that could make them liable in such circumstances?

Secondly, we learn that in April 2014 the “Project Sparrow” sub-committee tried to secretly sack the independent investigators, Second Sight, who had produced a report in July 2013 that showed there were bugs in the Horizon IT system. This small sub-committee included Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells and chairman Alice Perkins, and a senior civil servant, Richard Callard, who was the Government’s eyes and ears because the Government was the only shareholder in the Post Office.

There have been times during this scandal when it has been possible to feel sorry for people like Ms Vennells, who has even been hounded into giving her honour back, but any sympathy has long since been shredded. And now we learn that the Government was as aware as senior managers that there was something seriously wrong with the computer system and therefore the convictions of the postmasters.

Just as worryingly, when the Project Sparrow’s minutes were first released in 2021, they were 60 per cent redacted so that they made little sense to people like the BBC’s journalists who were trying to get to the truth.

So this isn’t a historic cover up from a decade ago – it was going on as recently as 2021. The scandal is utterly appalling, and it should shake our establishment – businesses which rely on the public sector for their vast profits, the civil service and politicians – to the core.