I don’t think that anyone who watched the recent ITV drama on the Post Office Scandal could have failed to have been both saddened and shocked by the staggering injustice suffered by sub-postmasters between 1999 and 2015.

‘Mr Bates v The Post Office’ tells the story of how the Post Office, over two decades, held hundreds of its own sub-postmasters and postmistresses liable for financial discrepancies that appeared on the unreliable computerised accounting system, Horizon.

Toby Jones (one of my favourite actors) played Alan Bates who took on the Post Office and who was instrumental in driving the campaign to expose the scandal.

It has been reported by Neil Hudgell of the law firm Hudgells who has already helped 73 former post office operators clear their names, that following the ITV drama around 50-100 new enquiries have been received.

It seems that the drama has encouraged new cases to come forward and it appears that the majority of the new enquiries were not prosecuted but lost their livelihoods and homes.

Mr Hudgell told the BBC that the drama had brought to light the trauma of what the sub-postmasters went through.  “It’s brought huge widespread sympathy to these people so alongside that, family encouragement and speaking to other postmasters that have been along this journey, they have found the courage to come forward.

Prime Minister Rishhi Sunak has condemned the Post Office Horizon scandal as an “appalling miscarriage of justice” adding that the government was reviewing options to “try and make this right for the people who were so wrongfully treated at the time”.

For myself and I suspect the majority of viewers there remains one unanswered question, how could this persist at such a scale, for so long….