Post Office scandal: LEP says sorry for adding to ex-Broughton sub-postmistress' distress over Horizon conviction and jailing

Mrs. McDonald pleaded guilty to charges of theft and false accounting and was sentenced to 18 months in jail back in January 2011.

She served four-and-a-half months, but her name was eventually cleared just over a decade later after it was shown that she had been wrongly convicted as part of the Horizon IT scandal at the Post Office.

On Thursday, the ongoing public inquiry into the affair was told of a claim by Mrs. McDonald that the Post Office-employed investigator in her case had “bullied” her while he was looking into an alleged shortfall of around £94,000 at her branch.

Stephen Bradshaw was accused by the counsel to the inquiry of regarding her prosecution as somehow being “career-boosting” for him. He says he had always acted professionally.

Since the wider injustice - in which over 700 subpostmasters and mistresses were convicted - came to more widespread public attention following last week’s ITV drama, “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office”, the Lancashire Post has come in for some social media criticism for the way in which it covered Jacqueline McDonald’s case at the time of her guilty plea and jailing.

There have been calls from some within the Broughton community for the paper to apologise, with one comment suggesting that the Post should be “first in line” to do so.

Responding to the criticism, Lancashire Post digital editor Vanessa Sims said: “Media outlets don’t very often apologise - and while we stand by our entirely accurate reporting of Jacqueline McDonald’s case in 2011, we are sorry that our coverage will no doubt have compounded her distress at knowing that she had felt compelled to plead guilty to crimes she didn't commit.

“At the time, the Post was - like many other local newspapers nationwide - publishing a legally sound account of court proceedings involving a sub-postmaster or mistress in which wrongdoing was either admitted or was the conclusion reached by a jury.

“Of course, we now know that Jacqueline’s case was one part of a patchwork of injustice being stitched across the country as a result of the Horizon scandal. However, back in 2011, while it had long been evident to those caught up in the shameful affair that they had been wrongly accused - and even, like Jacqueline, convicted and jailed - that was far from being widely understood.

“At the turn of the 2010s, some specialist national media titles, which had been investigating the allegations made by the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) - led by the formidable Alan Bates, who gave his name to last week’s ITV dramatisation - were piecing together the puzzle of what is now widely regarded as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.