Mr Bates vs The Post Office has been an extraordinary successful vehicle to humanise the victims of a small number of out of control unaccountable self-serving monsters.
Monsters who ensured that regular law abiding people had their livelihoods cancelled, were relieved of their savings, lost their homes, lived in cars and some were put in prison for crimes the Post Office knew were never committed.
DEFRA’s regulations are an insult to everyone working in our sector.
Our sector did not need any new regulations. The Post Office did not need a dysfunctional accounting system thrust upon them.
But it looks like DEFRA, not politicians decided to rewrite our regulations - and the only justification or argument that matches DEFRA’s actions is that their bureaucrats believed that the entire sector was engaging in systematic animal cruelty.
But the veicle they chose to rectify all these imaginary problems was a rating system that informed no one of the quality of care, didn't consider decades of experience and told no one about the establishment itself.
The only remedy to counter DEFRA's overreach is to concentrate on individual responsibility and institutional reforms.
- DEFRA awarded themselves the vast powers to laud it over others without accepting any responsibility - and this protectionist bubble has to be collapsed before institutions can function, be accountable and act in the public interest.
- The procedures and the individuals involved in the writing the regulations must be held to account for their lack of due diligence, incompetence and negligence.
- Decisions to do nothing after the problems were known must lead to individual accountability and the government needs to provide compensation or provide public funding for legal action to hold their institutions to account for the harm caused to individual business owners and our sector.
- And in DEFRA’s case the break up of a dangerous and dysfunctional institution into departments that are accountable and able to function in the pubic interest is essential.
DEFRA wrote our regulations without any concept of how small businesses operate.
- DEFRA wrote rules and regulations that didn’t consider that the majority of catteries are run by one or two people and do not have time for new bureaucracy and can't factor someone in to the finannces to deal with any excess bureaucracy.
- DEFRA made demands for financial inputs from people, many of whom will never pay any VAT and might only reach the personal tax threshold every few years.
- DEFRA bureaucrats were entirely negligent in their approach and certainly had no idea that they were required to make provisions for any regulations that outlawed previously legal requirements.
- DEFRA made up regulations without any consideration of cost, made no funding available and wrote them to take immediate effect.
This discussion of the Post Office fiasco and the DEFRA debacle is covered in ten short articles:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5,
Part 6,
Part 7,
Part 8,
Part 9,
Part 10