>I don't know where you find the limits here, in the sense that at some level there is a mistake here. People make mistakes.

I worked in a highly regulated company, we were under supervision of FDA, EMA and German EMA. We once missed a bug in database migration where a boolean field was false by default in java (non-nullabe), but it could be null in database column. It apparently broke a few reports (NOT running software, just pdf reports) for pharmacological clinics, 2 developers, 2 testers, our PO and out CTO had "disciplinary" actions (don't remember what it was really called) and their actions were under supervision from external consultants our company had to pay for.

It's crazy we don't have such rules in finance, food, data processing and publishing industries.

> The situation at the Royal Mail is likely to be dramatically more serious, because there's a significant chance they were both covering up serious failings and knowingly directly prosecuting people to do so.

Yes, RM decided to start internal investigation that lasted a few years, instead immediately contacting police, this is why it lasted so long and were so many victims.