Many of those culpable are pretty ordinary solicitors and technology contractors and not, eg, peers of the realm.
You misattribute
The whole point of this coverup was to benefit the elites or cover up their failings. We have a dodgy contract, acceptance of a faulty system, and desire to cover up its failings because that would lead to ruined careers at the C level. Misallocation of funds would be investigated, we would have to figure out where did millions of dollars actually disappear to, etc.
The middle classes involved, solicitors, etc. are culpable in the sense that they serviced the machine and enabled it, but they not the beneficiaries, they are just cog in the machine. If a specific person would refuse, another would soon take his place.
So the real blame lies with those who were comfortable giving outright criminal orders.
One thing that I have learned (and, no one else seems to have learned), is that Accountability begins and ends at the top.
It doesn't matter if it was a "rogue employee." The top head is Responsible. That's (ostensibly) why they get paid the big bucks (or so I'm told, but never shown).
Every time a politician commits an offence the president/prime minister should go to prison?
Every time a pupil breaks the law, the principal of the school should go to prison?
I'd suggest the reason 'no on else seems to have learned' it is because it's a ridiculous and impractical idea. Should CEOs (etc) be punished if they knowingly aid and abet crime and/or cover it up? Sure, I think most people are on board with that.
Concretely in this case, if you are bringing a prosecution and you fail to uphold the rights of the defendant, yes I absolutely think you should face criminal liability for that.
Pretty much, yeah.
Happens in the military (not always, of course, but more common).
The argument I always hear, justifying the enormous pay differential, between the CEO and their staff, is that the CEO is ultimately responsible for everything.
In practice, this almost is never the case.
I'm pretty sure that SE salaries would be much higher if the only people allowed to determine their salaries were their peers.
Yes even one contrary example would disprove this statement. I thought the original sentiment was boards are dominated by top executives in industry, and not that literally 100% of board members are currently a CEO. The former isn't obviously untrue to me, the latter is easily disproved.
It isn't even necessarily wrong to have mostly CEOs or ex-CEOs on boards. You really do want experienced businesspeople as board members. But that conflict of interest or "class loyalty" should be kept in mind when discussing whether CEO pay is set by a competitive, open market.
I'm just complaining about the ethical rot. I have always believed that leaders need to be held to higher standards than anyone else, and, if they want to cry about it, they should distribute their pay to the folks that have to bear those standards, because their "leaders" won't.
Ministers used to resign voluntarily. "Cabinet collective responsibility" used to be a thing. As recently as the Major government and the first term of Blair.
These days senior Tories greet the idea of responsibility with a shrug. That's how we got the Truss disaster, and why they're on course for electoral wipeout.
There are ministerial positions where they've had as many ministers in as many years!