Subpostmasters bid to overturn convictions

Postal workers tell of relief at having court appeal heard

FORMER subpostmasters who say they were wrongly implicated over the Post Office’s defective Horizon IT system have said they feel their bid to overturn their convictions represents “the beginning of the end”.

Postal workers attending the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday described the relief of having their appeals heard.

Janet Skinner (50), who was jailed for nine months in 2007 after pleading guilty to false accounting, said: “It feels like the beginning of the end here today.

“Obviously we don’t know which way it’s going to go, it’s in the hands of the judges now.

“But did I think I would ever get to this stage? No. So it’s important for me to be here. We just want to clear our names.

“The Post Office feels like too big a company to be messing with when you’re on your own.

“They portrayed themselves as this most trusted British company, and they were not.”

Miss Skinner, from Hull, described her prison ordeal as awful. She said: “It was not a good time for me. I had two teenage children at the time and so I refused to let them see me in jail.

“I didn’t want them to have a memory of that. It was tough.”

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred the cases of 42 former subpostmasters to the Court of Appeal last year, following a landmark civil case against the Post Office.

They had all been prosecuted by Post Office Limited between 2000 and 2013.

Former subpostmaster Nicki Arch said: “I was one of the first, I was part of the rollout for the Horizon system in 1999 and in 2001 my case was heard at Bristol Crown Court.

“Obviously, I totally refused to do a deal, although I was offered one, and had my own barristers and I pleaded not guilty. I was in front of a jury, had a full four-day trial and was proved innocent.”

She added: “I was proved innocent in 2001 ... and the Post Office did not learn a single thing. They carried on and carried on and I got nothing.

“I lost my house, I lost my business, I lost my health and everything else and I thought, ‘Well, I might just save one person from going through what I did’.

“Instead, over 1,000 others have gone through it.”

Ms Arch claimed: “They (the Post Office) knew on the first rollout, on the first crown court hearing, that the equipment was at fault and there was no one, including myself, that had done anything wrong and they carried on anyway.”

She added: “If they had learned their lesson from the judge at Bristol Crown Court in 2001, we would not have wasted all this time and taxpayers’ money now.”