‘People have found courage … the fight goes on’
◆ Scots whose lives were ruined in Post Office’s Horizon IT case call for further investigation in the wake of a new ITV drama
It is a prime-time TV drama that has shone a light on probably the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history and helped bolster support for its victims in their fight for accountability.
Now, several Scots whose lives were left in ruins as a result of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, have urged members of the public to press their MPS to demand a fair compensation scheme, and called for senior executives at the firm to be investigated.
The ITV series, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, starring Toby Jones, has proved to be one of 2024’s early hits among critics and viewers, with its focus on the ordinary sub-postmasters caught up in an epic legal battle that is still playing out.
Some 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting between 2000 and 2014 due to issues with the Horizon IT system, installed and maintained by Fujitsu. Despite repeatedly protesting their innocence, many were convicted and imprisoned, or left with their finances and lives torn asunder. Some died before their names were cleared; some took their own lives.
So far, only 93 convictions relating to the scandal have been quashed. The UK government said it had paid out £27 million across the 475 claimants in the original civil case, but only 11 people have received full and final settlements. Ten more have been accepted.
Myra Philp, who was among those who had their lives turned upside down by the Post Office’s actions, said she hoped the four-part TV drama would expedite the fight for justice. She pointed out that since the programme began, dozens of those affected had applied for compensation.
Ms Philp worked at a post office in Auchtermuchty with her mother, Mary, who was the sub-postmistress between 2001 and 2006. When the IT system began flagging shortfalls, her mother initially blamed herself – but when she reported issues with Horizon, the Post Office told her no-one else was having problems.
As the shortfalls mounted, the pair began putting the money back, taking out loans and borrowing from relatives – Ms Philp estimates they paid more than £70,000 to the Post Office. Mary died in 2018 aged 83, before the first court case was won by the sub-postmasters.
Ms Philp – who last year told
There were three CEOS involved in this cover-up, seven prime ministers and numerous chancellors
a human impact hearing at a public inquiry of how the Post Office “stole our money” and “destroyed my late mother’s life” – took to social media to urge anyone who had watched Mr Bates vs The Post Office to write to their local MP to demand accountability for the injustice and adequate compensation for those affected.
She said: “The Post Office tried to ban me from the compensation scheme, but I appeared at the statutory inquiry and there is now no time limit on application. This week alone, 63 people have found courage and applied because of the TV show … the fight goes on.”
Another Scot affected by the scandal, Chris Dawson, ran a successful sub-post office in Pitlochry. But after he repeatedly refused to accept liability for the £17,500 shortfall identified at his branch, he was suspended for six months. This started a downward spiral, leading to him being declared bankrupt, and losing his home and his marriage.
He said while the drama had helped to shine a light on the actions of Paula Vennells, Post Office chief executive from 2012 to 2019, there were other figures that deserved scrutiny, including Adam Crozier, the Scot who was Post Office chief executive from 2003 to 2010, during which time many of the prosecutions took place.
Mr Dawson – who avoided a conviction – also said there was a need for accountability on the part of Dame Moya Greene, the chief executive of Royal Mail between 2010 and 2018. Although that company is now separate from the Post Office, her time in charge included a two-year period when both were part of the same group.
He said: “Whilst only one was mentioned in the ITV drama, let us not forget there were three CEOS involved in this cover-up, not to mention the seven prime ministers and numerous chancellors, and ministers for the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy. Justice for postmasters means an investigation into each and every one of them.”
Since the drama began, Mr Dawson – who also gave evidence last year at a public inquiry hearing – has taken to Facebook to share a written apology he received last year from the Post Office’s remediation unit director, Simon Recaldin, who told him: “It is not fair of me to expect your forgiveness, but I do want to help make things right.”
However, Mr Dawson said he had refused the offer of a verbal apology, given it did not come from Ms Vennells directly. “Time will tell if justice is served,” he added.
The drama has also sparked
an upsurge in members of the public supporting a move to strip Ms Vennells of her CBE. A petition that condemns the “mass cover-up” by the Post Office had attracted more than 570,000 signatures by last night, with thousands of people adding their names in recent days.
Nick Read, the current Post Office chief executive, said it had paid over £120m in compensation to date. He said: “We hope that the ITV drama will raise further awareness and encourage anyone affected who has not yet come forward to seek the redress and compensation they deserve.”
Like millions of others, I watched the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office with a sense of outrage and bewilderment about how this could not only happen but go on for so long.
By dramatising an evolving scandal, the programme brings its human realities to a far wider audience than cruel facts alone. It is a rare example of television at its best, with the power to force change.
Justice is slowly catching up with the real villains. While not a retributionist by nature, I sincerely hope every individual who bears responsibility – starting at the top – will be called to account in courts of law. Let them have a taste of their own medicine.
The ongoing public inquiry seems to be heading firmly in the right direction and there are also fundamental implications to ponder.
These include the challenges faced in fighting injustices, large and small, in an increasingly depersonalised world.
Try arguing with a computer or a call centre that never answers, or any of the other interfaces created by corporate entities to make challenge as difficult as possible, backed up by the force of law. Just as with the Post Office, the balance of power lies overwhelmingly with the pursuer rather than the pursued, no matter how vulnerable.
That is an area of law ripe for review. The Horizon scandal proves beyond doubt that the computer can get it very wrong – which should be the starting point in any legal process, rather than a reluctant conclusion that must be fought for on highly unequal terms.
For dramatic purposes, the timescale in Mr Bates has been compressed. Years went by while nothing much happened except a relentless pursuit by the Post Office of allegations which many within it must have known to be dubious or downright false.
Yet twisted logic drove it on. To call halt would have amounted to an admission of gross error for which responsibility must be taken and prices paid. The alternative was to keep doubling down and concealing reality.
It was not “the Post Office” which took these decisions but people within it. It was not “the Post Office” that raided businesses built by innocent people, but human beings who must have sensed something amiss about this plague of wrongdoing by hitherto blameless individuals.
Doubts about the Horizon computer system started to surface within weeks of it being installed in 1999. The “helpline” repeatedly lied to those who reported errors by telling them nobody else was having the same problems.
Then Horizon-based convictions started to pile up – 41 in 2001 and 64 the following year. Even at that stage, it is scary that nobody noticed – or admitted to – a pattern which raised doubts.
It is then monstrous that the Post Office did not stop prosecuting subpostmasters on Horizon evidence until 2015.
Sir Ed Davey, now Liberal Democrat leader, was in the dock of public opinion this week for failure to act while he had Ministerial responsibility for the Post Office between 2010 and 2012. He claimed to have been “deeply misled by Post Office executives” and presumably his own officials, as intermediaries.
That should be tested not only in the case of Ed Davey but every Minister who had the same responsibility as the scandal developed. To what extent, and at what level, were civil servants colluding with Post Office top brass to keep politicians in ignorance, for fear of the grisly truth being uncovered?
That said, there is also a lesson for any Minister which chimes with my own experience. Relying solely on official advice is a mug’s game. In an area of such obvious potential controversy, any Minister should be listening to constituents, talking to fellow MPS and looking closely at correspondence.
More than 120 MPS raised concerns about Horizon, based on representations made to them. Any Minister who did not notice a pattern, or any civil servant who failed to draw that pattern to the attention of the Minister, should be high on the list of those required to answer for these omissions.
For years, the powerlessness of decent people facing false allegations was exacerbated by isolation from each other; it was a scatter of cases across the country and the Post Office’s vested interest was in preventing them from joining up. But did the courts never notice – or were they just instinctively, as portrayed in Mr Bates, on the side of authority?
In England and Wales, the Post Office itself has the role of prosecutor. That was not the case in Scotland where the Post Office investigates but the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal service decide on whether to prosecute. It seems surprising that 73 Scottish prosecutions relying on Horizon evidence were not enough to suggest something might be amiss.
Two of these convictions have now finally been quashed on the recommendation of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. One of them involved Bill Quarm, a subpostmaster in North Uist and pillar of the community who accepted advice to plead guilty, to avoid going to prison.
Within two years, he died “a broken man”, in his widow’s words. The Commission found that his plea was in “clearly prejudicial circumstances” and “the process was an affront to justice”. I recall the same informal verdict being delivered a decade ago by a friend who said simply: “Everyone in Uist knew that Bill Quarm wasn’t a thief ”.
In the same way, everyone in Llandudno knew that Alan Bates wasn’t a thief and so on round the country. Yet for 15 long years, the system and the powerful people who controlled it said otherwise, because they could not afford to admit that the computer might be wrong.
But let it never be forgotten. The computer was wrong – and will be again.