Rosie Brocklehurst looks at the latest on the Horizon Post Office scandal.
The Horizon Post Office scandal is a story of gross injustice and abuse of power on a monumental scale which took place over a period of more than 23 years. It is still playing out today, revealed in the denialism on display by Post Office witnesses to the Statutory Public Inquiry and more practically, in failures of Government to compensate anyone properly.
Shameful, sordid and cruel
Few people have grasped even a small part of this shameful, sordid and cruel saga of lives ruined. For years, the Post Office refused to reveal that their ICL/Fujitsu IT system was full of bugs. Financial shortfalls were illusory, created by glitches, yet had to be paid back by Subpostmasters on punitive ‘feudal’ contracts. Many who paid up, often borrowing on credit cards to do so, were still prosecuted, told they were the only ones and pressured to admit to “false accounting” or face being charged with theft and risk being sent to prison. Several were jailed.
One important and often overlooked aspect of the story is that in the process of investigating 3,000 Subpostmasters and wrongfully convicting over 700 of them, children have been harmed. The impact on Subpostmaster families in what are often small communities, devastating enough for the adults, can cause for children incalculable psychological distress, restriction of life opportunities and damage to educational development. On the evidence of one case study published below, it was the cause of a life-threatening physical illness.
Investigations, suspensions and ‘unsafe’ criminal convictions from around 2000 onwards may have ended around 2014, but abuses continue to this day. A new management regime at the Post Office delayed the Statutory Inquiry this year by failing to disclose thousands of documents, thus preventing the hearing of a key Fujitsu engineer witness, Gareth Jenkins, who had given evidence in criminal trials that was crucial in sending several Subpostmasters to prison, including a pregnant woman, Seema Misra.
Media coverage
But the horrific story of injustice has not had the media coverage it deserves. A ‘no burn’ up to 2009 became a slow burn thereafter. Despite hundreds of wrongful prosecutions before Computer Weekly ran the first 2009 story, it was only after 2010, when journalist Nick Wallis picked it up and took the story to BBC Radio and Panorama, that it began to trickle out in the wider media. In 2022 he published The Great Post Office Scandal, a brilliant exposé that covers only a small number of the human tragedies that have unfolded. He and Alan Bates of the Justice for Subpostmasters’ Alliance (JFSA) are both now advising ITV on a drama about the scandal for transmission next year. Wallis paid for many of his own investigations and he and his publishers also founded a small charity to help fund rail journeys for Subpostmasters so they could attend the Public Inquiry or to pay for counselling for the traumatised.
In 2021, 39 convictions were overturned as part of a group litigation order (GLO) by the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, presided over by ’Iron Man’ Judge Peter Fraser. The Post Office sought to throw everything they could to close down the GLO and at one point, on the advice of the former President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, Lord Grabiner for the Post Office, tried to recuse Justice Fraser on the grounds of bias, delaying the chance of overturning convictions and costing a fortune, which, ultimately is paid for by the public purse. The Post Office lost this case in 2019.
In early September this year, the Post Office Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, Kevin Hollinrake MP, announced that he was to “err on the side of generosity” and allow up to £600,000 to be claimed in compensation by Subpostmasters. At face value it was seen as a welcome, life-changing sum of money and one that might put the story to bed, exactly what Government intended it to do. But the vast majority of the over 700 convicted can’t even apply for this money, even if it was anywhere near enough to compensate for everything they have lost, which it is not. As of today, a total of only 91 of the over 700 convictions have made it to appeal and been overturned.
The Statutory Public Inquiry is due to finish at the end of 2024. Meanwhile, abuses continue to come to light. One such is the refusal of solicitors Womble Bond Dickinson to admit to withholding evidence that could have helped at least one Subpostmaster, Lee Castleton. WBD made £54 million from handling Post Office cases. Lee’s daughter Millie Jo tells her story below.
Castleton was bankrupted by a £300,000 charge made after he lost a civil action taken against the Post Office to retrieve earnings after suspension. He and his family were forced to live in penury for years above the post office he had bought but could not earn a living from.
Then we have the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) whose CEO, bizarrely, works only part- time and runs a holiday letting business in Montenegro. Despite the CCRC’s critically important role to recommend cases for appeal, it has been estimated, by campaigning peer Lord Arbuthnot, that it could take up to ten years for all cases to get to the appeal court, time during which many more Subpostmasters will have died without compensation. Thirty-three have died already without seeing justice done and three have committed suicide.
Media attention is vital for achieving resolution. It is true that the mainstream media while latterly more willing to pen a satirical tour de force from Marina Hyde in the Guardian or run a Thunderer column in the Times on the sheer incompetence of the Post Office, are still failing to enlighten their readers or comment on the many Horizon scandal stories that come up almost daily. In the febrile atmosphere that is the Post Office scandal, their strangely intermittent and muffled coverage has actually allowed further abuses to take place, or at least delayed redress which is still the longest journey for all victims. There is no PR to organise campaigns, and no ‘celebs’ using their leverage to win coverage.
The Inquiry itself, under the chairmanship of retired judge Sir Wyn Williams does not get the kind of media attention that was garnered by the phone hacking scandal. On many days there is not a single journalist in attendance. Complexity and a fast-moving 24-hour news agenda militate against coverage.
Accountability
Everyone who familiarises themselves with the facts will eventually ask the question: “What about accountability?” Paula Vennells CBE, CEO from 2012-2019, has not yet been questioned by the Inquiry. She dodged and dissembled when questioned by MPs in Parliament in 2019, by which time the scandal had cost the public purse at least £800 million. The Post office, unlike Royal Mail, is one hundred per cent owned by Government who hold a single share in UK Government Investments (UKGI). Vennells is no longer practising as a Church of England-ordained minister and her career as a CEO and paid non-executive has ended – the celebrant who no one celebrates.
This is also the first time Labour Hub has covered the story. It seems it is difficult for the left to engage with it. Yet the left has some of the sharpest and most dynamic activists around who could usefully amplify the story. Few do. Is it because it is seen as the equivalent in socio-cultural terms of The Archers on Radio 4? I believe it is something to do with the traditional view of the Subpostmaster as a petty-bourgeois shopkeeper, looked down upon in 19th century satires such as The Diary of a Nobody. This political-cultural classification of the corner shop retailer retains its echo of snobbery in modern interpretations of Marxism. Many of the victims did belong to a SubPostmasters’ trade union. But unfortunately, it was one that was entirely in the pocket of the Post Office, and, it is claimed, its General Secretary colluded in the betrayal of many of its prosecuted members.
Racism, a core issue for the left to rally round, has also reared its ugly head in the Post Office scandal. This year, racial profiling by Post Office investigators was revealed via a Freedom of Information request by campaigners: a code classification for phrases such as ‘negroid types’ were used for identification. Allegations also surfaced of a disproportionate targeting of Subpostmasters of Indian and Pakistani heritage. There have also been claims of racial abuse on the Fujitsu helpdesk and of racial bias among jurors in criminal cases at magistrates courts as well as in the length of some sentences.
Then we come to the children of Subpostmasters. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and a whole canon of psychotherapeutic theory support the view that the strength of a civilisation can be measured by how it cares for children. Understanding the impact of Post Office and Government behaviours upon children in this case might help bring home the extent of injustices. It has rarely been included as an area for analysis. It takes time of course for children to understand their own feelings and the harm it has done. Lee Castleton said:
“I have two children and each one has dealt with this horror differently. One refuses to speak outside the family about it because of a need to get away from remembering it, while my daughter, Millie Jo, eventually found it helpful, if extremely hard, to write about, following years of therapy and a slow recovery. “
Below is an edited extract taken from Nick Wallis’s blog of Millie Jo’s own words:
“I must have been eight when I first took note of the confusion, frustration and anxiety that was leeching into my home. This was before talks of court, trials and accusations of theft. This was the period that my father started noticing the IT faults that wouldn’t be taken seriously for so many years. In the years running up to my father’s trial in 2006 I vividly recall sitting on the staircase late at night, listening to conversations I barely understood or could really comprehend. To a child, the answer always seemed obvious, my father hadn’t done anything. Why didn’t people believe him? Why is the dining room table covered in papers as well as the back office of the post office, and why is he always down there late at night making phone calls and faxes?
“This was an ordeal that not only cost my father legal fees, but this was also an event that blackened our name and branded us all with something that was unjustified. Court ruling, local gossip and unyielding arguments from the Post Office would lead to my whole family being branded as thieves and liars. It’s deeply sickening to look back to my life in that small town. A place that would in time, fill me with anxiety to walk through. How comfortable can anyone be when people spat at you based on what you know is a lie? It was also a lonely time, the financial strain of legal fees and supporting the family saw my dad working near 100-hour weeks, often involving travelling and spending days on end away from us. He became a stranger to me, someone I barely saw and lost a close relationship with. My mother worked too during the day, upholding the newsagents we still had, which was failing due to the label attached to us and it after the legal case.
“I remember feeling cold and terrified when a child on the bus in my first week asked, ‘Didn’t your dad steal loads of money or something?’ This set me on edge for a long time, causing me to become that ever so anxious child who regularly was the subject of bullying. After a few incidents of supposed friends treating me poorly, I completely disconnected.
“At home I was dealing with parents who were working their hardest to provide, utterly pained by the stress that the Post Office trial caused them. Dad was working insane hours as well as beginning to work with others to try and solve the many emerging cases of other sub-postmasters and post-mistresses like him. My mother was also working as much as she could but also dealing with a stress- induced epilepsy. She lost her driving licence as a result and had to take medication. These seizures were unpredictable at first when the medication was still new. I remember having to handle her seizures alone as a child, sometimes in the middle of the night.
“I didn’t tell my parents about the bullying or social withdrawal. They didn’t know I spent my breaks sitting alone or just walking around, they didn’t know I could go a day or two without really talking. They didn’t know that I was assaulted on the school bus and had to run off on the first stop, wet from water being thrown at me, being spat on and having been hit by paper balls. In my mind this was an additional stressor they didn’t need. I could deal with it alone and not put more weight on their load. I just felt like such a burden all the time.
“My late teens and early twenties were governed by my eating disorder and mental anxieties. I began to sink under the weight of it all and subsequently grabbed for some sense of control. I was anxious about going to university and leaving my family. Mum was still having seizures and Dad was still fighting a legal battle, I felt guilty leaving and not being able to help more. I left, already dealing with an undiagnosed at the time eating disorder. It began in my GCSE year, just eating less bit by bit and skipping out on the canteen and packed lunches to avoid questions. By this point I was visibly skinny. Living alone however gave way to me being vulnerable to all my demons… By the end of my first year of university I had been diagnosed as anorexic and too sick to go to my second year… My lowest weight saw me weighing little more than 5-stone and having to stay in hospital for heart- related issues for days on end. I’d be lying if I claimed that this wasn’t a cry for help. The surrender of a broken spirit, the pain and self-loathing of someone who just couldn’t escape a terrible situation.
Every part of my late childhood and teens was absolutely tainted by the Post Office case.
“But I fought. I tried. I’m better for it. Not perfect but better, part of me will always feel a little broken-up. I still feel a burning fear at spending larger sums of money or doing something purely for myself. That nagging voice in my head still says ugly things sometimes. It still tells me that my past and family’s struggle will define me, that it will be a branding on my skin forever. Broken, thief or liar.”
At the outset of his cross-examination, Julian Blake, counsel to the Inquiry, asked Stephen Dilley [who was the Post Office’s solicitor from Womble Bond Dickinson (who do not come out of this well)]: “Having reflected on the evidence of the Inquiry as a whole, is there anything that you would like to say to Mr Castleton or his family?”
Dilley replied: “No there isn’t.”
Rosie Brocklehurst is a journalist and press officer (retired) who worked for the Labour Party, LWT, the BBC and several charities.