It was one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice – more than 700 people convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. There were suicides, bankruptcies, jail sentences and lives destroyed. But it took a TV drama which began airing on January 1, to build a swell of public opinion big enough for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to step in. Today he has promised a new law which will quash the wrongful convictions.
At the story’s heart is a faulty IT system called Horizon, created by the Japanese company Fujitsu. It was installed in post offices across Britain but created shortfalls in each of the post office’s accounting. Postmasters and subpostmasters were then pursued relentlessly by the courts between 1999 and 2015 by The Post Office for financial losses that never occurred.
The stories of those postmasters are heart-breaking. Many were forced to raid their savings to pay back the sums they were accused of stealing. Many lost their homes, their jobs and suffered terrible privations. Many have died without seeing this week’s justice for them.
Alan Bates, who lost his job and savings as a subpostmaster in Llandudno in Wales, was the leader of the victims group and for more than twenty years, battled to clear his and other’s names. He is played in the ITV drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office by Toby Jones.
The question that is now being asked across Britain is how did a TV show achieve so much in one week which years of campaigning in the British justice system did not? Since Mr Bates vs The Post was aired last week, Paula Vennells, Britain’s former chief executive of the Post office in 2012 has handed back her CBE bestowed on her by the Queen in 2019, Fujitsu, the Japanese company who was paid over £3.6bn by the UK government is now under pressure to pay compensation, and politicians from all political parties are in agreement with new legislation to compensate victims.
Currently you will need a VPN to watch Mr Bates Vs The Post Office on ITVX in Australia. But it is coming soon to mainstream media.
