Original subtitles

The village shop and post office

Someone suggested that I would be

I started my first job

and in 1994,

I passed my interview, so, yeah,

And everything was perfect.

We had a group of pensioners

to get their pension every week.

Very much part of a community.

28p, please, love.

You do get to know your locals.

We'd have a good banter,

It was really good.

You're not only their postmaster.

You were also an adviser to people.

It was lovely.

You felt like you were actually

Morning. With you in a minute.

'It was idyllic.'

I felt that I'd managed

As a postmistress, it's not easy.

'The idea was it would be

'I thought I was gonna

But I didn't know

I went through hell.

'It was diabolical.'

Something had to be done about it.

'Look, Alan!'

'Look what we did,

'Should the Post Office bosses

'No. No, no.

'Hit them in their pockets.'

Hit them in their pockets.

That's what you want to do.

That's... That's what's gonna

TOBY JONES: This is the story

nearly 25 years ago.

We were not mad, were we?

Dealing with Post Office

than dealing with the mafia.

It's like fighting a steam roller.

A group of subpostmasters

fought to expose one of the widest

in British legal history.

We want answers now

to so many people, and why.

NEWSREEL: 'There begins

'and every ha'penny

The Post Office was established

and had always used paper and pen

But in 1999, management introduced

..a computer system called Horizon.

It was the biggest IT roll-out

The Post Office connected 40,000

to one central hub.

'An engineer arrived.'

He screwed it on the desk,

and he goes, "That's Horizon.

"It's going live shortly,

It was great,

I'd been involved with developing

where I'd worked before,

Basically, I never had a problem

and then a couple of months

I had a very big shortfall

It said I was minus £2,000.

Just overnight,

I suddenly found

and I couldn't understand

That was a ridiculous amount.

There was no way of going back

like you did with the paper,

cos once you pressed that button,

I rang the help desk,

and they told me

which doubled the shortfall

When I rang the helpline,

I was told that there was

Oh, yes, the helpline

"Nobody else has got a problem.

"You're the only one."

"You're the only one

"You're the only one."

Then I started feeling

I knew I wasn't computer-literate,

In the end,

and nothing was done.

Under the terms of their contracts,

the 20,000 subpostmasters

whatever the cause.

When it got to about £9,000 short,

I told my parents and my husband,

"Can we re-mortgage

"Cos I've got no idea

"but I've got to make it good."

My mum went down

and drew it out,

and we put it into -

Every week, I was

So, we basically went through

to try and make up the balance

It was just up and down,

It was never, ever right.

And on the end of the month when

..that's when it all

Where's this money gone?

And the amount kept growing,

so I then didn't say anything.

I kept quiet and let it grow

Terrified of what was gonna happen.

In North Wales,

one subpostmaster

I had £1,000 of shortfall,

and I've never been

that Horizon had

Because I always felt

I was accepting

And I wasn't prepared to do that.

Eventually,

I had to do it or else.

And I said, "I won't do it, not

And eventually, they decided

without giving me any reason,

So, they walked off

and they decided to give

Horizon just created

not just for me,

but for subpostmasters

I shall probably clean

I'm resigned to the fact

and unless I sell my house,

The Post Office used

to bring private prosecutions

In 2003,

they went after Jo for the money

I was originally charged

and I pleaded not guilty.

And we almost got to trial,

and they offered up a plea bargain

And said, "Well, if you plead guilty

"we'll drop the theft charge,

That meant Jo was forced to borrow

in order to pay back the £36,000

I could only raise £30,000

so we had a village meeting.

And I had to explain to everybody

that I was in trouble

And someone put up their hand

cos it was November, they said,

"Well, couldn't Jo have

And from the moment I told them,

I thought they were all gonna think

it was quite the opposite,

It was very humbling.

Literally thousands of pounds

I think we'd reached it

INTERVIEWER: Wow.

When she went to court,

I just looked at the judge,

and he goes, "Well I'm not

Well, I was literally...

Just the tears were

Jo was sentenced

But there were other people whose

'We had a lot

Especially when the children

We used to look forward

They used to come running

Yeah.

'They enjoyed being here as well.

'Would've handed it over to them.

'A lot of happy memories.'

But they all got broken.

In 2009, the Post Office charged

And her face was splashed

Family members actually went

and gathered as many papers

It was also in one

So, basically, everybody read

We had somebody come in

We had car windows broken.

You know, they did try and,

I got this feeling

that "she's a thief".

And thinking about it day and night,

I just wanted to end my life.

I'm showing you the box.

We can cross quickly.

And this is where

Noel Thomas became a postman

In 2005, when his nightmare began,

he had only ever worked

There we are.

We're by the box

that my wife and I ran for,

You know, it was a betrayal,

At half past seven,

and, er, there was a lady

and said they were Post Office

made them a cup of tea, and I told

erm, about £52,000 down,

Noel was arrested and questioned

She was just, "Where was the money?

"And what did you do with it?"

You know,

Then the Post Office did to Noel

what they did

They offered

if he agreed to plead guilty

I remember me telling him,

And he said, "Yes."

But unfortunately,

er, the judge, erm,

and he said, erm, "Nine months,"

And I waited

But he said, erm, "Take him down."

'I'd been a councillor,

'I'd been a postman and,

All of a sudden, er,

like taking a mat

It was bloody horrible.

'My journalistic life

I mean, it's the biggest story

It's probably the biggest story

In 2009, the story hadn't

Social media was in its infancy.

Even though many subpostmasters

each one of them thought

But that was about to change.

This particular article began

because we were contacted by

Often when you get contacted

it's very hard to stand up a story.

But one of my former colleagues,

and he thought,

And I think

he'd been contacted by Alan Bates,

Then they started

People having the same problems,

people being told the same thing

which eventually led to them

about four other subpostmasters

But we were so worried

We didn't publish it for a year.

This was the response

That was an outright lie.

We knew of seven postmasters

and also, we know that computers

especially complex systems.

Suddenly,

were seeing the story,

which then started the campaign.

That's the seven

then there's, er,

But where are all the others?

So we thought, "Let's see

"and let's see

Somewhere central.

Fenny...

We didn't know if anyone

slowly but surely, people turned up.

We all sat round in a circle

and you almost felt embarrassed

"Oh, I'm Jo,

But I realised, "Oh, my God,

That's when the stories...

A jigsaw started coming together,

And we'd all had our lives

People had been losing houses,

they'd been borrowing money

marriages were splitting up.

We all looked like

and just weary with the stress

and the shame of it.

It was diabolical.

But that's when we knew

And that's when we picked

That was really

and that's where the JFSA,

Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance,

It was like a switch got turned,

They'd gone from this trusted brand

And it was like,

This is the view I have of him

I mean, most mornings,

and as you can see,

TOBY JONES: For the past 20 years,

have had their lives dominated

The whole of this Post Office issue

the worst unpaid full-time job

I'm gonna do the cat,

and I'll have her sitting down

looking up at him as if to say,

"Well, when are you gonna finish,

"When are you gonna take a break?"

Because you are hearing stories

So you couldn't give up

because it developed

And it wasn't just me.

Other people were

The good thing about being an MP is,

if you contact someone like

and say, "I'd like to meet you

they tend to respond.

Erm, Mrs Hamilton?

James Arbuthnot.

'He came out to the shop

And he was just

There are two other cases

Wow, really?

I thought, "There's something

'And so I went to see

'the then Chief Executive

We're the ones who are going

as relevant and as loved

that it is today.

Paula Vennells was hired

By 2012, she'd worked her way up

and used her in-house PR

to highlight her commitment

I say this very specifically,

putting our subpostmasters

and the colleagues

right at the forefront

It was Paula Vennells who suggested

was forensic accountants

and we said,

"Who would you recommend?"

Ron Warmington runs Second Sight.

I was Head of Investigations

for one of the world's biggest banks

And now I'm meant to be retired.

The only reason I'm not retired

Ron's investigation was paid for

But, obviously, we had

it's gonna be a bit of a whitewash.

So Alan and the MPs brought in

RON: Kay Linnell flew at me

I don't doubt

I have them here in front of me,

that Second Sight

of producing

Clearly suspecting that either

or that

probably, she thought both.

The involvement

started with Jo Hamilton,

Kay volunteered

I had no idea

but I knew we had a room of people

or were losing everything,

and people were still being

And I knew we had to do something

to try and stop the tide

She clearly was exactly

Having had that meeting

which I suspect they will remember,

I was satisfied

Ron's team began their investigation

At that time,

to prosecute subpostmasters.

Basically, I was told I was going

In the West Midlands,

Jess was convinced a faulty PIN pad

had caused the shortfall.

And she pleaded not guilty to theft.

But the case dragged on

Went to numerous courts

In Wolverhampton Crown Court,

the judge said,

And the Post Office said,

"The PIN pad's been taken away

And so the judge said, "Well...

"If it's gone for repair,

That's when it all got thrown out,

By then, the damage had been done.

The stress that we'd been through,

the trauma that we'd been through,

it all mounted up,

And I-I went to commit suicide.

I even tried to commit suicide

Jess was so ill,

the doctors decided to treat her

All I remember

Like a helmet type thing on my head.

And the shockwaves

So I had... I think I had

After that, I lost all my memory.

I don't remember anything

I couldn't sleep

Put me on numerous medication...

..which I'm still on today.

And it's all down

During Ron's investigation,

the Post Office had

There were documents which

very poor investigative processes

blatantly at simply

by trying to get

which generally

using as a cudgel,

I'm pretty used to being able

But when I really dug deeper,

I didn't find any evidence

We didn't know whether

but the very fact that they had

erm, seemed quite promising.

And at that time, we did understand

that Post Office... did actually

I felt we were getting somewhere.

Ha, little did I know

Remote access to the system

And the reason why

was it meant that someone else

on your counter in your Post Office,

When the Post Office rolled out

every subpostmaster's computer

This was located at the headquarters

who designed and managed Horizon,

Post Office were quite adamant

could ever access the systems

And that was something

that we wanted Second Sight

or how it had occurred.

I went to Fujitsu headquarters

and looking at the system,

and how we accounted for

Er, Michael Rudkin

That was the purpose of my visit.

'I arrived, as scheduled,

Cheers.

Mr Rudkin, George Delph, hi.

'Within a few minutes,

I was really taken aback

that we had to pass through.

I was encouraged to enter into

And in doing so, I then recognised

there's two Horizon terminals

One of the guys not happy with

My chaperone said,

"This is my covert operations team

He proceeded to enter into

and he started, er,

which I said to him,

He says,

He says, "I'll alter the Euro

You're inside some subpostmaster's

In total disbelief, I said,

"Are you sure you can

And he said, "Yes."

I said,

I've been telling my members

no-one else has access

' "And here you are proving

At which there was an immediate look

and then ushered me out,

and more or less thrown out

..a thief.

I said to Michael, "Your story

"But Post Office, of course,

"will ask for evidence

"So we need to find

The so-called visitors book

ironically, is the only

"So, Michael, you need to have

"to see if you can find the

"so get to it, Michael,

I had a telephone conversation

I said, "I have the evidence.

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Well,

The reply came back.

"Oh, my effing good God.

"They are now going to become

The day after Michael's visit

Post Office officials

What come as an even greater shock

was the orders that then came

that following morning,

"You've got a £44,000 shortage

My wife, Susan,

ended up being convicted

electronically tagged

She had to live through

In 2013, Second Sight

With Ron's report

Post Office management

Paula Vennells rang me up to say,

"What we're proposing

"between the subpostmasters

"with a senior judge

"And that will be able to get

And I said,

"Let's go ahead with that."

Alan put forward 150 cases

The whole process was only meant

It was running into years.

You're supposed to go to mediation

but it appeared that the Post Office

who turned up and said,

"You're out of time to make a claim,

I think they were actually

of what had been going on,

and they didn't want

The Post Office has spent

which they themselves

In Westminster, James Arbuthnot

was working hard to keep the case

And they've broken their word

in so many different respects

If you could just introduce yourself

Paula Vennells,

And then Paula was called in

'People do not like appearing

Because the select committee

that the witnesses may prefer

Before the hearing,

Paula Vennells asked colleagues

Here we go.

A copy of her email

"Urgent: Accessing Horizon.

"Dear both, your help,

"the select committee hearing."

That's obviously the question

she's gonna have to answer.

This is a system that works well,

and it works well

For those it doesn't work for,

I've got Nadhim,

The MPs wanted to know why

during Second Sight's investigation.

Paula, why don't you

What's the problem?

I think the point I want

No, just...

Why won't you give Ian Henderson

We have...

we have shared whatever information

That's not what

It is the first time personally

You're the head of the organisation.

Will you provide it? Yes or no?

I'm not prepared,

Right, I've got my answer,

No, you haven't got your answer,

I'm simply saying

I'm not able to answer

'It was pointed out to her

'that she was in charge

But it just seemed to wash over her.

Well, this sounds like a shambles

You came in here, opened by saying

You now realise why you're in front

The system... The reason...

ALAN: I just couldn't understand

she didn't take things on board

and actually try and resolve it,

which she should've done

I'm very sorry

JO: When I listened to the evidence

..I realised

and just what it looks like.

I have been told that

It looks like

Then, a few weeks after

the Post Office

Post Office dynamited

and fired everybody.

I think at that stage,

she decided it was preferable

and to allow these subpostmasters

And I think that's shocking.

We were growing information,

TOBY JONES:

Alan Bates and his team

had been carefully

against the Post Office.

Because we had those documents,

there was a possibility then

in the civil courts

If we could find a legal firm

REPORTER:

'A report has criticised

'or prosecuting subpostmasters

'without establishing the cause

'at their branches.'

Driving into work, normal day,

and I heard a BBC radio programme.

'If the cash recorded

'does not match up with the cash

'then they are held responsible

I thought, "There may be something

because it didn't sound right,

I explained the case to him,

I showed him the type of evidence

And I explained we had no money

but we felt there was a case there.

So I needed to weigh up

we could raise the necessary

There are specialist funders

but only if there are enough of you.

Because otherwise we knew

and we would lose.

The only way that we were gonna

and uncover it

Group litigation orders are used

and they've got enough similarity

that you can literally fund one case

and solve a lot

It was the only way, and to do that,

we needed a much larger group

How many would you need?

At least 500.

The meeting kicked off

to find subpostmasters

who'd had problems with Horizon.

Eventually, 555 people pursued

against the Post Office.

The case against Post Office

the way individuals had

The lack of information

The flaws in the system

The denial that had happened,

The abuse of individuals, the way

The way they'd been so high-handed,

their Post Office

that's what we wanted exposing.

Alan had found the lawyers,

And we were on.

Alan and the Justice

finally took the Post Office

Well, I went four days

She'd said to me,

And she said, "I'll be with you.

"Wherever you are,

And, erm, yeah, four days later,

Among Alan's group

were people whose lives had been

Many had been bankrupted,

Gathering enough evidence

was challenging because

which meant we were having

with one arm tied behind our backs.

But during the case, the Post Office

they'd always claimed

So, what we've got here

So what this records is the fact

network problems,

which were causing the error

which in turn were messing up

and causing a financial discrepancy.

This particular example showed that

needed to be manually corrected.

They had teams and teams of people

Quite often in litigation cases,

"Well, very rarely are we ever

These were smoking guns.

Not just one smoking gun,

which prove to us

that there were multiple problems

there had been from day one

And that was why Post Office

At the end of the court hearings,

Justice Fraser delivered

outlining his findings

On the day the judgement

our side was totally crammed

The other side of the court,

They knew what was gonna happen,

they knew which way this judgement

Mr Justice Fraser's

"This approach by the Post Office

"has amounted, in reality,

"..that ignore

"It amounts to

"of maintaining

SHE GIGGLES

The judge said there seemed

and excessive confidentially

THEY CHEER

We couldn't be more happy

This has been the result

to achieve justice

It was overwhelming. It was utterly,

and it just vindicated everything

The win was one of the best days

The civil justice system in the UK

But the win came

Although the Post Office agreed

after legal costs,

the subpostmasters were left

But the civil court win

to appeal

These subpostmasters have not only

but they've been exonerated

I'm not a criminal any more,

To date,

have had their names cleared.

The sun was shining, and I was free.

REPORTER: How do you feel now?

At last, you could go home

That emotion will...

It was like lifting

with rocks on your back for years,

Thank you, all.

You know,

It was such a big, big relief,

cos the Post Office did a lot

It's something that we couldn't

I didn't have this many people

But I'm seeing my dad coming back

So we are really grateful,

you know, that we've had this chance

CHEERING

Well done. Well done.

God's got me through everything.

I just thought I wanted to

I've built myself up.

I've made myself stronger,

and I want everybody to know

I didn't rob the Post Office,

That's what matters to me,

And it needs to be told.

It's not just...

a little group of people,

Hundreds of people

Everybody ready?

A statutory inquiry has been set up

Would you not remember

I'm afraid I don't.

I'm sorry, I don't have

I don't remember that at all.

I know who should be

I mean, it's the people

on vast quantities of money,

whilst they've made hundreds, if not

whilst knowing the real truth

and denying the truth

Those are the people

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