By Isle of Wight Observer
‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’ has brought attention and public support to the sub-postmasters who lost so much in the Horizon scandal. For many years they have been shouting as loudly as they could, fighting a system and an establishment pitted against them in every way.
The protections that should have been in place to protect those innocent people completely failed them. As a former sub-postmaster, I empathise with their frustration and confusion; they were told they were personally liable for any deficits because the Post Office was adamant that the Horizon computer system could not be wrong.
We sub-postmasters were told we must be at fault, and had to reimburse the Post Office for any shortfall out of our wages and takings. Now that we know Fujitsu staff had remote access to accounts, I believe all deficits, no matter how small, should be investigated. Money was taken fraudulently and with threats from, as Toby Brown playing Alan Bates so succinctly put it, “the skint little people”.
I do not believe any sub-postmaster went into the role intending to steal from the Post Office. You were somebody people would come to for advice or a friendly chat; you were trusted. Nobody would have been accepted as a sub-postmaster unless they were reasonably proficient in paperwork and mathematics and many had been successfully using the paper method for years. It was only when Horizon was introduced that problems arose.
I only had a single terminal, but I experienced problems with Horizon and had to repay small deficits from time to time; I remember long evenings struggling to try to make the figures balance and understand what could possibly have gone wrong. But it was sub-postmasters with more than one terminal that really suffered.
The public are now paying attention to this biggest miscarriage of justice in British history, but should it really be a TV programme that shone a light on the many shortcomings of the government, the Post Office and Fujitsu. What were our politicians doing?
The Horizon scandal unfolded under Labour and Conservative governments, and LibDem leader, Sir Ed Davey, when he was Post Office Minister, refused to even meet Alan Bates. Former Post Office boss, Paula Vennells, has finally bowed to public pressure and handed back her CBE; when will he hand back his knighthood?
Why didn’t these politicians see a problem when many trusted members of local communities, previously pillars of society, were being repeatedly prosecuted. Surely common sense alone should have told those elected to represent us that all these local sub-Postmasters were not criminals. More than 20 years of devastation which destroyed the lives and dreams of hundreds of innocent people could have been avoided if politicians had really listened, cared and acted.
One aspect of the ITV drama really struck a chord with me. That was how much of a massive insight you got into people’s lives.
What they feel is important and how they think things should change. I know that 20 years ago people wanted the same things we want now; lower taxes, better schools, a well-functioning NHS, but nothing’s got better, in fact things are far worse. Everybody knows what needs to be done, but nobody is doing it.
I was proud to run a small Post Office which gave me a chance to help the people who lived around me and that experience is one of the things that persuaded me it is time to take a stand. I’m not a politician, but I am standing as a candidate for Reform UK in the next general election to give ordinary Islanders a voice. It is finally time for the establishment to take notice of “skint little people”.