大象传媒

The Great Post Office Trial is a scandal which reaches right to the heart of one of our national institutions. Your friendly neighbourhood Post Office stands accused of wrecking the lives of hundreds of its own Sub Postmasters over more than a decade.

Here we examine the story of how a computer terminal found in every Post Office in the country led to what some call the widest miscarriage of justice in UK legal history.

She had taken over the shop in 2001, and shortly after also took on the responsibility of the little Post Office counter, which had been in danger of being lost. The shop needed Post Office customers to survive - and besides, Jo’s friends and neighbours relied on that counter for their pensions. It came with what’s called a Horizon computer terminal. Every Post Office in the country has one.

A few short years, and tens of thousands of pounds in unexplained accounting shortfalls later, that counter cost Jo everything.

She received little training to use the terminal, and even less to use the pin pad that was later installed to pair with it. Jo coped in the beginning but before long the accounts shown on her Horizon computer stopped adding up. It would tell her she ought to have thousands of pounds in her till that she didn’t. Under pressure from the Post Office, she started making up the difference by putting her own money in - even remortgaging her house to do so.

But it felt like refilling a broken glass. Out of money, she found herself in a position where she felt she had no choice but to pretend the money was in the till, signing off the accounts she knew were wrong, while her appeals to the Post Office’s helpline got her nowhere. On the advice of a friend who feared Jo was on the brink of total breakdown, Jo called her union, who arranged for the Post Office to audit her branch. They also told Jo she’d need a good criminal lawyer.

The audit and the investigation that followed were the Post Office’s chance to find out what was going wrong - to see if computer errors on Horizon or honest mistakes had generated the illusion of missing money. Their own investigator, internally, concluded that there was no evidence she had stolen anything. Jo was shocked to find herself under suspicion of pocketing any money. She had spent every penny she had trying to make the accounts add up. But the Post Office sacked her and charged her with theft anyway. They also asked for a cheque for more than £30,000 - by return of post. Jo didn’t have anything like that kind of cash. It was a desperate situation.

With the theft charge hanging over her, Jo agreed a deal. She would plead guilty to falsifying her accounts, find a way to pay off that eye watering sum, and the Post Office would drop the more serious charge of theft. Her village were outraged by how Jo had been treated; they helped her raise the money.

On the day of her sentencing in 2008, it felt like her life hung in the balance. She could be taken straight from Winchester Crown court to a cell. South Warnborough turned out in force to support her. They crammed themselves into every corner of the too small courtroom. Jo Hamilton inspires the kind of affection it wasn’t built to hold.

The judge agreed that jail was too harsh, handing down a 12 month supervision order. Jo was immensely relieved, but before long the reality of the situation set in. Her life was in tatters. Early retirement was off the table. And a criminal record would hang over her forever. She knew she had done her best to be honest and to do the right thing. How could this have happened?

Jo had told her investigators that she feared the Horizon computer system was to blame for the accounting shortfalls. They had told her that wasn’t possible. There were thousands of Horizon computers all over the country. If there were flaws in the system, how come she was the only one having these problems?

The thing is, she wasn’t.

Alan Bates was the Sub Postmaster at the Wool Post in Craig-y-don in Wales. He had installed and developed Electronic Point of sale systems for most of his professional life. And he knew, when he started experiencing shortfalls just like Jo had, that the Post Office’s claims of an infallible system didn’t stand up. He resolved some computer errors on his own and managed to reduce a shortfall of £6,000 to just £1,000; but the Post Office insisted he was still liable for the rest.

Alan is breathtakingly stubborn. Even though he knew it could cost him his business, he refused to pay up or sign off any accounts until the Post Office gave him access to data from the computer system that wasn’t available in branch. The Post Office refused, and eventually fired Alan. It was a huge blow to his small business. He wasn’t going to take it lying down.

Alan knew he couldn’t take on the Post Office alone. It was one of the UK’s most loved brands, backed by the power of the state. So he went looking for strength in numbers. He found others just like him. He found Jo. Over more than a decade, his campaign for justice would grow until his group represented more than 500 aggrieved Sub Postmasters. It included people who’d been been bankrupted, ruined and even jailed by the Post Office.

Alan and his group set about wading through a morass of institutional cruelty and corporate secrecy, uncovering a scandal that goes to heart of who we are as a nation.

Find out the rest of Alan and Jo’s story in The Great Post Office Trial, on 大象传媒 Radio 4.