Nick Wallis in Hastings to talk on the great Post Office scandal

Six years ago, locals mobilised to oppose plans to sell off the St Leonards Crown Post Office. What we were unaware of at the time was that a much greater scandal was unfolding – the persecution of subpostmasters who, due to the PO’s faulty IT system, were apparently fiddling their accounts. Nick Wallis, the journalist who has done most to expose the scandal, is coming to Hastings on 10 May to talk about the campaign. Rosie Brocklehurst, who has organised his visit, fills in the background.

In April 2021, the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of 39 former subpostmasters and ruled their prosecutions were an affront to the public conscience. They were just a few of the hundreds who had been prosecuted by the Post Office using IT evidence from an unreliable computer system called Horizon. When the Post Office became aware Horizon didn’t work properly, it covered it up.

Journalist Nick Wallis has devoted over a decade of his life to pursuing the story described by Ian Hislop of Private Eye as ‘an extraordinary journalistic expose of a huge miscarriage of justice.’

The scandal has taken 23 years to unfold. Over that time, 33 subpostmasters did not live to see justice done. Three of them committed suicide.

Nick, who works for ITN and is advising ITV on a drama about the scandal which is due on air later this year, first became aware of the story in 2010, when Davinder Misra, the husband of Seema, a pregnant jailed subpostmistress, contacted him at BBC Radio Surrey. Davinder was trying to make ends meet since his wife’s incarceration by trying to sell the services of his one-man-band taxi company. Nick could not offer a contract but asked if, like many a cab driver, Davinder had a good story to tell? That, along with an earlier story in Computer Weekly from 2009, was the beginning of the exposé.

Over the following 12 years, Nick attended several lengthy High Court trials, conducted hundreds of interviews and helped produce two Panorama documentaries, a nationwide BBC Inside Out series and many Radio 4 programmes and podcasts. He now also writes a regular blog and email update service on developments of a still unfolding story.

Public inquiry

He has recently been covering the statutory public inquiry chaired by former Judge Sir Wyn Williams. His book, The Great Post Office Scandal, published in Summer 2022, has been updated and will be on sale on 10 May and available in local independent bookshops.

As I have always been passionate about righting injustice and admire investigative journalism, I followed this story from 2021 when Nick made 10 podcasts for the BBC. I tried for over a year to get to one of Nick’s talks in Kent and then in London but failed each time due to illness. So last year I contacted Nick to see if he would agree to come to Hastings. Although he was busy finishing a book about the Johnny Depp trial, which he hoped might help ‘pay the rent,’ like the hero he is, he offered to come here on 10 May.

There are heroes in this story, not least the suffering subpostmasters. But in my view, Nick is also a hero – a modest man who has often given freely of his time to bring this story to public attention. He deserves an award for what he has achieved, not least giving us the historical record of how a once great institution destroyed the lives of hundreds of people.

Dame Joan Bakewell says in a testimonial that his book ‘has the power of a great thriller.’ And the denouement is yet to happen. There are still innocent people caught up in this horror but completely isolated and unaware of how to get redress.

Katy’s story

Last Christmas, shortly after arranging the event with Nick, by chance I met Katy, a nurse who trained at the Conquest, the daughter of an Eastbourne subpostmaster. Katy was at school in Bexhill when Post Office auditors invaded her family home and turned out drawers in front of her. Her sick father Bob was suspended without pay by the Post Office in 2008. Her traumatised mother was prosecuted while her father was dying. Nick has since put Katy and her mother in touch with a barrister and I have also invited Katy to come on 10 May to tell her family’s story.

The CEO of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019 was Paula Vennells CBE, at that time a lay CofE preacher. In 2017, Paula Vennells planned to close St Leonards Crown Post Office in London Road and sell the building for profit. She was making cuts with a view to raising profits, yet local campaigners trying to save our post office were unaware she was spending huge sums to continue to prosecute innocent subpostmasters despite knowing Horizon had multiple bugs – an amount that has been put at £150-200 million over two decades.

This does not include money for compensation later paid from Post Office coffers or the £780m set aside by Government, adding up to a massive £1bn and counting of public funds allocated to deal with the Horizon scandal and its fallout.

No one brought to account

Nobody yet knows the total amount clawed back from individual subpostmasters for fictional ‘shortfalls’ calculated by the flawed Horizon accounting system. No one has been brought to account, including the Post Office investigators with some powers of investigation similar to the police, who treated subpostmasters so callously, denied there could be bugs in an IT system they did not know, told every individual they were the only ones having problems and presumed everyone was guilty.

Later this year Ms Vennells will be called to give evidence for the first time to the public inquiry.

After Nick’s presentation on 10 May and interview with Katy, there will be a Q&A.

I want to ask what well-remunerated establishment figure Tim Parker, PO chairman from 2015, knew, and why did he keep vital information from the Post Office board?

Meanwhile, few caught up in this scandal have received anything like adequate compensation for their true losses. In many cases, creditors have had first call on compensation due to bankruptcies caused by the Post Office actions. There has been very little in terms of an apology and the overturning of convictions has yet to happen for the majority. So this shocking story is not over yet, not by a long way.

 

Nick Wallis talks on the Great Post Office Scandal Wednesday 10 May, 7-9pm, doors open 6pm. The Pig, 37 White Rock, Hastings TN34 1JL. Admission £6.50 or £4 concessions. Tickets available online or via the QR code below. Don’t delay – seating is limited.

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