Surviving the Post Office (co-produced and co-directed by Hayley Hassall, who has previously reported on the story) has something of the travelogue about it. Will Mellor, who played former Subpostmaster Lee Castleton in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, presents.

Mellor calls his role in the ITV drama “more important than any other” in his career. In this documentary, the actor traverses England, first meeting Lee Castleton in Scarborough (“we’ve become friends”) and then setting off on an odyssey by train and car to meet several more former Subpostmasters and/or their spouses/children.

The one person interviewed who is not directly affected by the scandal is Neil Hudgell from Hudgell solicitors. The legal firm Howe and Co is also mentioned in Mellor’s script. Both firms represent Subpostmaster core participants to the ongoing public inquiry.

The doc is worth watching. It’ll only take half an hour of your time and it will once more bring home just how bloody awful the Post Office were. My only criticism is that it would nice if there were some kind of graphic map put on screen tracking Mellor’s journey as he moved from location to location.

Interesting thing 1

Surviving… is not Panorama, nor is it meant to be. The revelations did not come thick and fast. But the doc emphasised a couple of points which have not had a huge amount of publicity until now.

The first interesting thing is that Postmasters are still getting discrepancies on the Horizon IT system. This has been reported elsewhere, but it’s now likely to be clocked by at least a couple of million people.

After meeting Lee, Mellor spoke to Shann Brede, who remains a Subpostmaster at Goldsithney branch near Penzance. In a brief shot, we see Brede holding a “Commander’s Certificate” from Devon and Cornwall Police, which she was awarded for facing down a robber armed with a knife, and ensuring he left empty-handed.

Brede had discrepancies in her accounts totalling around £20,000 over the last 22 years. Until the settlement of the Bates v Post Office High Court litigation in 2019, Brede dutifully funnelled her own savings into the Horizon black hole, severely hampering her finances and draining the savings she’d put by to fund her daughter’s university education. Brede told Mellor the experience had “ruined our lives.”

Nowadays the Post Office does not chase her disputed discrepancies. In the voiceover Mellor says “we’ve heard from dozens of Subpostmasters who said they’re still having ongoing problems using Horizon. Losses tend to be written off, now.”

It doesn’t take a genius to spot the problem, first articulated to me by a forensic accountant many moons ago. Since the rollout of the Horizon system, the Post Office has not been able to tell the difference between IT error and fraud. This was fine (for the Post Office) when it could just blame Subpostmasters, seize their assets and destroy their lives through the criminal courts. But now it has chosen not to do that, who is picking up the tab for the mysterious discrepancies they’ve written off? The Post Office, and by extension, the taxpayer.

With no disrespect to the thousands of honest Subpostmasters, thanklessly working hard to serve their communities and scratch a living, there’s never been a better time to be a bent Subpostmaster. And that is entirely the fault of the Post Office cadre of investigators, who proved their incompetence by going after innocent people whilst failing to properly investigate what might be complex, messy and difficult crimes, a small number of which may have been (or be) happening inside Fujitsu, or the Post Office itself.

The Post Office/Fujitsu Right of Reply section after Brede’s interview was odd. In white writing on a black screen the following legend appeared:

This was followed by:

Putting aside the word “robust”, which may have been an attempt at gaslighting Subpostmasters [more on this below – see UPDATE], the two statements are tantalisingly oblique. There are 11,500 Post Office branches. I am not sure what “received” in relation to a discrepancy means. Assuming it means “has been reported” over the course of twelve months, that means the Post Office got up to 11,499 reports of discrepancies last year*, which could be as little as 50p, or £50,000.

Let’s arbitrarily assume the value of each reported discrepancy was £500 and you are looking at the Post Office writing off as much as £5,749,500 per year.

The second legend “It also claims none of the investigated shortfalls were down to a known Horizon defect” is oblique to the point of meaninglessness. Which Horizon shortfalls? Brede’s? All of them across the network in the last financial year? All of them ever? And what does “investigated” mean in this context? We know the Post Office has historically not done a great job of investigating shortfalls, so forgive me for not trusting the reported outcome. Also, note known Horizon defect. What does that imply? That many of the shortfalls were down to newly-uncovered defects?

* See UPDATE 2 below for more on this.

Interesting thing 2

Katie and Thomas Watson are children of a couple whose lives were torn apart by the Post Office scandal. They tell Mellor the day their mum Fiona was accused of stealing money from their branch it was “the end of our childhood”. Fiona was suspended and ordered to repay the Horizon discrepancy which resulted in the Watsons selling their home, moving in with their grandparents and living for a while in a caravan.

During the ordeal, Fiona was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer and died in October 2014. “She couldn’t do both,” Katie told Mellor. “Fight cancer, and fight the Post Office… She tried. She really tried, but she couldn’t do both….”

At the end of the Watsons’ segment, another white-on-black legend appeared which stated “There is no dedicated compensation scheme for the families of Subpostmasters.”

Again this is known, but not widely. Given that thousands of children, now adults, have had their life chances, and their mental equilibrium, severely impaired by this scandal, that will not sit right with many viewers. Katie tells Mellor “I think people forget there is a knock-on effect to the children. Kids have watched families become bankrupt. To have their parents’ ostracised because people believe that they are guilty. I think it’s important that the children are recognised and something happens for them.”

Neil Hudgell told the programme: “There are a good number of those children who are deeply affected now in adulthood from what’s gone on in their formative years. As it stands there’s no mechanism for compensation for children at the minute. What there is, is a huge groundswell of support to see how that can be brought about.”

You can watch Surviving the Post Office now on iPlayer, or wait till 8.30pm tonight to see it on BBC1.
You can read the Post Office’s statement about the documentary here.

UPDATE: the Post Office press office have said they will send me the same information used to inform the oblique white-on-black statements pictured above.

They also told me the description of the Horizon system as “robust” is taken from Mr Justice Fraser’s 2019 Horizon Issues judgment (part of the Bates vs Post Office High Court litigation), in which Fraser described the post-2017 Horizon system as “relatively robust” in comparison to its earlier iterations. That word “relatively” is missing from the Post Office statement. Furthermore, Horizon has undergone another major “upgrade” since 2019 (in 2022, I think) and no court ruling has been made on its robustness, relative or otherwise since then, so calling the current Horizon iteration robust feels more than a bit misleading.

UPDATE 2: I have received the written info sent to the doc-makers. It says in the last financial year the Post Office had 6,279 cases “referred to the Network Support and Resolution Team who investigate postmaster discrepancies”. They ask the reader to note: “this is not the same as the number of branches who used the ‘Review or Dispute’ button. This is because some issues are resolved following use of the button without referral to the Network Support and Resolution team, either in branch or with the help of the Branch Support Centre.”

The value of the discrepancies has not been disclosed. The press office adds:

“Discrepancies – shortfalls or surpluses – can arise in branch for a range of reasons. Today, we have a process for the management of bugs, errors and defects to ensure that any issues, if they do arise, are dealt with transparently to mitigate any impact on postmasters. As of 1 July, we have four open bugs, errors or defects with the potential for financial impact. These are what is referred to as ‘edge cases’ in technical terms which means they have the potential to cause an impact, but this is highly unlikely. These have been communicated to postmasters via the Branch Hub. It is important to note that bugs, errors and defects could impact different elements of the Horizon system, and not all cause balancing issues. For example, a problem might not have the potential to cause any financial impact but could cause a poor user experience for postmasters. If a postmaster experiences issues with the system, they are encouraged to contact the Branch Support Centre for support.“

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