… and what has the PO CEO been up to?
What an extraordinary day. At 10am, ITV announced they were turning the Post Office Horizon Scandal into a four-part prime time drama series.
At 11am – campaigning voice for Subpostmasters Chris Head had a meeting with Post Office chief executive Nick Read to discuss next steps.
Then at 3.45pm only the actual Prime Minister had a Zoom call with Michael Rudkin and Tracy Felstead (and another former Subpostmaster called Dionne – Dionne – no one seemed to know you – if you are a secret emailer, please get in touch!)
I spent my day interviewing a former secretary of state, a serving MP and a gentleman who gave me a very powerful new line for the upcoming Radio 4 documentary, which I think will shake some feathers in Westminster and at the Post Office.
It’s fair to say that this week has been a bit different from other weeks on this story. My head is spinning – goodness knows what people at the centre of this scandal are thinking.
Boris and Paul v Tracy and Michael
Let’s start with the Prime Minister dialling into Tracy Felstead’s kitchen. Tracy was sent to prison at the age of just 19 and last week one of the highest courts in the land ruled that this was a total affront to justice and should never have happened. Tracy’s conviction was quashed as one of the 39 at the court of appeal. I spoke to her within 15 minutes of the call with the PM ending. She told me the Zoom meeting lasted 45 minutes and Paul Scully – the junior BEIS minister was there too.
Tracy told me both Scully and Johnson: “seemed sincere. The Prime Minister couldn’t stop apologising, and he said this is the biggest miscarriage of justice, and he is appalled by what’s gone on.”
In fact, Tracy, told me, the PM made a formal apology on behalf of the country to her as the senior minister in Her Majesty’s government for everything that she had been through.
“‘I said that I’d had to tell my children at quite a young age that their mother went to prison for something they didn’t do, and the Prime Minister was sat there shaking his head saying, ‘oh my goodness’.”
Tracy sounded empowered by the experience, and confident she had properly got her message across to the most powerful man in the country:
‘It needed to be done. It needed for them to hear it from us, rather than the press or MPs. I take my hat off to them for taking the time to actually to talk to us and get an idea of what we’ve all been through, and the impact it’s had and find out what’s actually happened.”
I asked how Tracy would feel if the apparent sincerity in the meeting didn’t translate into something concrete. She said: “I’d be disappointed and upset if nothing comes of this. I’ve just sat there and gone through the whole 20 years of my life. It’s a hard thing to talk about anyway. It’s about what the Post Office have done, and getting justice.”
Thumbs up from Scully
Also on the call was Michael Rudkin, whose wife Susan was one of the first six Postmasters to have their convictions overturned at Southwark Crown Court in December last year. Michael used to be a big shot in the National Federation of Subpostmasters and what he and his wife have been through beggars belief – in fact – his story alone could be turned into a film. Anyway, Michael told me:
“I thought it was a sincere attempt from the PM and Paul Scully to listen and take note on the points that we raised with them.
“It sounded positive and that they would take it away and deal with matters as soon as possible.
“I told them in a nutshell that I wanted an independent judge-led inquiry, I wanted compensation that acknowledged the real loss of investment, the money that was paid to the Post Office, and compensation for the psychological trauma and loss of reputation.
“I pointed out that the group litigation order, whilst there was a £58m settlement, didn’t take into account that £47m was paid to litigation funders and the lawyers.
“The £11m to be divided by 557 sub-postmasters only handed out £20,000 each on average and that was a pittance with regards to what we’ve just been put through, the loss of investment and the trauma in our lives.”
I asked him if he thought what was said was just soft-soap PR. Michael replied:
“I shall come back and haunt him if he doesn’t do anything. Paul Scully, when I raised the issue of the 550 compensation, he nodded his head and stuck his thumb up, and the Prime Minister said this is absolutely appalling, and said he needed to take this away and have it addressed properly. He said he would discuss this with the minister and said we’ve got to get some compensation and get your lives sorted out.”
On accountability, Michael said:
“I raised the issue [of criminal investigations of executives] and said who is it who countenanced all these prosecutions? And will those people be identified and brought to justice? The Prime Minister said we need to investigate this and look into the matter early. Unless he’s a good actor and a good liar, I got the sense that both men were being sincere.”
Well well well. Let’s see. My profound thanks to Michael, Tracy and to the brilliant Tom Witherow who I worked with on this, and who has done a full write-up in tomorrow’s Daily Mail. Please buy it.
TV drama – how it happened
Over the last year Alan Bates and I have had a TV drama in development with Little Gem Productions and ITV Studios. It was green-lit earlier this week and announced at 10am today.
Natasha from Little Gem approached me after reading an article in the Sunday Times Magazine by Katie Glass in Feb last year. Natasha was appalled by the awfulness of the scandal – which she had never come across before.
I had helped Katie with some contextual information for her piece, and when Natasha called Katie after the piece was published, Katie very kindly suggested Natasha should be speaking to me.
Natasha and I had a meeting in Little Gem’s offices in Shepherd’s Bush just before the first lockdown, and I told her if she want to tell this story she had to get Alan Bates on board. Natasha spoke to Alan, helped find him an agent. Natasha and her business partner Ben took this story to Patrick Spence at ITV Studios, who was equally affected by the plight of so many Subpostmasters.
Patrick, who is genuinely committed to detailing this scandal as accurately and dramatically as possible, set up a development deal (which Alan and I signed as consultants) to try to get the narrative into shape as a TV series by finding a writer.
To start with, Patrick put two researchers virtually full time on pulling together the factual background. There was widespread delight when Gwyn Hughes signed up to the project as the writer, and it was her draft scripts and story arc which got the story over the line.
It is unfortunate that not everybody’s tale can be told. Even the book I am writing cannot touch on every aspect of a 25 year scandal, but everyone I have spoken to every step of the way on the TV production side has been wholly committed to doing the right thing: telling the truth, getting the power of the story across, exposing as much as we can about who knew what when and, crucially, getting all of it to as wide an audience as possible.
This will not be easy, but I am confident it is in good hands. Patrick came down to the Court of Appeal last Friday and was deeply moved by what he saw and the people he spoke to outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
I have always been a fully independent journalist (partly because I am simply incapable of being told what to do) and I don’t want anyone to think I am compromised by being involved in this production. I have fielded dozens of calls and emails from production companies, writers and broadcasters about this story since Dec 2019. A TV drama was always going to get commissioned – the job was going to be ensuring the right series got made which didn’t sensationalise or misrepresent. I signed up with Little Gem and ITV Studios because I have been assured the integrity of the story is paramount. I will be there to keep them informed, honest and accurate, and I am sure Alan will too.
What’s Nick Read been up to, then?
Interesting man, the Post Office CEO. Today he had a chat with Subpostmaster campaigner Chris Head, who is one of the 555 High Court claimants still seeking proper redress after legal funders took most of their settlement. Chris has some new ideas for getting that money into the pockets of Subpostmasters and accountability. After the meeting, Chris said:
“Just spoken to Nick for the past 15 minutes & had (what I believe) a very genuine conversation regarding the plight of the 555 Sub Postmasters. Shared all of my thoughts on why this could work. He has promised to go away & discuss with the board & take my idea to government.”
After that meeting, Mr Read disappeared off to a country Post Office branch where he had another, much longer conversation with a current Subpostmaster about the current state of the network. Productive discussions were held, I am told. What will come of them, nobody quite knows. I’ll tell you more the moment I can.
Radio 4 interviews
As I mentioned above, I spent a few hours doing remote interviews today with some key players with things to say about the Post Office Horizon Scandal. This is for the Radio 4 doc which will be with you at the end of May. I hope the doc will act as an “Episode 11” to the Great Post Office Trial series, which finished its repeat run on Radio 4 today. There’s a lot of editing and a lot of legalling to go before we can get those interviews to air, so I can’t say much about them now, but I am really getting a sense from speaking to senior people that the Court of Appeal’s findings will have far reaching implications across the body politic.
As a journalist who has been trying to get this story wider public awareness for a long time, it’s nice to have the privilege of seeing it happen.
I remain extremely grateful to everyone who has ever given me a tip-off, contact or a document, and I am particularly grateful to those Subpostmasters who came forward and told their stories in the face of institutional indifference and naked hostility from the Post Office.
The Post Office might be pretending to be a nice, smiley organisation now, but there are people within it who still believe they were in the right and the campaigners were in the wrong. As an organisation, the Post Office has years of trust to rebuild, and it has a very long way to go.
Booooook
Thanks to everyone who has joined the mailing list over the past week. The crowdfunding is over, but the work it has funded will go on.
If you know of people who might want to support what I’m doing going forward, please do click on this link and buy a pre-sale copy of my book. David and I at Bath Publishing (which is a tiny independent publishing house) are still working out how we can divert some of the cover price of the book to a cause close to the story. As soon as we have something to announce on that front we will. It will of course be backwards-compatible so if you have already bought a pre-sale copy of the book either directly from the Bath website or via my tip jar, some of the purchase price will be diverted into a pot good people can hopefully do something useful with in the future. Oh – on that front that you to everyone who got in touch offering their expertise on the subject of creating a charitable trust. As soon as the book’s done, that’s my next project.
Sorry – this is a far longer newsletter than I expected it to be. As ever – thanks for your emails and messages. I am sorry I cannot respond to them all. I have been getting more than 200 a day over the last week, which is lovely, but impossible to deal with. I am sure things will quieten down soon. Either way I will leave you alone for a few days and get back in touch when the Next Big Thing happens!
My very best regards and thank you – I know many of you are wholly committed to getting this story properly documented and widely told. I appreciate your help, advice and support. It’s wonderful to know there are so many good people out there.
Enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend!
Nick