Toby Jones plays a tireless activist who sought justice for hundreds of wronged individuals.
A shocking scandal that you might not be familiar with takes focus in ITV’s latest factual drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which stars Toby Jones as a man who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds in his quest for justice.
Alan Bates (Jones) was a subpostmaster who lost his job after unexplained losses began appearing in his branch’s accounting, for which the Post Office held him responsible and demanded he repay.
Confident in his own skills, Bates refused, ultimately leading to his dismissal – but the story didn’t end there. He went on to lead a determined campaign to prove the culpability of a faulty computer system named Horizon.
These events had a devastating impact on the lives of hundreds of subpostmasters, with executive producer Natasha Bondy lamenting that their story has been frequently overlooked up to now.
She explained: “There’s not a murdered woman, there’s no serial killer involved. It’s the Post Office, this slightly bland, friendly brand, and you can’t imagine anything at the level of this malevolence happening there.
“That’s obviously the whole point of the story; that’s how it has gone on for so long. But even now, I still find myself telling people and some people don’t know, even though it has gone up the news agenda slowly but surely over the last three years. It’s just not terribly salacious.”
Read on for more details on the heartbreaking events that inspired Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office true story explained
Although the case hasn’t always attracted much media attention, the Post Office scandal has been gradually unravelling for more than two decades.
In 1999, a Fujitsu-designed computer accounting system named Horizon was rolled out at Post Office branches up and down the country – the result of a £1.5 billion investment intended to make their operations more efficient.
However, it wasn’t long before some subpostmasters reported issues with the new method of working, as Horizon repeatedly flagged losses in their accounts, which in some cases ballooned to tens of thousands of pounds.
In several incidents, the Post Office would demand that the individual employees make up the shortfall using their personal finances – a company policy – which left numerous people in a position of financial ruin.
If that wasn’t bad enough, criminal prosecutions were brought against more than 700 Post Office workers on charges of theft and false accounting related to the flawed Horizon system.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office co-star Julie Hesmondhalgh said: “The Post Office was actually doing the prosecutions, investigating their own workers, cracking down as they saw it on ordinary people running post offices in the home counties or whatever.
“I thought, ‘Nobody would write this – it can only be real life that’s so bonkers in that way.’”
Following a tip by sacked subpostmaster Alan Bates, the matter was highlighted in a feature by Computer Weekly published in 2009, marking one of the first major pieces of coverage that the scandal achieved.
In the wake of the article, Bates formally launched a campaign for justice which attracted a diverse group of victims – each of whom was told at one point that they were the only one – and support from the likes of then-Conservative MP (now Lord) James Arbuthnot.
Mounting pressure led to the Post Office launching an external review of Horizon in the summer of 2012 – almost a decade since Bates initially reported an issue with the system.
The company’s private prosecutions related to Horizon stopped in 2015, when a House of Commons Select Committee was also launched to investigate complaints into the IT system and the resulting mediation scheme.
It wouldn’t be until November 2018 that the subpostmasters would get their day in court against the Post Office, which ultimately reached a settlement with the group of 555 individuals at a cost of £57.75 million.
However, due to enormous legal fees, only around £12 million of that could be shared among the claimants – equating to as little as £20,000 compensation for people who had lost their money, homes, reputation and priceless time.
Following the verdict, the Post Office was ordered to set up the Historical Shortfall Scheme (now Horizon Shortfall Scheme), which would provide compensation to subpostmasters impacted by Horizon faults.
However, those named in Bates’s case were not eligible to apply for the scheme, leaving them worse off than their peers – an injustice corrected in March 2022, when the government announced a Group Litigation Order for this cohort.
Alan Bates said: “For me to try and draw a line under my involvement will be when the initial 555, the group that brought the court action, have received the financial redress due to them. That’s a process that is underway now, and in theory, should be finished by August of next year.
“You will never be able to repay people for what they’ve gone through and you will never be able to give them back all those years of suffering that they’ve had to endure. But hopefully it might alleviate some of their problems going forward.
“Another issue, and my current source of campaigning, is around the mental anguish of the families. At the moment, the government hasn’t taken that on board. These families need professional mental health assessments and support, not just financially but in other ways as well.”
Post Office workers have reported being shunned by their local communities when the allegations of theft were made, as well as suffering from depression and PTSD as a consequence.
There have been calls for executives involved in the scandal to face repercussions, with Bates rejecting an offer to receive an OBE at the start of 2023 on the grounds that former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells still has her CBE.
The boss became a figure of controversy for her firm defence of the Horizon system over many years, in the face of growing evidence that it wasn’t functioning properly.
Bates added: “How can an honours system work when they’re allowing people like her to hang on to something awarded for the disaster she oversaw during her tenure?”
Vennells has now said that “it is beyond doubt there are serious and unanswered questions as to the manner in which subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted” (via MailOnline) and, in 2021, said she was “truly sorry” to 39 former employees whose convictions were quashed (via The Guardian).
However, as of September 2023, only 86 of more than 700 subpostmasters had seen their convictions overturned, with dozens dying in the time it has taken for the public inquiry to be completed (via The Times).
The Post Office scandal is regarded one of the largest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office premieres on ITV1 and ITVX on Monday 1st January 2024. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.
Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.