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In this episode, Alan Bates convinces his peers to ally with the Post Office, hoping that mediation will bring them justice. But should the Subpostmasters trust the very people who’ve let them down so badly? Discover how the mediation scheme really played out, how the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) finally got a lawyer, and learn about Post Office CEO Paula Vennells’s actual role in the Church of England. [Contains spoilers.]
- 1.
How Ineffective was the Post Office Mediation Process?
Episode 3 sees Second Sight’s Bob Rutherford tell Alan Bates that the Post Office is obstructing his investigation. He says Subpostmasters should take the Post Office to trial rather than trust its proposal to negotiate. With no funds for a lawyer however, Bates and his peers agree to the mediation scheme.
Mediation began in 2013 and Bates shared over 100 cases, according to the documentary The Real Story of Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which will air on MASTERPIECE Sunday, April 28th at 11pm ET and again Sunday, May 5th at 7pm ET. “The whole process was only meant to take ‘x’ amount of months, but in total, was running into years,” Bates says in the film. Post Office lawyers used various delay tactics and were said to have told victims they were out of time to make their claims. After more than a year, not one case was finalized. Then, just weeks after the Post Office testified to a select committee of Parliament, it called off mediation altogether.
In its announcement, “the Post Office said 56 of the 136 cases made had already been closed, with the remainder being put forward for mediation unless they were already subject to court ruling,” says Computer Weekly. “Angela van den Bogerd, Post Office head of partnerships, said ‘This has been an exhaustive and informative process which has confirmed that there are no system-wide problems with our computer system.’”
- 2.
What's Paula Vennells’ Role in the Church of England?
During a radio interview with Paula Vennells portrayed in Episode 3, the host mentions that, in addition to her role as Post Office CEO, Vennells is a priest in the Church of England.
“Ms Vennells was ordained in the Church of England in 2005,” according to BBC News. As an associate minister, she preached on a part-time and unpaid basis in the St Albans diocese. Vennells was even “interviewed for the role of Bishop of London—the third most senior in the Church of England—but not appointed from a final shortlist of three. She was still chief executive of the Post Office at the time.”
Even after her 2019 departure from the Post Office, Vennells was appointed to join the Church of England’s ethical investments committee, according to The Standard (UK). She resigned her position as Anglican priest in April 2021.
- 3.
How Did the Subpostmasters Eventually Find a Lawyer?
In Episode 3, a solicitor riding in a taxi overhears a radio program with Jo Hamilton talking about the Subpostmasters’ 150-page contracts. He asks the driver to turn up the volume, then he excitedly exits the cab.
The real contract lawyer James Hartley was driving to his office in Leeds when he heard the BBC radio show. “I thought to myself, there may be something we can do about this to help. It didn’t sound right,” Hartley says in the documentary The Real Story of Mr Bates vs The Post Office. He took the initiative to contact Alan Bates and discuss the evidence. “I needed to weigh out whether or not we could raise the necessary litigation funding. … The only way we were going to be able to break through this…was a full-scale group action.” A nationwide search began, with 555 Subpostmasters finally pursuing a group litigation order against the Post Office.
- 4.
Did a Fujitsu Whistleblower Call Alan Bates?
At the end of Episode 3, Bates almost drops a call from someone in technical support at Fujitsu. The man on the phone says everyone’s been lying; there was remote access to postal branch accounts. The caller reveals he was on a Fujitsu team doing thousands of corrections to Horizon nightly, addressing coding errors, bugs, and data corruption. Who was this whistleblower?
It was Richard Roll, a former computer technician at Fujitsu from 2001 to 2004. Roll first gave his vital evidence to the press, rather than a government authority. He told his story in a 2015 taping of the BBC program Panorama. BBC News reports that the program’s broadcast was delayed a few weeks because “lawyers for the Post Office sent letters threatening to sue.”
- Read our interview with actor Toby Jones
- Catch The Real Story of Mr Bates vs The Post Office documentary airing April 28 at 11pm ET and May 5 at 7pm ET
- Read about the real people and cast
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