A technical failure in the accounting software led to ruin for hundreds of honest citizens. A scandal that took place 25 years ago in the United Kingdom and is now being revived by the series Mr Bates against Correos, released on Movistar Plus. The four-episode miniseries recreates how numerous people were unjustly convicted and does so through the figure of Alan Bates and his wife Suzanne (played by Toby Jones and Julie Hesmondhalgh), who ran a local Post Office and were forced by law to close their position, accusing them of fraud, theft and false accounting.
But they were innocent. Like hundreds of other employees of the Post Office, the United Kingdom postal company that has been operating since 1660, they did not understand what was happening and were immersed in a Kafkaesque nightmare that would change their lives.
Starting in 1999, the Post Office implemented an information technology system called Horizon, developed by Fujitsu. Some voices within the company already warned that the system had some errors that affected balances, so it was likely that there would be discrepancies that users could not explain. And that was what began to happen to hundreds of subpostmasters, who saw how the accounts indicated on paper that everything was fine, but the system, inexplicably, calculated that there was a large deficit.
The workers panicked because a clause in the Post Office contract specified that they were responsible for any money that went missing. They called technical support, but the discrepancy was not resolved and then there were only two options: immediately pay the deficit in cash or face a trial with a high probability of ending up in jail.
In total, some 3,500 branch operators were falsely accused of illegally withdrawing money from their accounts. Many of them were tried and convicted, with sentences ranging from community service to prison. Many lives were ruined by severe financial difficulties or complete bankruptcy following convictions. Even those who avoided prosecution had to go into debt to cover the huge sums they allegedly owed.
In 2009 Alan Bates, who years earlier had been sacked after reporting problems with Horizon, formed a campaign group to reveal the scandal. He rounded up more than 500 victims and sued the Post Office. After a long battle, in 2019 Bates’ group managed to win a court case that determined that their sentences had been unfair and that the Horizon system was to blame. Some sentences were overturned and other cases were reviewed, paving the way for those wrongly accused to receive compensation.
About this series, Alan Bates has pointed out that “for years much has been written about how so many lives have been destroyed but yet the true horrors that were inflicted on us have never been expressed. “I think this series is the first time that it has managed to convey the suffering that the victims have had to face.”
