‘I was ruined by a bullying post office’

CGTN Europe

A former subpostmaster wrongfully convicted of theft describes the personal and professional impact on his life.  Tom Hedges opens up on the final day of questioning for the ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennels at the public inquiry into the scandal.  #postoffice #vennells #scandal #uk

Transcript

00:00 What was the personal and professional impact on the wrongful conviction that you endured?

00:06 Well, good evening. Yeah, I mean, absolute ruination of my life. It's about 15 years ago

00:17 since I was prosecuted. And I went from living a fairly comfortable, nice existence to being

00:28 washed up and almost flushed away by a bullying post office who took me to court, prosecuted me,

00:41 and it meant that my business almost went bust, but we did manage to just save it a little bit.

00:54 But I came within a hair's breadth of going bankrupt, and the stigma never leaves you.

01:00 I was 58 at the time, and trying to get another job at 58 is a hard enough job,

01:09 but stick a criminal conviction on, and it proved completely impossible.

01:14 Tom, the former boss of the post office was robustly cross-examined this week. If you had

01:19 been asking those questions, what would you have asked her? I just, what on earth was she doing?

01:31 She must have been asleep on the watch. I flippantly commented to somebody today,

01:36 she must have gone into the office at nine o'clock in the morning, put her head on the desk and gone

01:41 to sleep, and then woken up at five o'clock in the afternoon and gone home, because so many red flags

01:47 have been brought out of this inquiry. What was she thinking of? What do you want to happen to

01:55 the management of the post office during this time, the former management of the post office,

02:01 when this inquiry comes to an end? Well, I'm fairly certain the Metropolitan Police will be

02:07 taking a look at all the evidence as it's, when the report is finally written at the back end of

02:13 this year, and I think that they should take a strong look, not only at Paula, because I think

02:22 she has been singled out as the fall guy here, but there are many others who also are culpable

02:31 and need seriously looking at. When you look back over these broken years, why do you think

02:41 this happened? Reputation. Reputation not only of the post office's image as a loved and professional

02:56 organisation, but also the reputation and images of the various bosses that were in charge over

03:04 a number of years, and as I said before, it's not just Paula. There are probably a good dozen or

03:10 more who are equally culpable. Have you finally got justice?

03:16 I'm lucky in that I had my conviction quashed back in 2021. I was one of the first of the 39 cases

03:26 in the High Court that day, and I'm extremely pleased that the other 900, and now with the

03:34 passing of this law, joined me. But as far as justice is concerned, it's over three years since

03:42 I got my conviction quashed, and that opened the door for me to claim compensation,

03:50 and only this week have I managed to lodge that claim because of all the hoops that the

03:58 post office have thrown up in the way of getting to that compensation. So I'm hopeful now that in

04:06 my personal case that will be the case, that will come through in the next couple of months.

04:12 However, there's 900 other people with the result of the law that's just been passed that are now

04:20 in a similar situation, and it's going to cost the government ultimately, because the post office

04:29 have no money to pay this, and the government hold 100% of the shares in the post office.

04:36 So it's down to them to pay.

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