Former Radio Surrey presenter is taking his tales of torment on the road
In 2010 Nick Wallis was working as a broadcast journalist on BBC Radio Surrey’s Breakfast Show. Based in Guildford, Nick was contacted one morning by Davinder Misra, the owner of Surrey Cars, touting for the station’s taxi contract. “Obviously, we didn’t have a taxi budget,” he laughs. “But I replied, quite flippantly actually, saying: ‘Thanks for getting in touch. Get back to me if you have any stories.’”
Which, as luck would have it, Davinder certainly did. His pregnant wife, Seema – formerly the West Byfleet postmistress – had just been jailed for a crime she did not commit. “We chatted and it became clear that Davinder was not in a good way,” says Nick. “He told me everything that the two of them had been through, and how many others were going through it too.
It was astonishing.” And so the now familiar story – of how Post Office staff throughout the land had been destroyed by the company’s flawed accounting software, Horizon – came tumbling out. Computer Weekly had been writing about the problems since 2009, explained Davinder, and there was a very active group – Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) – fighting on behalf of hundreds of workers to have the problem legally redressed. Davinder introduced Nick to the group’s founder – a Mr Alan Bates.
For Nick, the obvious move was to put Seema’s story on the radio
But there was a snag. “We were talking about someone unanimously convicted by a jury at Guildford Crown Court, so we couldn’t just rush the thing to air without thinking it through. Instead, I contacted Jane French, Editor of BBC Inside Out South, the regional investigative programme.
“I was surprised the BBC hadn’t done something already, but within 24 hours Jane emailed me back and said: ‘Sounds interesting. I am going to assign two producers to it and, if it checks out, you can do a film for the show.’”
Three months later the programme aired. “I was convinced it was a huge story,” Nick continues. “There were hundreds of professional people, with no history of criminal behaviour, who had been accused and prosecuted unfairly. They had all been sort of run over by this computer system.
Their stories deserved to be told.” Attempts at raising awareness with the national media met with only meagre success. Private Eye picked the story up, and Welsh language channel S4C covered cases in Wales, but that was more or less it. The plight of the postmasters and postmistresses, it seemed, was destined to pass most people by. Yet Nick did not give up.
By 2014 he had enough new information to pitch for a second documentary
This time Jane French suggested that he approach the BBC’s flagship evening magazine programme The One Show, as producers there had a crime and investigation budget. “They gave us enough money to produce two films, and on the back of that I was able to approach Panorama.”
At last the scandal looked set to hit the front page. Between 1999 and 2015, when that first Panorama programme aired, more than 900 subpostmasters had been convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting, with 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office itself. And yet, after an initial flurry of interest, the flakes of fury settled once more.
The wider world was apparently still not that concerned. “It was shocking, what had happened,” reflects Nick. “These people had been steamrollered by a faulty system, but they were contractually liable to replace the money that was supposed to be missing. If they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, they were prosecuted for misappropriating public funds.
“I am a broadcast journalist by trade and, for me, Panorama is the acme of my profession. But when we put the programme out and got absolutely no response, I thought: ‘Oh okay, I should probably write a book.’” Cue a blizzard of research into the legal history of the relevant cases, along with an in-depth look at the toxic computer system itself.
But with prosecutions, trials and appeals still ongoing, the subject matter proved a little too hot for many legally savvy publishers to handle. By 2017, however, it looked as if things might once again be moving in the right direction, as a phalanx of aggrieved postmasters and postmistresses took their fight to the High Court.
The case was known as Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd. Determined to be present, Nick decided to write a blog from the public gallery and launched a crowdfunding platform to finance his reporting. In 2019, the workers – some of whom had been waiting for 20 years to have their voices heard – were finally vindicated in a devastating judgement by Mr Justice Fraser. The Post Office agreed to pay £58m in settlement, though without admitting liability.
A second Panorama followed, along with a 10-part Radio 4 documentary series, The Great Post Office Trial, broadcast in 2020 during lockdown. “At this point – a successful court case, the Post Office forced to apologise and so on – you might have expected a lot more interest in the book. But no,” laments Nick.
By January 2024 nearly 100 of these convictions had been overturned in court, with plans for a blanket exoneration announced by the government
“My literary agent had been hawking it around every publisher there was, when finally he came upon a small legal publisher in Bath. The people there said that they had been following the story closely in Private Eye and would love to have the rights. The Great Post Office Scandal was the company’s first mainstream book, but they went with it. We got it out by late 2021.”
For the next two years, the story – and book sales – trundled gently along. And then, on New Year’s Day, the slowgathering storm finally broke.
More than 10.6m people sat down to view the first episode of Mr Bates vs The Post Office – one of the most watched ITV dramas ever shown. The four-part series garnered universal praise for writer Gwyneth Hughes, director James Strong and stars Toby Jones (Alan Bates), Monica Dolan, Julie Hesmondhalgh and Will Mellor.
“It was incredible,” says Nick, who worked as a series consultant. “A drama can show the emotional truth of a story. The lives of these ordinary, decent people, and what they had been through, really hit a chord with the public.
“It showed the power of TV, but more than that, it galvanised the government. After all these years, the fact that there could be an Act of Parliament to exonerate those people is amazing.” For the victims, the hope of full justice and fair compensation beckons.
Seema Misra had her conviction overturned in 2021. As for Nick, he is hitting the road with a series of shows, giving the public the chance to hear more about the horrors of Horizon.
“It’s all very interactive,” he explains. “There will be a Q&A with one of the subpostmasters involved, so as to give the audience a sense of what they endured. At Guildford and Leatherhead, Seema Misra will be there – which is where the story started all those years ago.
“The public inquiry into all this is ongoing, so the fight is not yet over. This has been the worst miscarriage of justice the country has ever seen. But it has also demonstrated that, if you have faith, you can overcome bully-boy tactics. I have no doubt that there are more revelations to come.”
Post Office Scandal – the Inside Story, hosted by Nick Wallis, is at Leatherhead Theatre on April 18 and the Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford on May 15. Special guest Seema Misra. For tickets visit: postofficescandal.uk n For The Great Post Office Scandal visit: bathpublishing.com
