A consultant on ITV’s hit drama about the Post Office scandal says “the net may be closing” on those responsible for the wrongful prosecution of subpostmasters after the Metropolitan Police confirmed an investigation is under way.
The police confirmed on Friday that they are investigating the Post Office over potential fraud offences after the wrongful prosecutions and its handling of the Horizon IT scandal.
Former subpostmasters and subpostmistresses were held liable by the Post Office for financial discrepancies thrown up by the computerised accounting system.
The Post Office decision led to more than 700 prosecutions, criminal convictions and, in some cases, prison sentences.
Asked by Sky News if he thought the investigation would lead to criminal prosecutions, Nick Wallis, a consultant on ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, pointed to the lack of charges handed down to those responsible for other national scandals over infected blood, Hillsborough and Windrush.
“So based on our society’s track record of being able to prosecute individuals or corporations, I’m not holding out much hope,” he said.
But he added: “You do get the sense that with this development, with the Met Police coming out saying they’re looking at not just perjury but conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and fraud, the net may well be closing.”
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This week’s airing of ITV’s mini-series about Alan Bates, the lead claimant, has thrust the scandal back into the public eye and 50 more potential victims are believed to have come forward since it came out.
Mr Wallis, who is also the author of The Great Post Office Scandal, said the reaction to the drama has been “phenomenal”.
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“I was speaking to the executive producer last night and apologising for being caught off guard at the response to the drama,” he said.
“She said: ‘We all were.’
“We had no idea that the drama would touch so many people… It hit a nerve with the general public.
“It’s shone a light on this story – something I’ve been working on for more than a decade.
“As a result, more and more victims of this scandal – who perhaps weren’t reached by the journalism that’s been done on it in the past, who perhaps hid themselves away from their communities – now, at last, the word is starting to filter through to them that they will be believed if they come forward and they may well have a case for significant compensation.”
Mr Wallis said the compensation should have been dealt with by an independent body and that its handling has become “yet another facet” of the scandal.
Christopher Head, a campaigner for victims, became a postmaster at the age of 18 in 2006 and was under criminal investigation himself for six months in 2015 due to the IT scandal.
The Post Office believed he had stolen tens of thousands of pounds due to the IT accounting errors.
He was forced to go through civil proceedings before the case against him was eventually dropped.
Mr Head told Sky News the compensation offered by the Post Office to victims is “not even close” to adequate.
“The amounts of money people have lost… their business, their home, they couldn’t get a job because they had a criminal conviction,” he said.
“Then you put it alongside the stigma and the reputational damage and the distress and those kinds of things.
“You can’t really put a value on it, but the sums I’ve seen being awarded in those schemes do not come in line with what I would call actual legal principle.”
Mr Head said he considers himself lucky compared to those who ended up being criminally prosecuted and jailed.
“You still suffered at the hands of it, but you could never ever put yourselves in the shoes of the people who have been to prison, the people who have taken their own lives and the destruction that’s had on their families,” he said.
“People talk about compensation… and that is an important part of it so people can rebuild their lives, but also they need to see accountability so that they can put this to bed once and for all and move forward.”
Mr Head said he believes there were people at the Post Office who “knew what was going on” and “could have put a stop to it”.
Talking about the Met Police’s investigation, he said: “I think it’s been a long time coming, really.
“We’ve seen a lot of evidence ourselves over the years. I think a few MPs have pointed it out.
“For it to be made official… people are hopeful that somebody somewhere will be held accountable for what’s gone on.”
In a workshop in the far corner of the Styal prison estate, glass, plastic and metal are being smashed to the beat of pumping music.
Women at workstations are dismantling electronics with the energy of gym enthusiasts.
TVs and laptops, discarded at local recycling centres across England, have ended up here, on the edge of Wilmslow, Cheshire.
But amid the whiz of drills, the crunch of screens being separated from their plastic casings and the clatter of electronic boards ripped out and chucked in big bins, something else is being recycled – women’s lives.
“You get a lot of frustration out, because obviously a lot of girls have got a lot of anger, you know,” says Joanne*, who is serving time for drug offences.
She has joined this activity not for the £10 per 70 TVs she breaks apart, but because the programme – called Recycling Lives – could give her the skills and the support to keep her out of jail in the future.
Only 12% of women are employed six months after leaving prison, compared to 25% of men. In the general population employment levels between men and women are 78% to 72%.
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Ex-prisoners with a job are far less likely to re-offend. So, women prisoners are at a disadvantage. Often a man is connected to the crime they committed.
“For 90% of the women in prison, there’s always a male involved in why they’ve committed crime, it is the case with me as well,” says Joanne, who tells me she was pressured into dealing drugs by her partner.
Official Ministry of Justice statistics say that at least 60% of women in prison are victims of domestic violence and most will have experienced some form of abuse as a child.
Many, too, are mothers and they feel the guilt of separation every day. Joanne says of her son: “It’s my sister picking him up from school, not me.
“It’s my sister there on Christmas day, not me. Birthdays, all the special occasions. It’s heart-breaking.
“People think prison is easy. You are ripped away from your family and your children. It’s not easy.”
As if in illustration, the glass cracks on an iPad, as she peels it away with her screwdriver.
Official figures say there are around 3,500 women in prison and it is estimated that about half are mothers.
‘I’m trying to give them a future’
The workshop manager Yvonne Grime knows this all too well. A former serial offender herself, she’s the first former inmate at Styal to now hold a set of keys to the prison.
“The biggest thing for me [as a prisoner] was leaving my children,” she says, “and I still carry that guilt round, but I have come through it.”
Part of her redemption is to help the women in her workshop. The Recycling Lives programme transformed her life, and she wants to give back.
She says: “I’m trying to give them a future. I’m trying to give you some hope that they can that they can change.
“Get the children back, find a job, find a home. There is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Her work is part manager and part mentor. “When I first started, I thought I’m just going to come in and run this workshop,” she said.
“I didn’t realise I had to be their mum, their dad, their brother, their sister, the doctor, the nurse, the everything that comes with it.
“If I had a salary for every one of those professions, I’d be absolutely minted.”
Styal isn’t what you expect a prison to look like.
Inside the high fences and barbed wire are sixteen austere red-brick Victorian houses.
Once an orphanage, they’re now the prison’s accommodation blocks.
Ted the prison cat, wanders from block to block, and has already served several of his nine lives in the compound.
Along with recycling TV sets, women can learn to guide and drive forklift trucks.
They are quick with their tools, spinning through one appliance after another with remarkable and methodical destructive pace.
But the real advantage of the programme is that it continues on the outside. Only 6% of people who go through Recycling Lives go on to commit further crime. The general reoffending rate is 25%.
In a warehouse in Preston, former inmates are involved in recycling food from supermarkets and farms, then sent to foodbanks.
Here we meet Naomi Winter, who – three years since being released from jail – is now a manager at the food distribution depot.
The hardest thing about prison for her too was being separated from a child.
“I was put in prison when my baby is only three months old,” she said.
“So, it was like losing an arm, like losing a piece of my DNA.
“I still woke up for night feeds in the night and stuff like that.”
She says there wasn’t the mental health provision inside of prison to help her deal with post-natal depression, and she spent way too much time alone with her thoughts.
She was in and out of prison for drug offences and violence eight times by the age of 30 and first jailed aged 15, for breaching an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO).
She feels even short prison sentences can ruin lives, and says: “You take women who’s robbed a block of cheese to feed the child.
“They put them in prison for 28 days. They take the home, take the kids, they lose the family, and they get out with nothing. You just create a criminal right there.
“You’ve just created a woman who’s got nothing to lose. You’re also releasing them with a sleeping bag in a tent and telling them to go and sleep in the woods.”
Alternatives to custody
The government recognises that prison isn’t working for many of the women who end up there.
It’s why, with women being mostly non-violent offenders and serving short sentences, the government is setting up a Women’s Justice Board to look at reducing the number who go into prison with alternatives such as community sentences and intervention projects tackling the root causes of re-offending.
The Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told Sky News: “For many women, prison isn’t working. Most women in prisons are victims themselves. Over half are mothers, with a prison sentence separating parent and child.
“That’s why I am establishing a new Women’s Justice Board, tasked with reducing the number of women in prison by exploring alternatives to custody for female offenders.”
Chief Executive of Recycling Lives, Alasdair Jackson says: “There are certain things we all need as human beings: One is a place to live, one is a job to be able to pay for that place to live and then a support network.
“But there are a lot more factors that women have to contend with; there’s children, there is maybe domestic abuse, there’s everything that goes on around that, but when you give people a chance, when you give people the skills that they need, it is life-changing.
“And when you change a woman’s life, you are often changing the family’s life and the children’s life.”
Prison is supposed to be part punishment, part repair job. But there are limited programmes like Recycling Lives, and for many women entering jail currently, the only recycling is back into criminality.
The world’s oldest man has died at the age of 112, the Guinness World Records has announced.
John Tinniswood was born in Liverpool on 26 August 1912, the year the Titanic sank. He was a lifelong Liverpool FC fan, born just 20 years after the club was founded.
He died on Monday at a care home in Southport, Guinness World Records said.
In a statement, his family said: “His last day was surrounded by music and love.
“John always liked to say thank you. So on his behalf, thanks to all those who cared for him over the years, including his carers at the Hollies Care Home, his GPs, district nurses, occupational therapist and other NHS staff.”
In April 2024, aged 111, he became the world’s oldest living man, following the death of 114-year-old Juan Vicente Perez from Venezuela.
Mr Tinniswood’s key advice for staying healthy was to practice moderation. “If you drink too much or you eat too much or you walk too much; if you do too much of anything, you’re going to suffer eventually.”
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But when asked the secret to his longevity after turning 112 in August, Mr Tinniswood put it all down to “just luck”.
“I can’t think of any special secrets I have,” he said. “I was quite active as a youngster, I did a lot of walking.
“Whether that had something to do with it, I don’t know. But to me, I’m no different [to anyone]. No different at all.
“I just take it in my stride like anything else, why I’ve lived that long I have no idea at all.”
Apart from a portion of battered fish and chips every Friday, Mr Tinniswood did not follow any particular diet, and said earlier this year he felt “no different” turning 112.
“I don’t feel that age, I don’t get excited over it. That’s probably why I’ve reached it.
“I just take it in my stride like anything else, why I’ve lived that long I have no idea at all.”
He lived through both world wars and was a Second World War veteran – having worked in an administrative role for the Army Pay Corps.
In addition to accounts and auditing, his work involved logistical tasks such as locating stranded soldiers and organising food supplies. He went on to work as an accountant for Shell and BP before retiring in 1972.
He met his wife, Blodwen, at a dance in Liverpool. They were together for 44 years before Blodwen died in 1986.
Mr Tinniswood is survived by his daughter Susan, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and lived to be the fourth-oldest British man in recorded history.
His family added: “John had many fine qualities. He was intelligent, decisive, brave, calm in any crisis, talented at maths and a great conversationalist.
“John moved to the Hollies rest home just before his 100th birthday and his kindness and enthusiasm for life were an inspiration to the care home staff and his fellow residents.”
The oldest ever man was Jiroemon Kimura from Japan, who lived to the age of 116 years 54 days and died in 2013.
The world’s oldest living woman, and oldest living person, is Japan’s 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka.
Two teenage boys have been arrested after the suspected stabbing of a 12-year-old girl.
South Wales Police were called to Barry Island in the Vale of Glamorgan at around 5pm on Sunday to a report of an assault near the Harbour Road car park in the seaside resort.
The girl, whose condition is described as not life-threatening, was taken to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff with serious injuries.
Police say they have arrested two local boys, aged 13 and 15, on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm and they both remain in custody.
The younger of the two has also been arrested on suspicion of possession of a bladed article.
Detective Inspector Phil Marchant from South Wales Police said the incident and “the ages of those involved” would “cause worry within the community”.
He said the two suspects are “known to the victim” and were arrested within an hour.
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“At this stage we are not looking for anyone else in connection with the assault,” he added.