“WE’VE JUST got to trust in the British justice system and everything will be alright.” So says a wretched Lee Castleton (whose character is played by Will Mellor) in “Mr Bates v The Post Office”, a new ITV drama about hundreds of British sub-postmasters who were wrongfully convicted in an accounting scandal between 1999 and 2015. British justice did not make everything all right for Mr Castleton. Far from it.

In 2004, when “Horizon”, a new accounting system operated by Fujitsu, a Japanese technology company, showed a loss of £25,859 ($47,397) at Mr Castleton’s branch in Bridlington, Yorkshire, the Post Office demanded Mr Castleton make up the shortfall. He refused; it later became clear that faulty software had generated errors which he was unable to correct. Mr Castleton took his case to court, where he represented himself. A judge ordered him to pay costs of £321,000, which bankrupted him.

His was one of several hundred cases between 1999 and 2015 in which sub-postmasters were wrongly accused. More than 700 were convicted of crimes including fraud and theft; hundreds more were chased for money in civil litigation. Many were made bankrupt. Four committed suicide. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent body that reviews suspected miscarriages of criminal justice, has described the scandal as “the most widespread miscarriage of justice” it has ever seen and “the biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history”.

The drama’s graphic but largely faithful portrayal of how hardworking Britons, many of them beloved figures in their communities, were falsely accused and then unable to clear their names, has caused public outrage. That, in turn, has triggered a panicked response from politicians and others.

On January 9th, a little over a week after the first episode of “Mr Bates” was broadcast, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, said he was actively considering the introduction of a law to quash 800-odd remaining unsafe convictions. On the same day, Paula Vennells, who had been chief executive of the Post Office for much of the period during which sub-postmasters were hounded, said she would return her CBE, an honour that had been awarded to her in 2019. A petition to strip her of it had gathered more than 1m signatures. Some campaigners have called for Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, who was postal minister between 2010 and 2012, to resign (he has been accused of having dismissed victims’ complaints).

In one respect the scale of the reaction is surprising. The scandal, in all its dreadful detail, has been known about for two decades, thanks largely to the eponymous Mr Bates (Alan, a former sub-postmaster from Wales, played by Toby Jones in the drama.) He first reported his concerns to Computer Weekly, a magazine, in 2004. In 2009 Computer Weekly published the first of many reports; Private Eye, a satirical news magazine, and the BBC have been among those to have covered the scandal assiduously.

State institutions have also responded, if not with alacrity. In 2020 the Metropolitan Police launched an investigation (no one has yet been arrested); that same year the government established a public inquiry, led by Sir Wyn Williams, a former high court justice. In December the House of Commons passed a new law designed to speed up compensation payments.

A TV drama has kicked the establishment into high gear, however, and not for the first time. In 1966, for example, “Cathy Come Home”, a film about a young couple’s descent into homelessness, prompted a parliamentary debate in Parliament; it is credited with changing attitudes to that problem. The sheer scale of the Post Office case, allied to the unpromising raw ingredients of misfiring accounting software, may have made it hard for people to grasp until now. By humanising the plight of Mr Castleton and others, “Mr Bates” has brought home the suffering of ordinary individuals.

The fact that justice has still not been done may also explain the scale of the reaction: only 93 victims have had their convictions overturned, and according to the CCRC, hundreds of sub-postmasters have still not come forward to appeal. Some peculiarly enraging aspects to this story add to the sense of anger. The use of private prosecutions, which need not involve the police or the Crown Prosecution Service, appears to have enabled the Post Office to bully sub-postmasters into admitting they were guilty when they were not. The Post Office still has managerial, though not legal, control of the appeals process.

The government is reviewing the rules around private prosecutions. But it increasingly appears as though a mass exoneration is the only way to salve public anger over the case. That is not as simple as it sounds. Legislation to quash the remaining convictions risks being seen to compromise the independence of the judiciary. Allowing a large group appeal may be a better way to expedite the process but that would still risk exonerating anyone who may have done something wrong.

The government may not care. Criminologists sometimes talk about “signal crimes”, specific incidents that change people’s beliefs about their security. The Post Office drama may now require a “signal verdict” to shore up confidence in the justice system that let Mr Castleton and other sub-postmasters down so badly. ■