Mr Bates vs The Post Office - the real story behind the drama with Patrick Spence

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now, I've got a bonus episode for you, and I really know you're going to love this one. About a year ago, I'm pretty certain that if you are based in the UK, you'd have been gripped by a new drama that came out from ITV called Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Everybody was talking about it on social media. Tens of millions of people were watching. It gripped the nation. But more than that, it actually created change in society. In fact, it went on to change the law and it brought about enormous justice for hundreds of people that were robbed by the post office.

0:40Not only that, but it was a really stark lesson in how not to manage a brand, if you're thinking about this from the post office perspective. So I've managed to track down the producer himself, Patrick Spence, and I've invited him on to Uncensored CMO to tell some of the stories from behind the scenes about the making of probably Britain's most famous and effective drama. This is a really, really emotional conversation. And I know you're going to find it fascinating. So over to Patrick. Patrick, welcome to the show. Thank you. Now, in the UK, of course, everyone, I say everyone, but I mean, you probably can't walk down the street with somebody and talk to somebody without them knowing about Mr Bates.

1:18It was such an enormous kind of cultural moment this time last year. In fact, I think it's almost a year, isn't it? Yeah. But for people that maybe are listening abroad that haven't heard about the story, and there are hopefully not too many of them yet, just give us a sense of what the story was and maybe how you came across the story in the first place. Mr Bates versus the Post Office is the story of what is now accepted as the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. It is the story of the abhorrent behaviour by the post office in the way that they criminalised hundreds of their own staff, going after them and prosecuting them and sending hundreds of them to prison, bankrupting all of them and ruining their lives, driving some to suicide, over accusations of theft and false accounting, based only on the evidence of a computer system that it turns out they, the post office, knew was faulty.

2:15The story tells of the remarkable, brave, stubborn fight back led by a wonderful man called Alan Bates, the Mr Bates of the title, who gathered together 550 of those 800 or 900 sub-postmasters in a group action and took the post office to court and won. and then led to the overturning of their convictions. So it's an amazing story. Why did we tell it? Because the story begins in 2000. It lasts until 2020. I mean, frankly, it's still going on now. But when a brilliant factual producer called Natasha Bondi came into my office brandishing a pitch document for this story, saying this story's been out there for 10 years and no one's listening, and I think this should be a drama.

3:09I read her pitch document and my assumption as I read it was, you're making this up, right? This can't be real. I mean, I was aware, as I had shamefully turned the pages of the newspaper when I read Post Office or Horizon in the headline, I just thought, oh, that's not for me. I'm turning over. I was aware that something had been going on, but I didn't realise how bad it was. So after I read the pitch document and I said, you've presumably massively exaggerated this, She said, I've just taken it all from articles. I went back online and I read about it and I felt such shame. And I felt such horror that this had happened on our watch in our country.

3:45And then I realised that the Times and Private Eye and Computer Weekly, who are the real heroes of this story, have been writing about it for years. And none of us, myself included, had paid any attention at all. And so then two things happened. One, that shame is what drives you, I think, as a producer, is you think these people are unheard and they've been appallingly treated and we need to do something about it and maybe we can. And in this particular instance, it was so clear, it was the perfect story for drama to bring it to life. Because what the documentaries couldn't do and what the newspaper articles couldn't do was take you inside the homes and the hearts of those people to live bring that suffering to life.

4:30And that's what drama does. It takes you inside people's homes and hearts and viscerally makes you feel what they're feeling. That's what fiction is. And a good factual drama can do the same thing. So it felt to us like we had a purpose. We could do this. We could join the battle and pick up on the amazing work. We were definitely hanging on to the coattails of all of those journalists who'd made this, who'd kind of brought this story to the fore. And we just felt, you know what, this is something we can do. We can help. we can carry the baton for a bit and maybe we can just get a few more people to listen and hear we obviously didn't imagine that it would have this effect but you dream you have any idea at the time of the impact it would have no none at all yeah i mean in all of our jobs we all dream of that moment where something amazing happens don't we and i've been involved in big hit shows before but nothing like this and and nothing that so hits the target emotionally you know we knew We knew we'd made something really good.

5:27We were very, very proud of it. We were making it in the lead up to Christmas. We were still in the edit when Polly Hill, who is, I think, one of the other huge heroes of this story, she's the commissioner at ITV. Polly was the only person who said right from day one, I think this is exactly what our ITV audience wants. We chose ITV. It was our first place that we took it to because they were the biggest channel and they offered us the biggest audience. and they have an incredible track record for factual drama. So it all made sense. But if you'd asked me, what do I think the maximum audience size we could get?

6:04I would have said 5 million, maybe, 6. I would have snapped your hand off for that. Polly said, no, no, this is what our audience wants. I think this could be a hit. It's not why she commissioned it. She wouldn't have minded it if only got three because her purpose was the same as us, which is we have to give voice to these people. We have to allow them to feel heard because for 20 years no one's been listening. And we've got to give them that chance. So in the edit, we were watching it going, this feels really good. But when Polly watched it in November, I think, she said we were planning to put the show on air in March, maybe even May, to protect it because it's not an obvious hit.

6:46And she immediately said this has to go in the January slot. And the January slot on ITV is their big slot of the year. it's where the first four nights of the year they put their show it's not necessarily it's the show that they want to shine a light on and it's a it's an event but it's also the show that goes up against the stiffest opposition and the idea the thinking behind mr bates was don't put it up against the bbc's big guns because it'll get slaughtered and polly said i don't think we should care i think it's so important that we give this show every chance and we should show how proud we are of it and how important we think it is i think we should put it out in january and at that moment i think as program makers we felt the flutter of pride you feel when you get that kind of acknowledgement but also we felt terror because or i did anyway i can't speak for anyone else because i thought well in that case that means we'll be lucky to get two million and it might be one of those many shows you make that you're so proud of and it slips between the cracks and what did i know quite the opposite i think average attend average viewing is like something like 13 million i think no it ended it's now at 15 is now at 15 so it is the most watched new show on new drama on television for 25 years i think yeah across all channels so yeah who'd have known that's amazing who'd have known that the country wanted a show about sub postmasters and computer systems but actually i think what the country felt what you know we were so lucky that we that we hit the moment in time when that when this country the united kingdom woke up angry because of everything that was going on around them.

8:17Everything from Boris Johnson to how we'd gone through COVID to the way that people who run our institutions and our governments appeared to be bullies, liars and cheats. And suddenly here was another piece of evidence for it and everything coalesced around that. And so I think we struck, you know, it was bigger even than the story of the post office, the rage that we engendered. People were angry and they wanted something to fight over. I mean, you're absolutely right. because you can talk about the statistics and the numbers and the fact it's a computer system, it's post office, but it's real people and real lives.

8:50And that's the thing that gets you, isn't it? When you see very innocent people going to jail for something that they didn't do. And then the scale of it is just unbelievable. I mean, one thing I want to ask you is, you know, you usually watch a drama and it kind of opens with, this is based on a true story and there's a bit of creative license involved, isn't there? How true was it? So I think it's fair to say that if you're on terrestrial television, I'm not talking about the streamers. If you're on terrestrial television and it says this is based on a true story, it means that the hurdles that must be jumped are significant.

9:22Inspired by a true story means you've used the names of the characters. It may even be set in the same city, but frankly, you've made most of it up. And if it's a Hollywood movie or some other streamer material, they don't have to honour the compliance process that you have to on terrestrial television. So just to earn based on a true story is a very big deal. And every scene, even if it's fictional, has to be representative of the true story. It's an incredibly thorough process and quite right. So anything on the BBC or ITV or Channel 4 or whatever. We were so determined to not let the post office stop us from transmitting that we just worked that little bit harder to only use stuff that we knew we could stand up from multiple sources.

10:12So there was lots of stuff that we'd heard went on within the post office that we only had one or sometimes even two sources for, which we knew the post office would contest, even though we knew it was true and we couldn't use it. But it was OK because everything we did have that we knew couldn't be contested, because mostly it was written down by them in emails that we'd gotten our hands on, that was enough. So we didn't have to invent anything. So by the time we'd finished this process, the compliance team at ITV said, do you know what this show is so accurate you get to say this is a true story which is like the gold standard it was fantastic and that's testament to the work that gwyn hughes the writer and two brilliant script um producers and one of them's an exec producer now joe williams and emmy they they did so much research and made so sure that what what gwyn was being given was factually accurate it is effectively a documentary what you're watching everything that you see happened and here's the final piece of evidence of that is that there isn't a word that Paula Van Nels speaks on camera that she didn't write as an email and if you ever wondered what a good actress Leah Williams was Leah had to speak lines of dialogue that Paula Van Nels herself had written in emails and she had to make it sound natural Wow, that's astonishing isn't it?

11:34So yes, Mr Bates versus the post office is it, to all intents and purposes, a documentary brought back to life rather than an interpretation or an imagining of what must have happened. Yeah. And one of the stunning things as you watch it is it carries on for many, many years. Yeah. And the gap between, I mean, so do you think she and the team were aware of what was going on and were accidentally covering it up? Or do you think it, I mean, you know, how aware do you think they were? do you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to say I have to be very careful yeah to not land us both in prison but on the other hand I think what the inquiry will bring to light and what they will decide will be surely and this is a question that there was a massive cover-up within the post office I can't say whether that's the case or not but my instinct is that there was a lot that was known that was not acted on.

12:34What is definitely factually accurate is that they were aware that there were issues with the computer system and they carried on prosecuting nonetheless. What is also factually accurate is that they were advised to stop prosecuting and they ignored it. I would love to know what happened when presumably someone walked into Paula Van Nels's office and said, just in case anyone hadn't told you this, Paula, I do need to tell you that we have arrested and prosecuted using our own peculiar powers that bypassed the Crown Prosecution Service, hundreds of your own teams for falsefully taking control of or stealing or defrauding the post office out of tens of thousands of pounds each, and based only on the evidence of our computer, which, by the way, we knew was faulty.

13:18But anyway, just to let you know that's happened. And Paula or whoever else didn't say, I'm sorry, what? are you sure this is the right thing to be doing should we not ask more questions before we prosecute these people and what I want to know is what would have happened if Paula Van Nels had met Joe Hamilton for instance could have been any of them by the way Seema Misra or whatever because I think when you meet these people that you know within seconds you go well you're not a criminal you're honest as the day is long how could anyone have thought as they sat and accused them of stealing tens of thousands of pounds based on no evidence, that they were criminally minded.

13:58I mean, you've seen Jo in public, haven't you? Yeah, I mean... She's obviously... One of the nicest, most honest and humble and down-to-earth people you could ever wish to meet. And all they said was, where's the money, Jo? Where's the money? But this is a bit that I... This is a bit of watch and drive. I really struggle to get my head around this. How does an organisation as trusted as it was, no longer, but as trusted as the post office, owned by the government, you know, that we all kind of put our faith in. How does something like that go? And how does so many people, you know, because you would look at it and you'd go, which other organisations are prosecuting hundreds of their own staff and sending them to jail and all that kind of thing?

14:37It must have, I don't understand how, do you have any ideas as to why it could get so big without anybody, you know, wanting to? Nick Wallace has a very, Nick Wallace, who did the podcast, which came out as we were working on this. and he joined our team as a consultant. He was amazing. Nick Wallace's perspective is this. If you think about the post office, they were the nation's first police force. Way before the police existed and were invented, there was the post office who guarded our national highways, who were there to stop highway robbers. They were there to guard our property as it was taken from town to town.

15:15And they therefore had powers of arrest and prosecution for people who stole. and baked into the DNA of the post office is the belief that they are effectively a police force and that there are a lot of thieves out there. And Nick's theory, and I think the inquiry has borne this out to be true when you listen to the evidence that has been brought to bear by the studying of their emails, the senior management at the post office, the way they spoke about their own staff, they thought they were lying, scheming scum. And they talked about them in that way and they thought they were thieves. And so when this faulty computer system, it was the first computer system in the post office's history, because up until then it was all cash until 2000, when it was first introduced, the perfect storm that was created was that it confirmed their bias.

16:09It said these people are thieves on an industrial scale. And instead of going, really? It doesn't feel like you'd become a sub-postmaster to make a lot of money illegally. It feels like you'd become a sub-postmaster to serve your community, to be at the heart of a community and to be doing good. But what the computer was saying, no, no, no, they're industrial level thieves. And the post office senior management seemed to say, got them. Finally, we've got the evidence we've been looking for. that proves our bias. And they acted on that basis. And the way they spoke to them from day one was as if they were horrible themes.

16:48And, you know, you've seen the way they spoke to Joe Hamilton. That, again, was a factual account of those meetings that is not in dispute. A man whose name we had to change in the drama because he was the only investigator we featured, nevertheless spoke to Joe that way. Where's the money, Joe? Where's the money? and so their their mindset was clearly these lying stealing people need to be caught so i think that helps explain yeah the the way in which they sprung into action to send as many of them to prison as possible yeah the other thing people watching probably were curious about is that that some people confessed didn't they i think including joe or pleading guilty what yeah there's a big difference between confessing and pleading guilty so let me i mean it's in the drama but but But, you know, Joe was told, we have evidence that you've stolen all this money.

17:44If you say not guilty, and you are prosecuted for theft, you could go to prison for 10 to 15 years. If you plead guilty to false accounting, you may not even go to jail. And if you do, it'll be for only two years or whatever. I mean, forgive me, I don't know the exact number. What choice do you have? when you firstly feel cornered and bullied and no one believes you and no one's listening. And secondly, you think, well, I'd better trust the legal system. And thirdly, am I really willing to go to prison for 15, 10, 15 years? So a lot of these people had no choice. They pled to false accounting because their solicitors were saying, if I were you, and it was probably good advice, I would take the deal.

18:31So they pled guilty to false accounting, allowing the post office to go, you see, they're even admitting it. Confirmation bias again then, it's just confirming what they thought. Which is why when the story first started being written about, I think, and raised in Parliament, the post office was able to say, but most of them have admitted it. They have confessed, and actually they hadn't confessed to anything, they just tried to avoid jail. Yeah. And remember, it wasn't just jail, they'd been bankrupted already. because if you get a franchise to run a post office, you have to invest your life saving or you have to give an amount of money, which is effectively for most people their life savings, to buy into the post office.

19:07If they find you guilty of criminal activity, you lose the post office and your savings as well as going to prison. So they were bankrupted as well. It's that bad. And one of them, Seymour, I believe, was actually pregnant as well, wasn't she? In jail as well. Yeah. It makes you see, doesn't it? It does. I mean, you know, probably anger. I mean, I felt anger even re-watching it this morning as I re-watched it, preparing for this, and felt anger at the time. It just, the injustice of it is just so, yeah. So how did, I mean, it's incredible what you achieved through doing this. How did the people whose lives have been turned upside down, how have they reacted and how has it, you know, changed their lives since the documentary?

19:51Well, our first brief was to allow them to feel heard. and I think they feel heard. And I think anecdotally, many of them, and they're all saying this in the press now, are feeling that not only do they feel heard, but the healing process can begin. Not because of what we did, by the way, but because of the way the nation responded. I think it's really important that we don't lay claim to changing the law or anything. We made a TV programme which the nation watched, and this is what makes me so proud to be British, is the nation watched and went, we need to do something about this. And they rose up as one.

20:24and they do, all of them, crowd around sub-postmasters wherever they are and say, we're so sorry. And, you know, it's very moving stuff. So I think they feel heard and I think the way that the country has responded has allowed them to feel like they can begin to move on. But they remain unpaid, a huge percentage of them. Convictions are still being overturned. No one in authority has been held to account in any way at all. Really? So none of the people implicated in this have seen justice? Now, in all fairness, that's because they're waiting for the results of the inquiry. And Alan has gone on record, Alan Bates has gone on record as saying, if people are not prosecuted, then I will take them to court myself.

21:08And he will turn around to the country and say, can I borrow four or five million quid? It'll take an hour. The country will flood money into him. He's the most trusted man in Britain right now, isn't he? And if he says, I need help, I think they'll help him. But I suppose what I would say is, in a way, it's been sensational because it has allowed them to no longer feel criminal and ashamed. But on the other hand, it's not over yet. As Alan keeps saying, not by a long shot. We need everyone to be fully paid. And they're only asking for money back that they had stolen from them by the post office.

21:47And for all of the convictions to be overturned, which is just a matter of time, I think. And also for someone to be held accountable. I mean, more than just one person. Whoever. Let's not point fingers yet, but let's let the inquiry do that. But for hopefully people to go to jail. Because that's how bad their behaviour was. It was, I think it was criminal. That's incredible, isn't it? And this was a year ago. Well, a year since the... So the drama transmitted in the first week of January last year. So year on, no one's received compensation. So take a guess if you don't know the answer. So let's just do Alan.

22:25This is the one that I'm kind of authorised to talk about publicly. Alan is as honest as the day is long, and his application for financial redress, it's not compensation, it's financial redress, it's just a return of the money that he'd lost, is as he insisted, quite rightly, that it be put together by an independent financial auditor. And it is as modest as you can imagine it would be. and the government's response to Alan, to Alan's own application, their first offer was one-sixth of the amount that he named. Yeah. And they've now gone up to one-third. But we shouldn't be in offer. I mean, this is cut and dry.

23:06This isn't kind of a case of like, oh, we'll do a deal, is it? This is money owed. Right to your local em. That is outrageous. But what they're, I mean, it seems, I have to say that, underlined, because otherwise I'll get in trouble. but it would appear that their tactics are to, for more and more postmasters to die before they are being paid. They are sort of trying to wait it out. And actually that's why we're here. That's why I'm here. And that's why Alan's out there talking and fighting. And Joe is out there talking and fighting. And Joe's speech at the National Television Awards was to say, I really don't want to, you know, bang on about this, but just so you know, we haven't been paid yet.

23:45That was a mic drop moment, by the way. It was a mic drop moment. That was just so something else. They still haven't been paid. Alan's on one, his offer is one third of his application, his modest application for redress. And this isn't even compensation, this is just repaying what... Now, in Alan's case, he didn't lose that much money because he wasn't accused of theft. He lost£1 ,000, but he gave up his post office rather than return£1 ,000, which he knew he hadn't lost. So that's, and then he worked for free for 20 years on behalf of all of the sub-postmasters, including himself, to battle against that.

24:17And if he hadn't done that, none of this would have happened. So his application is actually quite rare, but still most of the sub-postmasters are being offered a sixth to a third of... I mean, that in itself is just outrageous, isn't it? So that's why they're still fighting and that's why, you know... It doesn't necessarily make it right, but in a small... Am I right in saying that he's now sir? Yes. And Paula's been stripped of her OBE or whatever it was, CBE. Yeah, so some justice in there as well. And what's the recognition over, you mentioned the National Television Awards. I must have seen you a few times already this year, last year, I say, but there's been a few awards, hasn't there, followed?

24:58There have been a few, yeah. You know, it must have been quite a bit. I mean, the National Television Awards were the big one because we were allowed to take the Postmasters up on stage with us and that, you know, that just made it so special. Well, that in itself, actually, I thought was like TV gold in itself, just seeing the real people. And also with their actors as well. that was quite funny to see how close actually they looked to the and watching them afterwards having experienced the feeling of because they've read in the newspapers that everyone's angry and they've met anecdotally people in the street who've come up to them and said we're really angry on your behalf but in that instance they they watched 12 000 people stand up and cheer yeah Yeah.

25:39So, oh, what for them, that was enormous, I think, because that was just an obvious recognition that that's how angry everyone is. A standing ovation on that scale for those people was, I think, very powerful. That was one of the most moving things of last year. And then you've got to amplify the tens of millions who ever watched that from home as well. That was incredible. Yeah. Wow. So what happens next then? Well, let's hope the inquiry suggests that people be prosecuted. And let's hope that the police act on that. And let's hope some people go to jail. And let's hope that the civil service and the government come to their senses and pay as quickly as possible the full amount that they're being asked to pay.

26:22And let's hope that then the postmasters can move on with their lives. Have you seen any reaction from the post office, the post office management today or Fujitsu, who are obviously implicated, of course, in the scandal? Have they responded? Because you'd like to hope, wouldn't you, that they would learn the lesson and, you know, change. Well, there are two different levels of response, aren't they? One is a genuine human response and one is a PR-led response. Fujitsu, I've said this before, but my instinct is that the kind of corporate affairs team at Fujitsu are a lot cleverer than they were at the post office.

26:57so the the the post office is so chaotic and monstrous that they were sort of easy targets all we had to do was tell everyone what they did and there was no denying it fujitsu it was harder to lay a lay a punch on it was very hard to prove who knew what and who did what and and so we couldn't and actually if you watch the drama they're mentioned a few times but there are obviously no executives there and there's no sense of the interplay between the post office in Fujitsu. I don't know what happened. But I do know that they remained completely quiet during the process up until transmission. And that they had, I think I'm right in saying that they had recently and coincidentally written off a large amount of money, which they had set aside for compensation the year before and said, we don't need to pay it anymore.

27:44So we can take that off the books. Now, listen, I'm not a city financier, but that's my understanding of what had happened. You'd need to go and read about it on Google to make sure I got that accurate. But I'm fairly sure I have. The moment the drama aired, they were far faster than the post office to come out and say, oh, we're so sorry. And we're going to obviously we're going to pay our share of compensation. But the manner in which they did it, the tone of voice was so insincere and so clearly corporate led rather than a genuine human response to their abhorrent behavior. because they must have known stuff, that none of the sub-postmasters believed it and none of them accepted it.

28:21I would characterise the behaviour of the post office throughout the inquiry as being remarkably unrepentant and stabbing each other in the back trying to save themselves individually. I haven't seen anyone properly say sorry. I find that astonishing. They've all said sorry. Yeah. But you don't, you know, Paula's appearance at the inquiry, she cried, but those tears were not for them. They were for herself. It was so apparent that she lined up in front of... Her appearance at the inquiry was witnessed by a number of prominent sub-postmasters. They all lined up to watch it. And they were all tut-tutting all the way through.

29:00And every time she cried, it was like, really? You think that's going to work? Because she was crying during moments when she was talking about her own perspective. She wasn't crying because there was pain done to others. By the way, I have to be careful how much I am implying that she was implicated because that's for the inquiry. But she cried a few times, but it didn't feel genuine. And so I just haven't seen anyone actually take ownership of anything yet. I don't think any of us have. And I think that's one of the reasons they're still so angry. And I think it's one of the reasons why the financial redress hasn't been made.