Post Office victim Jo Hamilton: My message to Starmer? Do the right thing!

Former sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton is thinking of sending a copy of her memoir about the Post Office Horizon scandal to Sir Keir Starmer, signed ‘Do the right thing!’ she chuckles, speaking from her home in South Warnborough, Hampshire.

She is hoping her new book, Why Are You Here, Mrs Hamilton?, will keep the scandal, caused by Horizon’s faulty accounting system – in which more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 for offences including theft, fraud and false accounting – in the spotlight, at least until all of the victims have received due compensation.

“I’m hoping that maybe people might get angry all over again,” she says.

Today, behind the jovial persona of the former sub-postmistress – portrayed by Monica Dolan in the award-winning ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, who is narrating the audiobook – Hamilton has gone from being a kindly, authority-respecting soul who ran the village shop and cafe (until the Post Office wrongfully accused her of theft and false accounting), to a determined individual still seeking justice for all the others.

“What I’m really outraged about is the fact that they haven’t paid everybody,” she says.

Hamilton, 68, received a settlement which enabled her to pay off all her debts and live fairly comfortably, but she still works as a cleaner in the village in-between her tireless campaigning.

“I mean, they’ve offered Alan [Sir Alan Bates, founder of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), played by Toby Jones in the TV drama] 50% of his original claim and he can’t possibly accept anything less than pretty much the whole thing, otherwise they’ll just use that as a stick to bash the rest with.”

The Government announced in June that more than £1billion has been paid out to to over 7,300 postmasters affected by the Horizon IT Scandal. But Hamilton believes the Department for Business and Trade is dragging its heels to pay the remaining victims compensation.

“We know there’s no money, but they’re quite happy to spend millions of pounds on lawyers brought in by the DBT to literally fight us over every penny.

“That’s the bit I’m just outraged about, honestly. If Mr Starmer was sat in front of me now, I wouldn’t be afraid to tell him, it’s just wicked. We’ve been fighting for 25 years and it’s not resolved. All they’ve got to do is pay people and we’ll all go away and be quiet.”

As depicted in the TV drama, the shortfalls in her own case started appearing inexplicably in 2003, and in 2006 the Post Office accused her of theft, but said it would drop the theft charge against her if she paid back the £36,000 they wrongfully claimed she had stolen. It was allowed to bring its own private prosecutions without intervention.

The stress she suffered was immense, from being led to believe she was the only one and that no-one else had a problem with the Horizon IT system (which turned out to be faulty), to losing the cafe, getting the sack, facing massive debt, the threat of losing her home and the possibility of prison.

In 2008 she accepted a plea bargain and, in a courtroom packed with village supporters, pleaded guilty to false accounting to escape a prison sentence, even though she knew she had done nothing wrong. Her conviction was quashed at the Royal Courts Of Justice in 2021.

More than 230 sub-postmasters were sent to prison and 2,800 were ordered to pay back money to escape prosecution, in the scandal which has been described as the UK’s largest ever miscarriage of justice.

The Horizon Inquiry is to publish the first volume of its final report (focusing on compensation and human impact) on July 8 this year, but today, Hamilton isn’t banking on the remaining victims being paid out any time soon.

“I honestly thought when they [Labour] got in, a new administration would want to come in and get brownie points, because really that’s what it’s all about. I thought they’d want to look like the good guys and sort it all out.

“I don’t think I could be more disappointed in the way they behaved. I’ve no idea what they’ll do, I just wish they’d get on with it.

“I’ve had assurance from Darren Jones [chief secretary to the Treasury] personally in an email to say the money has been set aside to pay them, and yet it’s still not been paid.”

She and others who have settled feel survivors’ guilt, she reveals, because the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), a campaign group formed by Bates and supported by many victims, was instrumental in getting convictions quashed and compensation for many. Some – but not all – convictions have been overturned through landmark legislation, The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024, for those who met eligible criteria.

“I just want everyone to feel like I feel… when they get their money I will feel that’s job done, because without them I wouldn’t be sitting here like this thinking, well that’s all right, I’ve paid off my mortgage and I’ve got a little bit of money in the bank.

“It took 550 of us to get the funding to go to court. I do feel guilty but I can’t do anything about it because I didn’t get enough [money] to throw at everybody and say, there you go.”

Her husband David, who himself has had his own challenges of prostate cancer, has supported her throughout.

“He just lets me get on with it, really. But he’s enjoyed some of the fame, the BAFTA and the NTA awards [where she made a speech]. The whole thing is a little bit bonkers.”

She kept her home thanks to a villager who paid for her remortgage, but misses running the shop which formed the hub of the community.

“I do sometimes think what would have been. It’s a cafe now, open eight till one. I used to do seven till seven and it used to be a bit of a drop-in centre. We’d get the kids off the bus if Mum was late, go out and help old ladies, taking the fish and chips down the road on a Friday night. We did a sandwich run to all the farms locally.”

What would she say to Sir Keir Starmer, should she meet him?

“I’ve no doubt he’d come back and say, ‘We’ve got no money’. I would say, ‘Actually, I know that the money’s there to be paid out, so stop paying it to lawyers, just pay everybody, especially Alan’.

“Imagine if it happened to them!” she continues. “They can’t live without expenses! I mean, we don’t get the luxury of that. We just get our money back with interest and they calculate a figure.”

She fears that some claimants will die before they are paid out.

“Well, 100 of us from the group are dead out of the 555. There are people in the group that are still working umpteen jobs, with cancer, receiving treatment, and they are still not being paid.”

Hamilton, who was recently made an OBE for services to justice, admits she finds sleep difficult.

“I don’t dream but I find it hard to go to sleep and to get much more than about three hours because I plot. I feel like a madwoman. I’m like, ‘How can we get them now?’ I fire off emails and just get the usual rubbish back.

“We put these people in power and why they think we should just be patted on the head and given platitudes, I do not know. I’m so disappointed in this administration. You can’t get near them. It’s like shouting into the wind.”

Her memoir, she hopes, will encourage others to fight injustices.

“I hope my book inspires people not to give up and to keep going, because wrong is wrong.”

Why Are You Here, Mrs Hamilton? The Post Office Scandal And My Extraordinary Fight For Justice by Jo Hamilton is published by Blink, price £20. Available now