A sub-postmaster depicted in Mr Bates vs The Post Office said she won’t give up fighting ‘until this is done and finished’.
Pam Stubbs is one of more than 700 branch managers wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting by the Post Office for errors in its Horizon computer system.
Her part in the story formed part of the ITV drama that threw a spotlight on the Post Office, and the Fujitsu IT company that made Horizon.
But despite the intense pressure bosses have come under, Mrs Stubbs accused them of still trying to dodge responsibility.
She said: “There is no acceptance from anybody at the Post Office that they have done anything wrong. At least Fujitsu had the grace to accept they have done something wrong and that they accept responsibility.”
Mrs Stubbs said there is still a fight to get ‘proper redress’ for all of the sub-postmasters who were left ruined by false accusations – often being forced out of their jobs or made to repay money they didn’t owe.
She was left without an income when she was suspended by the Post Office in 2010. For a while she was left trying to eke out an income by selling milk and newspapers in the corner of the Barkham Post Office she had built, before the Post Office took that too.
Mrs Stubbs says that other sub-postmasters suffered even more – as she never gave in to Post Office demands to pay back thousands of pounds she knew she hadn’t taken.
She said: “Yes, my story is important because I was stroppy, and refused to bow down. But at the same time, I wasn’t ruined. They didn’t take everything away from me. I was able to carry on living.
“They didn’t take the house away from me, which they did from other people.”
That’s why Mrs Stubbs and others are fighting for more than compensation, but for ‘proper redress’ – to have their lives restored to how they might have been had they never been accused.
She has been sceptical that the Post Office would ever pay up – with money ultimately having to come from the government, which owns the company. But she is more hopeful now that Fujitsu has said it is willing to contribute cash.
She said: “The Post Office were just as much thieves as they try and portray us.
“They have to make redress and stop calling it compensation – it’s not compensation. It’s giving us back what was taking from us – give us back what you took.
“Sometimes I think I’m tired and I don’t want to do this any more. But I won’t give up until this is done and finished.”
