Ex-postmistress Jo Hamilton has delivered an emotional analysis of how the Post Office scandal has affected her mentally.
Speaking in front of a Committee to discuss the Government’s plan to roll out compensation, Hamilton detailed being left “so angry” after discovering she had not “made a hash” of the accounts, despite initially believing she had done so.
Hamilton appeared before the committee alongside Alan Bates, the campaigning former sub postmaster.
Their stories has been serialised in ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which provoked a public outcry calling for justice.
Jo Hamilton spoke at a Committee
GB NEWS
The wrongfully-convicted former subpostmistress told the Committee that she was gaslit into believing she had done wrong.
“They convinced me it was all my fault”, she said.
The Horizon IT scandal led to the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of sub-postmastersPOST OFFICE“It was before the days of social media, so I really felt alone.
“I thought I must have pressed something wrong and made a hash of it. When I went to court and made the national papers and people rang me up and I realised it wasn’t just me, it just makes you so angry.
“They literally gaslit me for about three years. They turned me pretty much into a basket case.
“That lit a fire. Thank goodness we had the publicity. It’s taken this long and this much money to get to where we are now.
“I know a lot of the group and a lot of them are literally falling apart waiting for the end of this so they can put it behind them.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week announced that the wrongly prosecuted in England and Wales could have their names cleared by the end of the year under fast-tracked legislation after growing pressure to take more serious action.
Those whose convictions are quashed are eligible for a £600,000 compensation payment, while Mr Sunak offered £75,000 to subpostmasters involved in group legal action against the Post Office.
The Prime Minister has faced calls to go further and bar Fujitsu from securing Government contracts and pursue the firm for compensation payments.
The Horizon software started to be rolled out in Post Office branches across the UK in 1999 and over the subsequent years a series of subpostmasters were prosecuted over missing funds.
In 2019 the High Court ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.
