Six more former Subpostmasters had long-standing convictions relating to the Post Office Horizon scandal quashed in court this morning – as former chief executive Paula Vennells began giving her long-awaited evidence at the Public Inquiry.
Having lived for two decades wrongfully labelled a convicted criminal, former Merseyside sub-postmistress Sushma Blaggan headed straight from the Royal Courts of Justice to the Inquiry with her husband Narinder and their legal team from Hudgell Solicitors. Her husband said:
For Sushma to have appeared in court two decades after being wrongfully prosecuted, and for an Inquiry only to be hearing from Ms Vennells as to what went wrong on the very same day, just shows how badly Subpostmasters have been let down.
I hope Ms Vennells was made aware that we were attending the Inquiry today, and that we came straight from court.
Sushma was destroyed by what happened to her. When she was first suspended she tried to commit suicide, and then she did so again after she had been convicted. She had to do community service, but other than that, she wouldn’t go out and wouldn’t talk to anyone as she felt so ashamed.
It destroyed our lives. This should have been prevented, and certainly justice should have been done for Subpostmasters much quicker than this.
We should have had answers and the full truth long ago, so we wanted to attend the Inquiry today to see if Ms Vennells would give us that. The next few days will tell, and if I could speak to her directly, I’d just say ‘can you please tell us the truth? Enough is enough. We all deserve and need answers now.
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Alleged branch shortfalls led to suspension
Mrs Blaggan, now 62, ran Dale Acre Post Office in Litherland, Merseyside, with her husband running the connected retail shop,
However, like hundreds of others, they began to experience problems following the installation of the Horizon accounting system.
In 2004, after an audit showed an unexplained shortfall of £8,000, Mrs Blaggan was suspended and the couple were forced to hand over their savings. She was convicted of theft and ordered to carry out 240 hours of community service at a charity shop.
A decade later, Mr Blaggan, who at one stage had three Post Offices, was also suspended from running the Monument Place Post Office in Liverpool, again over a shortfall in accounts.
He was given six months to sell his branch, but with no income coming in to pay off the £110,000 loan he’d taken out to buy it, he had to remortgage his home. Mr Blaggan, 58, said:
We’ve suffered so much,
We suffered racist abuse as people alleged we were taking money from one Post Office to buy and run others, and we had to take our daughter out of primary school as she was being bullied.
We then had to cancel our pension policies and borrow from our family to get by. I’ve had three jobs to try and make ends meet, working as a driving instructor and an HGV driver as well as running shops. I’ve just had to keep on telling Sushma that we’d somehow move on from this and rebuild our lives.
Today feels like a new start. We felt it was important to come to court to hear the conviction being quashed, and then to attend the Inquiry, as it is vindication to all that we have never done anything wrong.
It has taken a huge toll on us though. Sushma is now on medication for life and she still suffers night terrors.
Court appearances ‘hugely important’
Both Mr and Mrs Blaggan will now seek compensation from the Post Office and are being advised by Hudgell Solicitors.
Solicitor Neil Hudgell said:
Whilst there is so much focus rightly on the Public Inquiry today, these latest exonerations in court are equally important. It is a timely reminder of the huge harm done to the lives of innocent, hardworking members of the community, and why it is so important we get to the complete truth.
Depending upon the how quickly the Government is able to progress its pledge to exonerate all who were prosecuted using Horizon based evidence, and how that is eventually done, these may be some of the last people to go through the conviction appeals process and to have their day in court where their case is individually considered, and their names ultimately cleared.
Other former subpostmasters to have their names cleared today included Assad Alli, Marion Chapman, Thomas Mulhall, Kimberly Connors and Seema Rahman. It means 109 people have now had convictions related to the scandal overturned by the courts.
