A former Hogsthorpe sub-postmaster – who along with hundreds of others lost his livelihood, his home and the respect of his community when he was wrongly branded a criminal – says he will never give up fighting for justice. Tom Hedges gives his verdict on the ITV series Mr Bates v The Post Office.
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00:00 It's been described as one of the greatest ever miscarriages of justice
00:05 but it has taken a TV drama to grip the nation into demanding justice for the
00:11 hundreds of sub-postmasters caught up in a 20-year post office scandal. One of
00:18 them watching Mr Bates vs. the Post Office was former Hogsall
00:22 sub-postmaster Tom Hedges. Hello my name's Tom Hedges and I was the sub-postmaster
00:32 at Hogstorfe post office near Skegness from 1994 until I was prosecuted and
00:39 dismissed in 2010 as a result of the Horizon scandal that's been all over the
00:46 TV for the last week. We've all been gripped with that program and what
00:55 happened to all the postmasters. How well do you think it's reflected what you
01:02 went through? I thought the TV program was absolutely spot-on. It had myself and
01:13 my wife Carol here with goosebumps because it was so real and we kept
01:19 shouting at the screen "that's what happened to us! Oh they said that to us!"
01:25 Oh they are appalling. It was just absolutely so spot-on. Our two daughters
01:34 have both been unable to watch it because it's brought back too many nasty
01:39 memories for them. I'm sure over the weeks they will come to see it all but
01:46 they just couldn't do it on the night. Have you received any compensation? I've
01:54 had some partial payments from the post office but nothing like what they owe me.
02:01 In fact they are taking so long. I had an email from my solicitor just before
02:12 Christmas with an update of my case and basically he says that he hopes
02:18 that we'll have this thing finished and full payment made by the summer of this
02:23 year and I checked back and I had almost an identical email from him 12 months
02:28 ago because the post office are just dragging their feet. They completely
02:34 wrecked mine and my family's life 13 years ago and they're obviously trying
02:43 to do it all over again by being so slow in paying compensation. The drama ended
02:53 with words that the fight goes on. Are you carrying on fighting? Oh most
03:01 definitely. There's a petition going around at the moment to have Paula
03:08 Vennells who was the CEO of post office to have her CBE stripped. I noticed this
03:16 morning that that's now got 365,000 signatures on it which is brilliant and
03:24 I'm sure a lot of those signatures have only appeared because of this TV series.
03:30 So I'm fully behind that. In fact I have already sent several letters to the
03:37 Forfeiture Committee in the Cabinet Office with regard to that giving the
03:44 reasons I think she should be stripped of it and in fact I did about six months
03:50 ago get a reply from the Cabinet Office to say that once the public inquiry
03:55 which is ongoing has reported they will consider the matter then. So what is
04:05 your life like now after all of these years? Well I'm fairly philosophical
04:14 about it and I have been managed to put it into my past. Certainly this last week
04:21 everything's come to the fore again but normally it doesn't really affect me on
04:29 a day-to-day basis. From time to time I will go on a campaign and write letters
04:36 to various bodies with regard to the case but on a day-to-day basis we're a
04:45 retired couple we live in a bungalow near the sea. I'm a lay minister in the
04:52 Church of England and most weekends you'll find me leading worship in our
04:58 local church at Hogstorp. I'm also the president of the Skegness Men's
05:05 Probus Club which is a club for retired gentlemen in the Skegness area and I
05:11 spend a lot of time organising events and speakers and things to do with the
05:18 club. We have a rule in this house the television does not go on until five
05:23 o'clock. Do you think you'll ever be able to forgive? Yes because I firmly believe
05:34 that if you can't forgive the cancer of not forgiving somebody will end up
05:45 eating you like cancer eats the body. I think it's it's a thing that you you
05:51 must do but there needs to be contrition on the other side the person or the
05:56 people because it was a lot of people over a long number of years and I still
06:03 don't think we're even grasping fully who knew what when and that's what the
06:11 public inquiry is I hope will sort out. As the government looks at ways to
06:20 prevent companies like the post office taking private prosecutions we spoke to
06:25 Matt Warman who was Mr. Hedges MP when he had his post office in Hogstorp. Mr.
06:32 Warman said the drama has highlighted an issue that has been on the government's
06:37 radar for some time and emphasises the urgent need to move things along so the
06:43 people affected can get on with their lives.