This article contains spoilers for Mr Bates vs The Post Office episode 2.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office continues to unpack the shocking miscarriage of justice against thousands of subpostmasters up and down the UK in this hard-hitting drama.
The second episode sees Alan Bates' Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance group getting more traction. More people have joined the group, and they get the backing of a number of MPs, prompting the Post Office to launch an independent investigation.
But as Bob Rutherford (the investigator) starts digging, he finds things are even worse than they first appeared. Without further ado, here's our full Mr Bates vs The Post Office episode two recap...
More postmasters get involved
Episode two picks up in Walsall on November 8, 2009, with Sam (Krupa Pattani) disagreeing with her husband, Jas (Amit Shah) whilst they're getting ready to head for the JFSA meeting. She's pleaded guilty to her charges, and Jas can't understand why. They arrive at a JFSA meeting after it already got underway; when they sit down, Sam ends up sharing what's happened at her post office. She said she only had problems once they sent her a new Horizon PIN pad. She confessed she stole £5,000 worth of missing money.
When Jo and Noel Thomas confess they also plead guilty, Jas' fears are somewhat placated. He tells Sam they're going to change her plea, and this time, he's going to court with her (we see this play out in another scene). Lee warns her to be careful if she goes to court. Alan asks the group what they plan to do about having lost everything to Post Office Ltd.
We then jump back to Hampshire, where Jo's MP James Arbuthnot arrives to chat with her about her plans to campaign for justice. He tells Jo there are two other cases in his constituency, and that he plans to ask around the Commons to see if any other members have heard similar complaints.
We then rejoin the group of subpostmasters at the second JFSA meeting in Fenny Compton on July 4, 2010. Michael Rudkin, a former executive officer from the National Federation of sub-postmasters, has come along to speak to the group. Before he shares his story, the crowds turn on Michael, saying that the Federation never helped, and accusing their union of being in cahoots with Post Office Ltd.
Michael cuts them off and begins to tell them they face even more of an uphill battle than they probably expect, and begins to tell them about a visit he made to Fujitsu HQ in Bracknell, the corporation that designed and operated the Horizon IT system at the heart of the scandal.
He'd been invited to sort out a common issue with foreign exchange stock control that subpostmasters had been having, and expected he was just there to get some extra training. However, he's taken in to meet the covert operations team and then the guy touring him around sits him down at a Horizon terminal to show how to manually adjust the problem.
The issue? He was currently accessing a subpostmaster's branch account and changing their figures without the postal worker's knowledge. Since Horizon had been telling everyone no one else could access their accounts, this is big news, and this remote access to their accounts stuns the crowds.
Michael continues his story. The following morning, he woke up at home with his wife standing at the foot of the bed, with an auditor right beside her. He tells Michael their post office is £44,000 in deficit. And since his wife ran the post office whilst he was away on Federation business, his wife was blamed for the issue and was convicted over the missing money. The group agrees that it looks like they punished them for looking into the issues.
At court, Jas finds out Sam now faces 36 charges, not 19, and her shortfall of £11,000 has more than doubled. Their lawyer urges Jas to get a medical report for Sam, supposing that the case is taking its toll on Sam, but he refuses and says she's doing fine.
Jo tries to get hold of Sam and she eventually answers. She just wanted to check how Sam was doing. Sam tells her she's up and down; she can't go out and about because she doesn't like the way people are looking at her, and is growing paranoid that the investigators will come for her.
Later, Alan and Suzanne watch as Jo and her local MP are being interviewed on the news about the scandal. They're not the only ones watching: Paula Vennells, Managing Director at Post Office Ltd, was also tuned in in her office. We then hear her chairing a meeting and stating that Post Office Ltd plans to 'robustly defend' itself against any civil action as they don't accept any of the allegations being made.
Back in Walsall, Jas returns home to find Sam has self-harmed. He calls an ambulance for her. He brings their son along to visit her and is pulled outside for a chat. The medical professional tells him they're going to try ECT to treat Sam since she is severely depressed, and other treatments haven't helped. Later on, he's chatting to Jo, and he starts to blame himself for not letting her just plead guilty.
Later, we see James Arbuthnot in a meeting with Paula Vennells and Angela, the Post Office's Head of Network Systems. Angela assures them that Horizon is robust and Vennells tells the committee of MPs that the Post Office is prepared to mount and fund an independent review into the matter to clear its reputation.
Following this, we see Bob Rutherford, an auditor from Second Sight, arriving at the Post Office HQ. They'd pulled a dozen files (the ones highlighted by the MPs) for him to check but promised to support his investigation fully. He asks to visit Fujitsu, picks up the files, and walks out the door, hitting the road so he can meet with the subpostmasters.
On July 12, 2012, Jo tells Alan to meet with a forensic accountant called Kay Linnell whom Jay recommended to him. They have a meeting with Arbuthnot and Rutherford, wherein Jo's accountant challenges Rutherford to prove that he intends to investigate the case fairly and impartially.
Outside, Linnell and Bates discuss the case. She promises to help Alan in her spare time but tells him they need hard evidence, and since Rutherford and Second Sight will have access to seven years' worth of raw data, they'll have to trust him to do his job and support his investigation.
Bob's investigation
We then see Bob Rutherford sitting down and chatting to some of the subpostmasters. First up, he meets with Jo, who explains that she never really knew what to do with Horizon. She also asks where the missing £36,000 could have gone, seeing as she doesn't have it, and Bob assures her he'll find it.
Next up, he meets Michael Rudkin. They've transformed their family home into a B&B to make ends meet, and he tells Bob just how much of a toll the fallout from the Horizon debacle had on their relationship.
After that charged interview, Bob meets with Lee Castleton. As Lee explains that he couldn't put his case forward correctly and that he knew the Post Office was lying, Bob starts to get upset, because he's so upset at how these people have been treated. The next time we see him, Bob storms into the Post Office and thrashes his former friend, Susan, for hounding Lee and the other victims as they did.
Elsewhere, we're back in a courtroom, wherein the judge marks a not guilty verdict on all 36 of Sam's charges. Jas is delighted, but Sam worries that her reputation will never actually recover. Then, we see James Arbuthnot sitting with Paula Vennells and Alan Bates. As she tries to leave, Alan asks why the Post Office is only looking at the 12 cases levied by MPs, and not any of the other people who weren't criminally charged, but were still left penniless over what happened to them. He offers to give her some names to consider.
Bob heads to Fujitsu HQ. As he's leaving, he calls Michael to ask if he can prove he paid them a visit (he isn't sure if he can), seeing as Fujitsu is denying he ever paid them a visit in the first place.
We move forward in time again to a meeting with Bob Rutherford, Kay Linnell, and James Arbuthnot about Bob's draft report. Alan is unhappy with the draft, as it only mentions 3 of the 47 cases Alan presented him with. Kay loses it partway through, as they aren't bothered about individual cases, the point is meant to be about proving systemic failure across the Horizon network... which Bob Rutherford says he hasn't found.
After the meeting, Michael forwards an email invite to Fujitsu HQ to Bob. Afterward, he meets with Angela, who says Michael had only been taken to a "Test Environment" that wasn't connected to the live Horizon system, so those transactions he thought he saw couldn't be real. Paula Vennells then updates the Post Office board, sharing concerns that Bob's report might not be "factual" enough.
Later, Alan commends Bob on the final report, which includes Michael Rudkin after all. Bob tells Alan that he isn't sure whether can't prove whether they had remote access to the subpostmasters' accounts, but he nevertheless found some documents in the Post Office archives that were 'beyond belief'.
The episode ends with Bob seeking out Jo once again. Shockingly, her auditor found no evidence of theft when he reviewed her accounts, meaning they had no right to take Jo to court whatsoever a decade ago. Meanwhile, now Post Office CEO Paula Vennells reaches out to Alan, asking how the pair of them can work together from this point.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office is now streaming on ITVX and airing on ITV1 from Monday, January 1 to Thursday, January 4, 2024.
