'My sub-postmaster dad carried a weight of shame'

Twenty-five years ago, Tom Millward lost his livelihood, his home and his good standing in the community when he was convicted of embezzling thousands of pounds from his post office in Norfolk. He did not live to see the dawning of the Horizon IT scandalwhich exonerated hundreds of former post office workers. His daughter has now cleared his name - and wants to rewrite the record of her hard-working, innocent dad.

"It sounds cheesy, but they were the pillars of the community," says Isobel Saunders, of her mum and dad.

"They were very well known - they were members at the social club, they were in the pub quiz team.

"People would come and speak to them when they having any problems."

Margaret and Tom Millward took on the post office in Trunch, near North Walsham, in the late 1980s, having moved from High Wycombe for a slower pace of life.

Tom, a former car salesman, ran the post office counter while his wife manned the shop and they and their two young children lived above it.

"It was very much part of our lives," says Isobel, who went to the local school and knew everyone in Trunch.

"It was meant to be this wonderful rural idyll and to be fair, for a while, it was."

In a now sadly familiar tale, things changed for the Millwards when the Post Office ushered in a new IT system in 1999.

Wednesdays - cashing-up day- "just became miserable" as Tom spent hours trying to grapple with the technology. Repeatedly, the computer told him his figures did not stack up.

"He had managed it fine for 10 years, doing this balance with no trouble," recalls Isobel.

"I would imagine he was just trying to run those figures again and again and again, and they just kept changing."

Isobel has since learned her dad cashed-in a life insurance policy and used savings to cover the shortfall, yet it just kept growing.

The couple were "very stressed", with Tom becoming withdrawn and angry, and Margaret unwell, her blood pressure "through the roof".

Isobel, then 15, was at school when the auditors turned up. She understands her dad told them, straight off, that the books would not balance.

"Immediately, the Post Office counter was closed," she explains.

"They went in, started combing through everything - and it never reopened after that day."

He was accused of stealing £5,000 and was advised to plead guilty to alternative charges of false accounting. Prison, he was told, was a real possibility if he was found guilty of stealing following a trial.

Terrified, Tom admitted something he did not do and was convicted on four counts.

He avoided jail but was given 100 hours of community service.

It may have been a "lenient" sentence - but he now had a criminal record and the Millwards were jobless, homeless and pariahs in their rural idyll.

Isobel says they were "very lucky" that someone in Trunch "took pity" and let them use their caravan.

"It was a big difference going from our five-bedroom, nice home to living in very close quarters with my parents," she remembers.

"It was cold, it was damp.

"You'd wake up in the morning and your duvet, everything, would be damp to the touch.

"But we had no income, we had nowhere else to go."

The couple found work at a crab processing factory in Cromer, and eventually moved to a rented home in another village.

"They'd been business owners and very well thought of, and now suddenly they're in the lowest minimum wage job you can be in," says Isobel.

"Not only was it poorly paid, but it was just horrible - cold, smelly, noisy - and they worked shifts."

Margaret tripped over a pallet in the factory and broke her leg. It never properly healed and altered her quality of life.

Tom, meanwhile, was was never the same again, his daughter told the BBC.

"I think there was this big weight of internalised shame.

"He didn't really talk to people anymore, he didn't make conversation."

Isobel and the rest of the family wrongly assumed Tom's silence meant guilt.

"We believed that he'd done it because he just never spoke of it again," she admits.

"I just accepted it, and that's guilt that I carry now."

Tom died in 2018, aged 71 - just a few months before sub-postmasters caught up in the Horizon IT scandal began to have their wrongful convictions overturned.

"It was on the news, and I remember sitting there with my mum and her going, 'you know what, I think that might have been what got your dad'.

"I wanted to look into it, but my mum just didn't want anything to do with it.

"It wasn't until mum passed away [last year] that I actually contacted the solicitor.

"He took over the whole process and said 'I've done about 180 of these now, so we know how this goes'.

"That brought it home a bit, it was so many people all over the country."

Isobel received a letter from the Ministry of Justice to say it would "remove the wrongful conviction" and clear her dad's name.

"It was a very odd feeling," says Isobel.

"If I had to pick an emotion, it would probably just be sadness that this happened at all, and that dad died long before he knew."

It has forced Isobel, 40, to confront uncomfortable truths the family never got the chance to do in Tom's lifetime - that their lives since 2001 were steered on a very different path, through no fault of their own.

Seeking compensation, if that is what she and her brother decide to do, can come later.

"I think it has stirred up a lot of stuff that was buried, how I've internalised the shame, and I'm trying to work through some of that," she says.

"I wanted to get his name cleared, and to [spread the word] if there's anyone out there, who knew him... if they're still alive."

Post Office chairman Nigel Railton has made an "unequivocal apology" for the Horizon scandal.

"Post Office did not listen to postmasters and, as an organisation, we let them down," he added.

"Postmasters and their families have suffered years of pain. It has taken them too long to clear their names and, in many cases, to receive redress."

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