Everything Alan Bates told MPs about Horizon scandal

The Government’s Horizon scandal compensation scheme is “madness” and “absolutely bogged down in red tape,” former sub-postmaster and campaigner Alan Bates has told MPs.

Mr Bates, 69, appeared alongside fellow former sub-postmistress and campaigner Jo Hamilton before the Business and Trade Committee on Tuesday, ahead of evidence from Post Office chief executive Nick Read and the director of Fujitsu’s operations in Europe, Paul Patterson.

The Post Office IT system called Horizon made it appear as though money was going missing from post offices. But instead of admitting faults in the IT system, the Post Office wrongly accused some sub-postmasters of stealing the money.

More than 700 were prosecuted on charges of theft, false accounting or fraud between 1999 and 2015. Many were jailed. Four took their own lives.

Of those wrongly convicted, just 93 have so far had their convictions overturned.

Mr Bates is the founder of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, and the inspiration for the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which has catapulted the Horizon scandal into the headlines this month.

It has culminated in Rishi Sunak last week announcing plans for a new law to fast-track exonerations for those who were wrongly convicted. He also pledged to compensate victims “swiftly”.

Mr Bates told MPs on Tuesday that he was feeling “frustrated, to put it mildly,” at the fact that many sub-postmasters have still not received financial redress.

Related Article

“There is no reason at all why full financial redress shouldn’t have been delivered by now,” he continued, “it’s gone on for far too long. People are suffering, dying. It just seems to be tied up in bureaucracy.”

He added: “We were given assurances that after 40 working days, that cases would receive a first offer. Well, generally I know that most people haven’t had a first offer.”

He said that he submitted his own claim “towards the beginning of October” and is still waiting for his first offer, having been told he will should not expect to before the end of this month.

“I think it was 53 days before they asked three very simple questions,” he said. “It’s madness, the whole thing is madness. And there’s no transparency behind it, which is even more frustrating. We do not know what’s happening to these cases once they disappear in there.

“I hear a lot of stories about Government lawyers […] not happy to work extra hours, or working at weekends or working evenings. There obviously isn’t enough of a resource being put in at that end to actually deal with these cases, and that’s what’s really frustrating.”

Ms Hamilton, who was wrongfully convicted in 2008 of stealing thousands of pounds from her Post Office in South Warnborough, Hampshire, said that in her experience of trying to secure compensation, she felt as though she was being painted as “a criminal all over again: you’ve got to justify everything”.

Ms Hamilton told MPs: “It’s almost like you’re being retried … it just goes on and on and on.”

She said it was “sickening” to think the money she repaid to the Post Office was being “played with”. She said she believed the cash she paid to the Post Office after Horizon wrongly identified “shortcomings” at her shop was “hoovered into profit and loss” by the Post Office, and that “it’s gone”.

Mr Bates also said that “everyone’s going to be surprised about how much was known” early on by the Post Office and the Government about what was going wrong with the Horizon system.

“We’ve always known that we were right, and it’s just that Post Office decided to try and control the whole narrative. […] They had the ear of politicians to brief them, and it was very very hard to battle against them. But we always knew we were right.

“As we know now, there was a major cover-up. The cover-up is far worse than the actual initial crime, and the prosecutions of individuals.”

Asked why he thought it was possible that so many sub-postmasters raising the same concerns over the Horizon scheme could have been ignored, he said: “When you take on a sub-post office you actually invest a large amount of money in the business.

“When they fell out with me, they walked off with that amount of money, and I think a lot of people feel there’s a financial gun held to their head if they start kicking off.

He said that he believes that the Post Office would push more “high-profile” cases through to prosecution “as examples, or warnings, to others to keep your head down and do as you’re told.”

Mr Bates said that he hopes that the Horizon scandal “sends a warning shot” to “big corporations, that what they […] the way they work really affects people down at the front line.”

He also called for family members of sub-postmasters who have suffered health issues because of the Horizon scandal to be “assessed as part of a claim” for compensation, because currently the way in which applications are processed is “not structured” and “not transparent”.

He added: “Financial redress will never put things back for people […] but this is money that they are due, money to put them back into a position that they would have been in had Post Office not done what it did to them.”

Mr Bates made reference to a 91-year-old former sub-postmistress still waiting for redress, asking “has she got to wait until she gets a telegram from the King? It’s absolutely ridiculous how long the system is holding this up. […] It’s very unfair and it’s cruel.”

Solicitor Neil Hudgell told MPs only three of his former sub-postmaster clients who had been criminally convicted had received compensation.

He said: “Within the convicted cohort of clients that we have, of the 73, three have been fully paid out.”

Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake told the Committee later in the session that he was determined to “slim down” the bureaucracy surrounding the compensation scheme.