Bates hopes 'real baddies' are held to account

Campaigner Sir Alan Bates has said he wants the "real baddies" involved in the Post Office scandal to be held to account.

He said "many of us know who the guilty ones are" in relation to the Horizon IT scandal, where more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for shortfalls caused by bugs in an accounting system.

Sir Alan spoke as a long-running inquiry into what is considered one of the most widespread miscarriages in British justice heard final submissions.

Lawyers acting for sub-postmasters told the inquiry on Monday the Post Office's "cruel" and "malignant culture" had "destroyed the innocent".

In an interview with the BBC's World at One programme, Sir Alan said that he hoped public scrutiny would ensure justice was done.

Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds were wrongly prosecuted after Fujitsu's faulty Horizon IT accounting system made it look like money was missing.

Many lost their livelihoods or were forced to make up shortfalls, while others have described feeling ostracised from their communities. Some former sub-postmasters took their own lives.

On Monday, Edward Henry KC, representing victims, said: "The truth is this tragedy is not about an IT system. Horizon did not destroy the innocent – the malignant culture of the Post Office did."

"People were ruined, people were bankrupted, people were imprisoned, there were atrocious miscarriages of justice, people died," he said.

His statement marked the beginning of the end of the inquiry which was set up in September 2020 to look at the Post Office scandal.

It has heard from 298 witnesses, received 780 witness statements and dealt with more than 2.2 million pages of disclosure.

Witnesses have included Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, who has been widely criticised for her handling of the matter.

Summing up, Mr Henry told the inquiry: "The greatest horrors of the world, man's cruelty to man, are not caused by monsters, malfunctions or misfortune but by those who claim to act in the name of good."

At the beginning of the year, the ITV drama Mr Bates versus the Post Office captured the public's imagination and won a number of awards by focussing on the human stories behind the scandal.

Sir Alan said that "the country will be holding quite a few people to account on this and they will want to see real justice" as a result.

He also said that he hopes the inquiry's chair, Sir Wyn Williams, would "name names in this one".

Sir Wyn's final report on the scandal is due to be published next year, but Sir Alan said he was worried it could be "put on a shelf" and that little would happen afterwards.

As Sir Wyn considers all the information, one of the barristers representing the victims, Sam Stein KC, requested that the inquiry should remain involved, particularly in holding the Post Office and the Department for Business to account for compensation payments.

Waiting for redress

While the inquiry draws to a close, many former Post Office branch managers are still waiting to finalise compensation due to them 25 years after the scandal began.

Sir Alan said that his most recent offer on redress, which he has rejected, was worth a third of his original claim. The first redress offer was for one sixth of his original claim, he said.

His claim was now with Sir Ross Cranston, a former High Court Judge, who is the Independent Reviewer of the GLO Post Office scheme, he said.

He said that many sub-postmasters were hoping to "put it behind them", but that they would continue to "see it through".

The inception, roll out and subsequent issues with Horizon spanned Conservative governments, Labour governments, and a Tory and Lib-Dem coalition.

Tim Moloney KC in his summing up on Monday said "successive governments contributed to the position of crisis and commercial hunger which drove the Post Office as an institution and individuals within it to lose sight of the true value of the network and the individuals within it".

Sir Keir Starmer has responded to letters sent by the former sub-postmaster Sir Alan Bates, while a No 10 spokesman has said that the government is committed to getting quick redress for victims.

They have, however, said they were wary of setting an "arbitrary cut-off" date that could see some claimants miss out.

Neil Sheldon KC for UK Government Investments (UKGI), the government body which owns the Post Office, said it "should have provided more robust challenge and, had we shown more curiosity, the legitimate concerns raised by sub-postmasters... may have been given more weight".

"For that... we apologise unreservedly."

He admitted people in government might not have understood what powers they had to hold the Post Office to account. These include dismissing the chair or bringing the chair and chief executive in to talk about the direction of the group.

However, he also defended UKGI, saying there was no evidence of any employee "ever having deliberately sought to victimise postmasters, hide the truth or engage in any form of cover-up".