Ben King
Business reporter

We've been hearing from Alan Bates on his efforts to uncover the truth about Horizon but how much did the people running the Post Office get paid while the flawed system was in place?

By looking through the company accounts for the Post Office and Royal Mail, the BBC has come up with a figure - £19.4m over 24 years.

Before 2012, Royal Mail and the Post Office were part of the same organisation - and its three successive chief executives, John Roberts, Adam Crozier and Dame Moya Greene, made a total of £12.8m. All three of them are due to appear at the inquiry.

From 2012 onwards, the chief executives of the separated Post Office, Paula Vennells then Nick Read, have made a total of £6.5m.

That's an average of less than £1m a year - compared to the £3.91m the average boss of Britain's 100 biggest listed companies earned in 2022. It's a huge sum compared to the salary of average workers, or for sub-postmasters still waiting for compensation.

The Post Office argues that it's a very large, complex business which has to compete with other organisations for talent, and uses external consultants to advise on executive pay.

So who are the Post Office bosses and what did each of them earn? Read our explainer to find out more.

Alan Bates has restarted giving his evidence before the inquiry, which you can watch above by clicking the Play button.

We'll bring you all the key lines he has to say here.

Mark Broad
Business editor

Image source, UK Parliament/PA

The current chief executive of the Post Office, Nick Read, tells the BBC that the financial redress scheme for sub-postmasters has been "slow".

He would like to "accelerate" the process and says he believes the Post Office is "pulling out all the stops to make sure that we get to that position".

Read made the remarks while attending the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal at Aldwych House – where we've been hearing from former sub-postmaster Alan Bates throughout the day.

The Post Office boss tells me that he was attending today's session to show his "support" for the affected sub-postmasters.

"It is really important for me as the current chief executive of the Post Office to demonstrate my support for the postmasters and demonstrate my support for Alan Bates, but also to learn the lessons of the past," he says, adding that there must be a change of culture at the Post Office.

He says he did not want to go into the specifics of Bates’ case and why his claim had not yet been settled, but insists that there was an independent panel tasked with determining compensation claims.

Read says that the company has made "huge strides to change the culture of the Post Office" while admitting that there was still "plenty to do both internally with colleagues but also with postmasters".

"We feel we are making progress on that journey."

Stick with us as we'll keep bringing you reaction to the inquiry.

Sam Hancock
Reporting from the inquiry

I just sat down with Nicki Arch, a former sub-postmistress at the Chalford Hill post office in Stroud, who told me how she went from having a business and two-bed terraced house to losing both and people spitting at her in the street.

Nicki was on the initial rollout of Horizon, so had the system installed at her branch in 2000, and within three months had been suspended and accused of stealing £24,000.

She recalls phoning a helpline - the same one Alan Bates said earlier he had called 507 times between 2000 and 2003 - before men who said they were auditors turned up at her branch.

"I assumed they were there to help as I'd reported the issue so many times," Nicki says, but she was then taken to an office where she says she was interrogated by the men - Post Office investigators - for "seven hours, in a locked room".

Nicki "never set foot" in her post office again and ended up at Bristol Crown Court in 2002 charged with theft and false accounting. She went on to be found innocent but says the damage was already done.

"It was reported in the papers that I'd stolen from pensioners and I got spat at in the streets," she tells me. "The whole community were gunning for me."

Nicki says she never received an apology or acknowledgment of her innocence from the Post Office, despite the fact she had lost her "business, house and reputation".

Bates says the hearings at the High Court, which in 2019 resulted in damages being awarded to some of the sub-postmasters, was the "first time the Post Office lost control of the narrative".

He says he couldn't understand why Second Sight had previously - in an interim report - made a distinction between "system failures" and "systemic failures", a distinction he says the Post Office "jumped on" in order to claim there were no systemic failures.

"It was obvious there were systemic failures in the way Post Office dealt with sub-postmasters, the way they processed things," he says.

He says there was a "total failure of Post Office throughout all of that" and that he found the distinction "frustrating".

The inquiry is shown an internal Post Office email from Paula Vennells. It describes telephone conversations she had with Bates.

Bates says it was correct that he suggested on one such call that an independent third party be set up that sub-postmasters could approach if they were facing issues with Horizon.

He says such an alternative system could have protected sub-postmasters from the "wrath" of the Post Office.

"One of the reasons I used to suggest something like that was because I was being contacted over the years by a number of sub-postmasters who had serious losses - I’m talking about £30,000, £40,000 of losses - which they had never declared to Post Office because they were so terrified of what was going to happen to them and they didn’t know what to do or how to move on from that position," Bates says.

The inquiry is now looking at a letter Bates sent to then Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells in May 2013, in which he asks her to take a meeting with Kay Linnell, an independent forensic accountant who was monitoring Second Sight’s work.

In the letter he says the "main purpose of the meeting is to ensure you have been receiving the full details of what has been occurring with the Second Sight investigation".

He goes on to say that considering what had been discovered, he was surprised not to have had a meeting already. Despite acknowledging in his letter that a lot of the issues "began under previous regimes" he wrote that they continued and that he had little doubt that prosecutions by the Post Office should never have taken place.

Asked what the purpose was of making direct contact with Vennells, Bates says he doesn’t remember why he asked for the meeting "at that particular time".

He says they had concerns at that time about what was being reported but can’t quite place it. Bates also said he cannot remember what came of the letter.

Image source, Jeremy Durkin/PA

Bates reaffirms a part of his written evidence in which he said he was initially wary of Second Sight because they had been chosen to investigate by the Post Office, but that his impression of them improved after his initial contact with them.

His written statement says he "came to see that they were keen on working as an unbiased third party".

They've been going over the process of appointing forensic accountants Second Sight to look into Horizon in 2012.

Bates has been shown a series of documents about how the terms of the investigation were agreed between campaign group Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) and the Post Office.

Bates draws attention to the wording of the terms, which said the Post Office acknowledged that "there may be a concern some sub-postmasters might not express their concerns because they feel speaking up would be detrimental to their position".

It goes on to say the Post Office "would like to take this opportunity to emphasise that these fears are unfounded".

Image source, PA Media

In the morning session Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey came in for some criticism from Alan Bates from his response to the scandal during his time as postal affairs minister as part of the coalition government.

Responding to the criticism a party spokesman said: "Alan Bates is a hero for all he has done to represent sub-postmasters through this horrific miscarriage of justice.

"Ed was the first minister to meet with Mr Bates and took his concerns to the Post Office and the Federation of Subpostmasters - Ed, like Mr Bates and so many others, was lied to.

"No one knew the scale of these lies until the whistleblower from Fujitsu revealed the truth several years later.

"Ed has said that he's sorry that he didn't see through the Post Office's lies, and that it took him five months to meet Mr Bates.

"The Liberal Democrats are calling on the government to ensure postmasters get full and fair compensation urgently, and Post Office executives who lied for decades are held properly to account."

In Norman Lamb's reply in April 2012, he reiterates the government's "arms length policy" over operational and contractual matters with the company over its management of day to day operations but does offer a meeting.

Beer mentions that a subsequent meeting with Lamb took place on 27 June 2012, which Bates says was the first time he felt someone was listening to his concerns.

He also says it was the first time a minister had taken on board information they had relayed to them.

Image source, PA Media

As the inquiry resumes after lunch, Jason Beer KC - lead counsel for the inquiry - looks at a letter Alan Bates sent to Norman Lamb, who took over as minister for postal affairs in early February 2012, on 25 February 2012.

Bates drew attention to a survey he conducted through the JFSA website of sub-postmasters to get feedback on the extent of the issues.

His survey had found that 77% of postmasters had experienced losses over the previous 12 months of on average £1200.

Bates then asked Lamb, the former North Norfolk MP, to help working with the ministry to uncover “this major scandal”.

Azadeh Moshiri
Reporting from outside the inquiry

Christopher Head was only 18 years old when his ordeal began. He ran a Post Office in West Boldon, South Tyneside, in 2006. His shortfalls rose to the tens of thousands. He was then wrongly accused of theft and fraud.

We spoke during a break in the inquiry, and he tells me the disclosure issues raised by Jason Beer “were more of the same”, and that he wasn’t surprised, since they'd been campaigning "for decades".

Jason Beer KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, opened today's session by saying the Post Office's "late and problematic disclosure of documents" has been repeated throughout the inquiry.

Another former sub-postmaster I spoke to took over his branch when his father passed away in 2017. Many sub-postmasters and their families still find it difficult to share their experiences, and he’s asked to stay anonymous to respect his mother’s wishes.

He inherited his father’s issues with the Horizon IT system and battle with the Post Office.

He adds that after all this time, he still “has no faith” the inquiry would be able to hold those responsible accountable.

The Post Office has said it "regrets" that documents were not disclosed to the inquiry "as early as all parties would have liked". It adds, "we are fully committed to supporting the inquiry to establish the truth".

The inquiry is now back from the lunch break and Alan Bates is set to continue answering questions.

As a reminder, you can watch the inquiry live by pressing Play at the top of the page, and we'll continue to bring you the latest.

As we’ve been reporting, the leading barrister for the inquiry, Jason Beer, earlier described the Post Office’s disclosure of documents ahead of today's session as “late and problematic”.

Since then, a spokesperson for the Post Office has responded to those remarks by saying the organisation is “fully committed to supporting the inquiry to establish the truth”.

“During the past six weeks, since the inquiry announced its current hearings timetable, we have disclosed the vast majority of documents required for those witnesses but regret a very small proportion of documents were not disclosed as early as all parties would have liked," the spokesperson says.

The spokesperson adds that the inquiry is examining issues spanning more than two decades, including a period when the Post Office was part of the Royal Mail Group.

“Disclosure is therefore highly complex and we continue to do all we can to deliver continuous improvements."

Image source, EPA

We've been hearing a lot today from former sub-postmaster Alan Bates, but for those of you unfamiliar with the role, sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are managers at Post Offices across Britain.

They take responsibility for the everyday running of a Post Office, including the money going in and out of the business.

They handle people’s savings and pensions, and are often at the heart of their communities.

Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 700 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses - an average of one a week - based on information from a faulty computer system called Horizon.

Some 283 other cases were brought by bodies including the Crown Prosecution Service.

Postmasters and postmistresses were jailed, went bankrupt, saw their marriages destroyed, and some died before their names were cleared.

Now that we've hit the midday break, that gives us a good opportunity to recap what's been happening.

So far this morning, we’ve been hearing from Alan Bates, the former sub-postmaster who led the campaign to expose the Horizon IT scandal. Here’s what we’ve heard:

• Bates has told the inquiry he first warned the Post Office about issues with the Horizon system back in 2000 and says ever since then its been trying to silence him and others
• Correspondence between Bates and senior figures show how he made several attempts to get help about the issues cropping up at his branch and others
• A Post Office helpline proved “unhelpful” for Bates when he uncovered the unexplained shortfalls at his branch, he says
• In a letter to his support manager, shown to the inquiry, Bates explained how the Post Office seemed willing to do "anything and everything” to keep Horizon’s failures hidden
• After being terminated with three months' notice without reason, Bates says this only supported his belief that the organisation didn’t like him standing up to it, saying: “They were after me one way or another”

• The leading barrister for the inquiry, Jason Beer, began today's session by describing how the Post Office’s disclosure of documents were “late and problematic”, which has been "highly disruptive"

Just before the break, the inquiry went over meeting notes from Davey’s office.

These notes show that the meeting was set up “for presentational reasons against background of potential publicity” as it details how Channel 4 was planning to run a piece on the JFSA campaign.

Bates says he doesn’t recall whether Davey was engaging with the substance of the accusations.

“I don’t recall the detail of the meeting, but I am quite certain that if there had been something positive come out of it, I would have remembered that,” Bates says.

He's then asked how he felt about the government's arms length approach to the Post Office Horizon scandal, to which he says they should have got involved much earlier.

Bates says that he blames the civil service more in a lot of instances and that civil servants were briefing ministers "in the direction they wanted to brief them in" over the benefit of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses.

The inquiry is now breaking for lunch but we'll continue to wrap up the end of that session as well as bringing you analysis of what we've heard.