Post Office Inquiry: Alan Bates says company ‘lied and tried to silence me’ for 23 years

Alan Bates has said he believed a mediation scheme set up to address the Horizon IT scandal was part of a “cover-up” and a “fishing expedition” to discover what evidence subpostmasters had about Horizon.

When asked about why he thought the scheme failed, Bates said in his witness statement: “I believe the Mediation Scheme failed as it was part of the cover up by POL (Post Office Limited), I expect POL discovered things that they did not like and did not want to come out.

“There definitely was an element of not wanting to accept fault.

“I believe POL had no intention whatsoever of getting to a mutually acceptable and fair decision, if anything it seemed as if POL had been using the Scheme as a fishing expedition to see what evidence SPMs (subpostmasters) actually had about Horizon.”

A lawyer from a firm instructed by the Post Office said Alan Bates had a “somewhat loose relationship with the truth”.

Andrew Parsons, from the law firm Bond Dickinson, made the comment after Mr Bates issued a press statement which said more than 1,000 people had applied to join the group litigation against the Post Office.

In his email in March 2017, Parsons said: “I’m happy with the comms too. Let’s not forget that Alan Bates has a somewhat loose relationship with the truth.”

After laughter in the inquiry room and from Bates himself, counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked: “Had you ever had any dealings with Mr Parsons?”

Bates smiled and said: “Oh yes.”

Beer continued: “Had you had any dealings with Mr Parsons that might properly allow him to form a view that you had a somewhat loose relationship with the truth?”

Bates replied: “No. Andy Parsons was one of those who used to appear at the working group meetings – one of the many lawyers the Post Office used to send to them.

“I don’t know why he’s come up with that – I might embellish but I don’t lie. I suppose I spend too much time around lawyers now and then so wording and phrasing can sometimes seem a little bit that way.”

Asked what he now thought of the culture of the Post Office, Alan Bates told the public inquiry: "They're an atrocious organisation".

"They need disbanding, it needs removing, it needs building up again from the ground floor. And as I've been quoted quite commonly, the whole of the postal service nowadays... it's a dead duck. It's beyond saving".

He added that the service should be sold to someone "like Horizon" before laughing and correcting himself "that's the last thing I'd say - someone like Amazon" who could put money into it. warning it would otherwise become a bugbear for the government for years to come.

The government was having “back channel communications” with the Post Office despite telling lead campaigner Alan Bates that it was operating an “arm’s length relationship” with the organisation, the Horizon IT inquiry has heard.

A July 2013 email, sent from shareholder executive Mike Whitehead from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to Post Office staff, showed how the government requested a meeting with the Post Office to discuss how to respond to communications from Bates.

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked: “Did you know or did you appreciate at the time that, notwithstanding what had been said by government ministers about operating an arm’s length relationship with the Post Office, there was nonetheless a back channel of communications between the government and the Post Office?”

Bates said: “No, I can’t say I was aware of that, no.”

Alan Bates wrote to former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells in 2013 expressing his surprise that she had not offered to meet following what had been discovered by forensic accountants Second Sight.

In his email to Vennells, Bates said: “Bearing in mind what has been discovered so far, I for one am surprised that we haven’t yet met to discuss the implications.

“Whilst I appreciate that the majority of the issues began under previous regimes and you have expressed a genuine willingness to address the concerns that the JSFA has been raising, these issues are still continuing.

“I have little doubt that it is now feasible to show that many of the prosecutions that the Post Office have pressed home should never have taken place.”

Vennells handed back her CBE following public pressure after the fallout over the Horizon IT scandal.

The row over the Post Office scandal and the hundreds of victims who are yet to be fully compensated has dominated headlines.

Here are the answers to questions you may have about the Horizon row, which still shows no sign of abating.

Read the full story from The Telegraph.

A survey conducted by Alan Bates at the height of the Post office scandal showed that 77% of subpostmasters had experienced a financial loss.

He drew attention to the survey in a 2012 letter to Norman Lamb, who became postal affairs minister in 2012, and asked for his help to uncover the "major scandal".

Speaking at the inquiry, Bates said he felt Lamb was the first minister to have listened to his concerns.

Post Office victims campaigner Alan Bates has told the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal that it was "pretty obvious" the organisation "were after me - one way or another".

Mr Bates was also described as "unmanageable" by a former senior figure at the organisation, documents disclosed at the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal have revealed.

Appearing before the inquiry today, Mr Bates said the Post Office "didn't like me standing up to them" - and argued that they terminated his contract as a result.

Read the full story from Sky News.

Responding to Alan Bates’ evidence to the Horizon IT inquiry and his criticism of Sir Ed Davey, who now leads the Liberal Democrats, a party spokesman said: “Alan Bates is a hero for all he has done to represent subpostmasters 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.”

The inquiry will resume at 1.55pm

Alan Bates has told the Horizon IT inquiry that he took offence to a letter from former postal affairs minister Sir Ed Davey after he claimed the government adopted an “arm’s length” relationship with the Post Office despite being its sole shareholder.

Questioned by counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC on why he took offence to Davey’s letter in 2010, which declined an invitation to meet with Bates, the former subpostmaster said: “It was because of the structure, wasn’t it.

“The government was the sole shareholder, they were the owners, as such, of all of this.

“How can you run or… take responsibility for an organisation without having some interest in… or trying to be in control?”

In his letter dated July 8 2010, Bates told Davey: “It’s not that you can’t get involved or cannot investigate the matter, after all you do own 100% of the shares and normally shareholders are concerned about the morality of the business they own.

“It is because you have adopted an arm’s length relationship that you have allowed a once great institution to be asset stripped by little more than thugs in suits, and you have enabled them to carry on with impunity regardless of the human misery and suffering they inflict.”

The Post Office worked on the assumption that "Horizon is robust and everyone else is wrong", Alan Bates said, giving evidence at the inquiry.

He said there were several reasons that the Post Office refused to accept that there could be any issue - including staff not fully understanding the issues, the Post Office presuming that everyone else was wrong, and doing things "for show" rather than investigating and making real changes.

The National Federation of Subpostmasters (the NFSP) has not helped any subpostmaster in any court case regarding Horizon, Alan Bates said during the Post Office Horizon inquiry.

Asked to what extent the NFSP had helped him, Bates repled: "Not at all." He said that this was also the case for the other subpostmasters he was aware of.

The Post Office has said it “regrets” that documents were not disclosed to the Horizon IT Inquiry “as early as all parties would have liked”.

A Post Office spokeswoman said: “We are fully committed to supporting the inquiry to establish the truth and we have disclosed almost half a million documents to date, reflecting both the unprecedented scale of the issues in the scandal and our commitment to transparency.

“This follows searches of over 176 million documents, 230 physical locations and third-party sites, and across multiple systems.

“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 inquiry is examining issues that spanned more than two decades, including a lengthy period when Post Office was part of Royal Mail Group.

“Disclosure is therefore highly complex and we continue to do all we can to deliver continuous improvements and incorporate past learnings into the disclosure process to avoid the risk of delays to the inquiry’s timetable.”

Alan Bates has said he was “annoyed” when his employment contract was terminated and felt that the Post Office was “after me one way or another”.

When asked how he felt upon receiving the letter terminating his contract with no given reason, Bates chuckled and replied: “I was annoyed with them, to put it mildly, but I think it was partly pretty obvious they were determined to – they were after me one way or another, and the build-up of correspondence over the period was certainly pointing in that direction.”

A document about 'Horizon Integrity', which suggested the postmasters were to blame for account discrepancies, claimed that Alan Bates "struggled" with accounting and had been given "copious" support.

Bates, giving evidence to the inquiry, said that the Post Office did not like him standing up to them after he refused to pay shortfalls from his Post Office that were caused by the faulty Horizon IT system.

Alan Bates told the Post Office IT Inquiry about a day in December 2000 when he contacted the Post Office’s helpline seven times, with one call lasting about an hour.

Lead counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked: “Were they of any assistance at all in those seven calls?”

Mr Bates replied: “Not really.”

He chuckled before adding: “Stating the bleeding obvious, I think, really, is one description I might use – but it was all things that I’d tried.”

Alan Bates said the partnership between subpostmasters and the Post Office was “very one-sided”.

He told the inquiry: “I had been led to believe that subpostmasters were working in partnership with the Post Office, and if the Post Office wanted me to measure up to the standards they required, I expected them to do the same for me.

“However, over time, it soon became evident that the ‘partnership’ was very one-sided, and it really was a question of ‘you will do as you are told and if you don’t like it, you can’t complain and there is no redress on this, and you just get on and keep your mouth closed’ — that’s how it works.”

In his witness statement to the inquiry, Alan Bates said the Post Office had spent the entirety of the 23 years he has been campaigning “denying, lying, defending, and attempting to discredit and silence me”.

He said: “Prior to and since my termination from the branch, I have spent the last 23 years campaigning to expose the truth, and justice, not just for myself, but for the entire group of wrongly treated/wrongly convicted subpostmasters.

“I have dedicated this period of my life to this cause which, sadly, has been necessary since Post Office Limited has spent this entire period denying, lying, defending, and attempting to discredit and silence me and the group of SPMs that the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) represents.”

Asked about his time working for the Post Office - and that it was a shorter period than many subpostmasters - Bates joked "that was due to the Post Office, not to myself."

The Post Office minister has said people responsible for the Horizon scandal “should go to jail”.

Kevin Hollinrake met dozens of those affected by the IT scandal in Fenny Compton, Warwickshire, where subpostmasters gathered to start their campaign for justice in 2009.

Read the full story from The Independent.

Lead campaigner and former subpostmaster Alan Bates has told the Post Office IT Inquiry his search for justice and redress was “something you couldn’t put down”.

Addressing his campaign for justice for subpostmasters, Bates said: “As you got to meet people and realised it wasn’t just yourself, and saw the harm and justice that had been descended upon them, it was something you felt you had to deal with. It’s something you couldn’t put down.”

Alan Bates, giving evidence to the Post Office inquiry, said he was initially "quite positive" about the Horizon IT system.

"When Horizon came in I think I was quite positive about it, because I knew what technology and these sort of systems could do," he said. "But I found it a bit frustrating once the system was installed... I found there were many shortcomings in the system."

Alan Bates has begun giving evidence to the inquiry.

Ahead of Alan Bates's appearance before the inquiry today, the lead counsel for the inquiry, Jason Beer KC, has raised the issue of disclosure.

He said the Post Office's "late and problematic" disclosure of documents has occurred throughout the inquiry.

Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 staff members were falsely prosecuted based on incorrect information from the Post Office's Horizon computer system, installed and maintained by Fujitsu.

Some were imprisoned following convictions for false accounting and theft, while many were ruined financially, and some have since died.

Here's a reminder of what happened to those featured in Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

As the independent public inquiry continues, Yahoo News reveals the people who are facing questions over the scandal.

Read the full story from Yahoo News.

Former subpostmaster Alan Bates is due to give evidence today at the Horizon IT Inquiry.

He has played a key role in campaigning for justice for postmasters who were wrongly accused of theft and fraud based on faulty data from the Horizon IT system.

After 20 years of campaigning, just 93 of the 736 convictions have been overturned – but the recent ITV1 drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office put the government under pressure to take action.