Former subpostmaster Alan Bates says Post Office was run by ‘thugs in suits’ in damning testimony

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The Post Office was run by “thugs in suits” and was keen to do “anything and everything” to cover Horizon failures, former subpostmaster Alan Bates has stated.

Giving proof to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry at this time, the chief campaigner for the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) made a sequence of damning allegations concerning the government-owned firm, together with that it spent over 20 years attempting to silence him and terminated his contract as a subpostmaster as a result of he stood as much as them.

Mr Bates stated the submit workplace was seemingly keen to do “something and the whole lot to try to maintain the failures of Horizon hidden” no matter who it has to “trample” in the method.

He additionally accused the federal government of permitting the “once great institution” to be stripped by “little more than thugs in suits” who’ve been performing with “impunity regardless of the human misery and suffering they inflict.”

He added: “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 [subpostmasters] that the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) represents.”

Mr Bates has performed a pivotal function in bringing to gentle the Horizon IT scandal, which noticed the wrongful conviction of greater than 900 sub-postmasters between 1999 and 2015 because of the defective IT system.

As a former subpostmaster, Mr Bates had his contract terminated by the Post Office in 2003 after refusing to simply accept legal responsibility for shortfalls in the accounts at his department in Llandudno, North Wales.

Since that point, Mr Bates has been campaigning vociferously for justice for himself and his colleagues after a lot of them had their lives, companies and livelihoods blighted by wrongful accusations and convictions of fraud, false accounting and theft.

Mr Bates grew to become the important thing determine in the ITV drama Mr Bates versus the Post Office which propelled the Horizon scandal into the general public eye.

Since the TV present, the federal government has introduced the mass exoneration of postmasters convicted in the course of the scandal.

Mr Bates advised the inquiry about his personal expertise of attempting to attract consideration to inaccuracies he’d encountered in the IT system, together with a day in December 2000 when he contacted the Post Office’s helpline seven instances, with one name lasting about an hour.

The inquiry was proven slides from an undated presentation titled Horizon Integrity written by Dave Smith, former managing director of department accounting on the Post Office, which confirmed that Mr Bates was ultimately dismissed from his place as a result of he grew to become “unmanageable”.

On one of many slides, Mr Smith writes of Mr Bates’ dismissal: “Bates had discrepancies but was dismissed because he became unmanageable. Clearly struggled with accounting, and despite copious support, did not follow instructions.”

Mr Bates, when requested what he understood to be the explanation for the termination, stated: “Basically, I think it was because a) they didn’t like me standing up to them in the first instance; b) they were finding it awkward; and c) I don’t think they could answer these questions and they had a feeling I was going to carry on in a similar vein going forward.”

The former postmaster was additionally extremely crucial of Sir Ed Davey after the previous postal affairs minister refused a gathering with him in 2010, describing the now Liberal Democrat chief’s phrases as “disappointing and offensive”.

Sir Ed refused to satisfy with Mr Bates concerning the plight of the subpostmasters on the grounds that the federal government had an “arm’s-length relationship” with the Post Office, which prompted the campaigner to reply with one other letter which learn: “It’s not that you can’t get involved or cannot investigate the matter after all, you do own 100 per cent 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.”

A Liberal Democrat spokesman stated Sir Ed was “lied to” and was “sorry that he didn’t see through the Post Office’s lies, and that it took him five months to meet Mr Bates”.

Alan Bates stated he has not returned to work since being dismissed as a subpostmaster resulting from his marketing campaign for justice, including: “I didn’t set out to spend 20 years doing this.”

He added: “The key issue has always been to expose the truth right from the outset because the other things, they followed on – once you know the truth about issues, the rest will hopefully follow on afterwards.

Addressing his campaign for justice for subpostmasters, Mr 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.”