‘Utter disaster’: Alan Bates attacks schemes compensating post office operators | Post Office Horizon scandal
Sir Alan Bates said plans set up to compensate post office operators for the Horizon IT scandal were an “utter disaster” and the government should not be involved in their running.
Bates, who for two decades has led the fight for justice for thousands of post office operators falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of theft and false accounting, has previously accused the government of presiding over a “quasi-kangaroo court” system for compensation.
“To be frank I would have to say they are an absolute disaster,” he told MPs’ public accounts committee on Monday. “There are many reasons why they are wrong and why they cause so much suffering even today. There is a fundamental problem with all these plans. And that is that the government should not be involved in them. That is the biggest mistake in all of this.”
Bates said discussions about designing and implementing compensation and compensation plans “started off pretty well” but eventually became overly complex and “legal” when they were implemented.
“They listened to most of our opinions,” he said. “But the plan that emerged in the end looked very different. The first thing the department did was hire an expensive team of lawyers to put the plan together. It hit a dead end. It became so legal.” [which] turned it into something extremely complex and threatening to the victims. Most victims just want a fair outcome. They just want to keep going.”
Bates finally reached a multimillion-pound settlement with the government in November, more than two decades after he launched his campaign for justice for post office operators over the Horizon IT scandal.
He said many sub-postmasters did not seek redress and compensation even when contacted by the government because they “lost trust in the system”.
“Public service is just a grind [schemes] “Let it sink into the ground,” he said, and continued: “The government needs to be involved at the highest level. He probably needs to finance it – in our case until the real culprit is [parties] Cough towards him – [but] it must be so [run by] an independent body. I think true independence will be very important. “It needs to be a completely independent body that can act independently and has the authority to do so.”
The latest UK government figures estimate that: £1.48bn paid to at least 11,500 beneficiaries As of February 27.
Thousands of compensation claims need to be resolved as the government begins to scrap the plans.
More than 900 post office operators were convicted of crimes including fraud, false accounting and theft between 1999 and 2015 after a faulty Horizon IT system incorrectly showed money was missing from branch accounts.
The convictions were overturned in 2024 by an unprecedented decision of parliament.
