The Post Office would do ‘anything to hide Horizon failures’, says Alan Bates as he gave evidence in the Post Office Inquiry taking place in central London as it enters an important phase.
He was called to give evidence as part of phases five and six of the inquiry, which will also hear from former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells, who led the company during the height of the scandal.
Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters and mistresses had their reputations ruined by allegations of theft and false accounting, many of them ended up in prison or left bankrupt, because of a computer system called Horizon.
The system, made by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was introduced by the Post Office across the country in 1999. It was used to manage transactions, accounts, and stocktaking.
Alan Bates claims Post Office would ‘do anything to hide Horizon failures’
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Bates had his contract terminated by the Post Office in 2003 after refusing to accept liability for shortfalls in the accounts at his branch in Llandudno, North Wales.
Bates fronted the legal campaign in 2019 which led to a High Court ruling, which said that Fujitsu’s Horizon accounting software, contained bugs errors and defects.
He gave evidence from the witness box on Tuesday in front of Post Office chief executive Nick Read as he recollected his account of the organisation “attempting to discredit and silence me” over the course of his 23-year campaign.
Alan Bates was quizzed by Jason Beer KC, the inquiry lawyer. He was asked about the time in late 2000 when the Horizon system in Bate’s Post Office first started showing unexplained shortfalls.
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Alan Bates arrives for Post Office Inquiry
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Bates confirmed a section in his witness statement, saying that on one day in December that year, he contacted the helpline seven times, with one call lasting an hour.
Asked whether they were able to help, Bates said: “Not really. Stating the bleeding obvious, I think, really is one description I might up.”
Beer added that Post Office records highlighted that, between December 2000 and November 2003, when his contract was terminated, Bates and his assistants made 507 calls to the helpline, of which 85 related to Horizon.
Bates added: “Often we never bothered ringing” the line because it proved so unhelpful.
One of the first letters that Bates sent to the Post Office after a number of issues had emerged at his branch was read in court.
Alan Bates admitted he 'never bothered' ringing the helpline
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Beer read out the letter where Bates wrote about the shortages and said that he is unsure where it came from. The letter showed the shortfalls in Bates’s Branch and says that he believes Horizon is at fault.
He asked what he should do at the end of the letter but when asked, Bates said he never received a reply.
Bates also described himself as stubborn, adding it was that characteristic, that had seen him through the sub-postmasters’ fight for justice but was not something he “set out to spend 20 years doing”.
He described the culture at the Post Office after his experience with them by saying: “It’s an atrocious organisation, it needs disbanding and needs building up again from the ground floor.
“And as have been quoted quite commonly, the whole of the Postal Service nowadays is a dead duck – it’s beyond saving.”
There was another moment where Bates laughed out loud at a remark made about him by Post Office affiliates. The email dated 2017, referenced to Bates as having a “loose relationship with the truth”.
The email was written by Andrew Parson, a partner at a Law firm Bond Dickinson LLP, which advised the Post Office at the time.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters are still waiting for compensation even though the Government announced that those who have had convictions quashed are entitled to £600,000 pay-outs.
The inquiry will hear from the Rt. Hon. Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, who is a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board and former MP for North East Hampshire. They will also hear from Rt. Hon. Sir Anthony Hooper, former Lord Justice of Appeal and former Chair of the Working Group for the Initial Complain Review and Mediation Scheme.