Davey sorry to Horizon victims for ‘not seeing through the lies’

SIR Ed Davey yesterday finally apologised to the victims of the Post Office scandal, which happened partly on his watch.

The Liberal Democrat leader said he was ‘deeply sorry’ for those whose lives were ruined and apologised for not seeing through the Post Office’s ‘lies’.

Hundreds of sub- postmasters were wrongly convicted because of faulty Horizon software in what has become the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history.

Sir Ed, who was postal affairs minister from 2010 to 2012, previously refused to apologise ten times in an ITV interview.

But yesterday he wrote in The Guardian: ‘I am deeply sorry for the families who have had their lives ruined. As one of the ministers over 20 years of this scandal, I’m sorry I did not see through the Post Office’s lies – and that it took me five months to meet Alan Bates, who has done so much to uncover it.’ He told LBC yesterday: ‘I should have said sorry earlier.’

Victims have urged Sir Ed to hand back his knighthood after former Post Office boss Paula Vennells returned her 2019 CBE.

A former postmistress has also said she will contest his seat of Kingston and Surbiton at the next election in protest.

Sir Ed had initially refused to meet Alan Bates, subject of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Yesterday he claimed he had been advised not to. ‘The Post Office is owned by the Government but not run by it. The official advice I was given was not to meet Bates,’ he said. ‘He wrote again urging me to reconsider, and I did then meet him that October. But he shouldn’t have had to wait.’

Sir Ed was heckled by the Tory benches in Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. Yesterday he claimed that he was being targeted by Conservative MPs who were ‘ seeking to exploit this human tragedy for their own narrow interest in this election year’.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting on the basis of faulty information.

THERE has been a 20-year campaign. There has been endless coverage in newspapers, including this one. There was even a TV drama, watched by millions, which put the Post Office scandal back in the headlines.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office (ITV) had many viewers weeping at the scale of the Kafkaesque injustice foisted upon sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses laid bare over four harrowing episodes. Yet still there has been scant justice for these unfortunate men and women. For how much longer must they wait?

To recap. Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office wrongfully prosecuted more than 700 branch managers for theft, fraud and false accounting, based on information from a computer system called horizon, made by Japanese tech giant Fujitsu.

Incredibly, even when they knew the system was faulty, the Post Office carried on with the prosecutions. I do hope that this is something they might one day have to explain in a court of law.

I’d certainly like someone to clarify exactly why it is not a criminal act that the money wrongly taken from the sub-postmasters was absorbed into Post Office profits and then shared out in bonuses between bosses. Isn’t that what the Mafia used to do?

In the meantime, justice still seems a long way off.

This week, there was yet another blow upon the bruise. On Wednesday, chief Post Office campaigner Alan Bates turned down an offer of compensation from the Government, calling the amount cruel, derisory and a sixth of what he had requested.

‘It’s just a terrible way to treat human beings,’ he said. And it is.

It really is. In 2022, the Government promised ‘full and fair compensation’ to sub-postmasters affected by the scandal. Last month rishi Sunak introduced legislation to acquit all those convicted in the horizon IT scandal.

he wrung his hands and called it ‘one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history’ and added that ‘the victims must get justice and compensation.’ Yet where are we now? Post Office fat cats get fatter while the Government sits on its hands and does little that is helpful.

Look at the case of Mr Bates. The offer of compensation was finally made on Wednesday, 111 days after he made his claim, two decades after he first noticed something was wrong with the horizon system installed in his Llandudno post office.

HIS claim was prepared with the help of forensic accountants, he left out no important detail, he could be forgiven for thinking closure was on the horizon — no pun intended — at last.

For one might have hoped that by this sorry hour the Post Office would do the decent thing. That they would say to all the claimants, including Mr Bates, sorry for ruining your lives.

here is the amount you have calculated we owe you. In full. Back-dated. We take your word for it. Some things that happened to you can never be compensated, but please take the money with our apologies and our belated good grace.

Of course, nothing of the sort has happened. The Post Office — which is owned by the Government — is seemingly still fighting to get away with as much as they can, paying as little as they can.

For months the claims of Mr Bates and other Post Office managers have been pored over by legal teams and accountants, at God knows what cost to us, the taxpayers. each settlement has been carefully considered and ‘negotiated’.

While it is understandable that due process must be followed, it is still a pity that Post Office managers were not given the same meticulous consideration when they were accused of stealing and then summarily prosecuted, despite their innocence.

It is hard not to escape the conclusion that, even now, these Post Office managers are being treated as criminals or — at the very least — people who cannot be trusted. Their claims are looked upon sceptically. Their version of events cannot be depended upon.

They are still at the mercy of an unyielding layer of obstructive bureaucracy — held in a hellish limbo by organisations, executives and legal experts who seem determined to delay any form of belated salvation.

They are making the Post Office victims fight for every last penny, begrudging them every sixpence. It is an absolute disgrace.

There was a flurry of outraged reaction after Mr Bates vs The Post Office was screened in the first week of January. I wrote about it myself. Make Post Office CeO Paula Vennells hand back her CBe! Or else! 1.2 million furious people signed a petition to this effect, but Vennells ‘returned’ her gong before the Government had to act.

Since then, silence. What a hollow victory that now seems.

It would be more meaningful if Miss Vennells and other Post Office executives donated their millionpound bonuses to help compensate the employees they so heinously wronged. It would be even better if the Government made Fujitsu chip in, too.

Perhaps it was naive to expect much to change in one month, but still, here we are: no further forward and maybe even two steps back.

‘If anyone feels they are owed more than is being offered, we are happy to discuss the evidence with their legal advisers,’ say the Post Office officials smoothly. ‘If agreement cannot be reached, decisions will be made by an independent panel.’ Independent panel! Negotiations! Feel they are owed more!

how bloody insulting. After all these years, Alan Bates and his colleagues are still being treated like grubby villains on the make, little people who can be fobbed off with the crumbs while everyone else gorges on the profits cake.

When, when, when are these decent people, whose lives have been ruined through no fault of their own, going to get the justice they deserve?

Who is going to atone for the sins wreaked upon them? Certainly not former Post Office minister ed Davey, who has finally made a slippery demi-apology for ‘not seeing through the Post Office’s lies’.

Certainly not Paula Vennells (non CBe). And, at this rate, certainly not the Government either.

They are making the Post Office victims fight for every last penny