Bates could not stop his battle with Post Office
LEAD campaigner and former subpostmaster Alan Bates has told the Horizon IT inquiry the Post Office spent 23 years “attempting to discredit and silence me”.
Mr Bates gave evidence at the probe on Tuesday, where he said his campaign for justice was “something you couldn’t put down”.
The inquiry was shown a presentation prepared by former Post Office managing director of branch accounting Dave Smith, in which he said Mr Bates was “dismissed because he became unmanageable”.
Mr Bates said he was “quite positive” when the Horizon system came in, but soon became “frustrated” after finding “many shortcomings in the system”.
The Post Office has come under fire since the airing of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which put the Horizon IT scandal under the spotlight.
More than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.Mr Bates had his contract terminated in 2003 after refusing to accept liability for shortfalls in the accounts at his Llandudno branch in North Wales.
He submitted a 58-page witness statement to the inquiry, in which he said the relationship between sub-postmasters and the Post Office was “very one-sided”.
He told the inquiry: “I had been led to believe that sub-postmasters 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.
“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’.”
Addressing his campaign for justice for sub-postmasters, 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.”