Alan Bates vows to raise funds to prosecute Post Office bosses if inquiry fails
Alan Bates said he will fundraise to put Post Office bosses behind bars if sub-postmasters are “failed” by the inquiry into the Horizon scandal.
The former sub-postmaster led colleagues to a High Court victory against the organisation in 2019.
Mr Bates said he was “certain” he would be able to raise the money to pursue private prosecutions if necessary.
“In so many other scandals, the people who make decisions and ruin numerous lives walk away scot-free. We are not prepared to do that,” he told The Times.
“We, as a group, will bring private prosecutions if the authorities fail us once again. If we try to raise that money, I am absolutely certain that we will raise that money.”
The Post Office inquiry is examining the scandal that saw more than 900 other sub-postmasters wrongfully prosecuted as a result of fictional shortfalls produced by faulty Horizon software.
On Friday, the inquiry heard that Paula Vennells, the former Post Office chief executive, “likely” signed off a trial bill of more than £300,000 after a sub-postmaster was blamed for a £25,000 shortfall at his branch.
Lee Castleton, 55, who was played by actor Will Mellor in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs. The Post Office, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2007 after the Post Office pursued him through the civil courts.
Alan Cook, the former Post Office managing director, told the public inquiry how Ms Vennells “likely” signed off the legal budget. The former chief executive joined the Post Office as its network director and would have been in this role at the time.
Questioning Mr Cook on the £300,000 spent, inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams said: “What I want to ask you is, what was the process back in 2006 for authorising the expenditure of those sums of money in the Post Office?”
As part of his response, Mr Cook said: “We had delegated authorities in place that would allow people below me, that would have probably lied with Paula Vennells as the network director, would have been able to sign that off.”
Clarifying, Sir Wyn then asked: “So what it amounts to is there would have been a person within the Post Office organisation who would have authority to sign off spending the money without talking either to you or to the board?”
“Correct,” responded Mr Cook.
The inquiry chairman continued: “So did you tell me the most likely person was Paula Vennells?”
Mr Cook replied: “Yes, I think so.”
At another point during his evidence, Mr Cook, who held the managing director role from 2006 to the early part of 2010, was also shown an email in which he blamed shortfalls on sub-postmasters with their “hand in the till”.
In an email sent in October 2009 to Mary Fagan, former corporate affairs director of Royal Mail, Mr Cook said: “My instincts tell me that, in a recession, subbies with their hand in the till choose to blame the technology when they are found to be short of cash.”
The pair were discussing increasing press interest about concerns surrounding the accuracy of Horizon.
Asked why it was his instinct to think that sub-postmasters were stealing, Mr Cook told the inquiry: “Well, that was an expression I will regret for the rest of my life.
“It is an inappropriate thing to put in an email, not in line with my view of sub-postmasters.”
Mr Cook’s evidence was followed by that of Adam Crozier, the ex-Royal Mail Group (RMG) chief executive who is now chairman of BT Group.
Mr Crozier left RMG in 2010 after seven years as its chief executive, a time in which it was the Post Office’s parent company before it was privatised.
Both Mr Crozier and Mr Cook offered apologies to postmasters and their families affected by the scandal.
However, they also both appeared to claim they did not initially know the organisations they presided over brought prosecutions against sub-postmasters.
Mr Cook, who said he only came to realise this in 2009 after he saw an article about Horizon victims in Computer Weekly, described his lack of knowledge on the subject as a “regret”, saying he had “never come across a situation before that a trading entity could initiate criminal prosecutions themselves”.
Questioning Mr Crozier, Jason Beer KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, asked: “Were you not aware that in fact there was no Post Office legal team – it had no separate legal in-house function and that civil and criminal proceedings were brought by lawyers within the Royal Mail Group legal team?”
Mr Crozier said: “I was not, no.”
Mr Beer continued: “So lawyers from within the group gave advice on prosecutions, they made decisions about prosecutions and within prosecutions, and they conducted the proceedings, not any Post Office lawyers, you didn’t know that?”
Mr Crozier replied: “I was not aware of that, no.”
The former ITV chief executive, who did not appear in the channel’s drama about the Horizon scandal, was also asked how he would feel about Mr Cook not knowing that the Post Office was initiating its own prosecutions against sub-postmasters.
“I would find that surprising,” Mr Crozier said in response.
Lawyers for Ms Vennells previously released a statement on her behalf that said: “I continue to support and focus on co-operating with the inquiry and expect to be giving evidence in the coming months.
“I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system.
“I now intend to continue to focus on assisting the inquiry and will not make any further public comment until it has concluded.”
