Government Involvement in Compensation Schemes Criticized
Sir Alan Bates has strongly criticized the compensation schemes established for post office operators affected by the Horizon IT scandal, describing them as an "utter disaster" and asserting that the government should not be responsible for administering these schemes.
Bates, who was falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of theft and false accounting related to the scandal, has previously condemned the government for overseeing a flawed compensation system.
"I’d have to say they were an utter disaster to be quite frank," he told the public accounts committee of MPs on Monday. "There are so many reasons why they were wrong and why they caused so much grief, even nowadays. There is a fundamental problem with all of these schemes. That is that the government shouldn’t be involved with them. That is the biggest mistake about the whole thing."
Complexity and Legalism in Scheme Design
Bates explained that while initial discussions on the design and implementation of redress and compensation schemes began positively, they eventually became overly complex and legalistic by the time they were put into practice.
"They did listen to a lot of our points," he said. "But the scheme that came out at the end seemed so different. The first thing the department did was go out and hire an expensive team of lawyers to put the scheme together. It got bogged down. It has got so legalistic [which] turned it into this enormously complex and threatening thing for victims. Most victims just want a fair outcome. They just want to move on."
Long Campaign for Justice
Bates finally received justice more than two decades after he began campaigning for post office operators affected by the Horizon IT scandal.
He noted that many subpostmasters did not come forward to seek redress and compensation, even when contacted by the government, due to a loss of trust in the system.
"The civil service just grinds [schemes] into the ground," he said. "The government has to be involved at the highest level. It probably has to fund it – in our case until the real guilty [parties] cough up towards it as well - [but] it has to be [run by] an independent body. I think true independence would be very key. It has to be a totally independent body seen to act independently and have authority to do so."
Current Status of Compensation Claims
According to the latest UK government figures, as of 27 February, thousands of compensation claims remain unsettled.
More than 900 post office operators were convicted between 1999 and 2015 after the faulty Horizon IT system falsely indicated that money was missing from branch accounts.
These convictions were overturned in 2024 by an appellate court ruling.
