Alan Bates, the founder of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, is set to give evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry on Tuesday, 9 April. The inquiry, which is investigating the scandal surrounding the Horizon IT system used by the Post Office, has been ongoing for several months.
The Horizon IT system glitches led to numerous subpostmasters being wrongly accused of theft, with money appearing to be missing from branch accounts when it was not. This scandal, which lasted from 1999 to 2015, has been described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK legal history.
Mr. Bates, along with 555 other subpostmasters, took the Post Office to the High Court over the scandal. More than 100 subpostmasters had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal as a result of the inquiry.
In his previous testimony to the Business and Trade Committee, Mr. Bates criticized the Post Office and urged the Government to provide compensation to those affected by the scandal. He described the Post Office as a “dead duck” and called for swift action to address the injustices suffered by subpostmasters.
Mr. Bates’s evidence on Tuesday will focus on governance, redress, and the response of the Post Office and other parties involved in the scandal. The inquiry’s fifth and sixth phases will delve deeper into the systemic issues that allowed the Horizon IT scandal to occur and the steps that need to be taken to prevent similar injustices in the future.
The testimony of Mr. Bates is expected to shed further light on the extent of the wrongdoing and the impact it has had on the lives of subpostmasters across the country. Stay tuned for updates on this developing story as it unfolds.