Alan Bates has pledged to launch a crowdfunding campaign to put Post Office bosses behind bars if the authorities “fail us”, in a sign that his 23-year fight for justice may be far from over.
The former sub-postmaster, who led 555 colleagues into the High Court, said he was certain he could raise the millions of pounds necessary to pursue private prosecutions if the criminal investigation continued to stall.
“The nation is angry about this,” he told The Times in an exclusive interview following his evidence to the Post Office inquiry. “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.
“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.”
Ministers must ensure the public inquiry’s remit includes building a dossier of evidence and potential suspects, he said, as he called on the “faceless mandarins of Whitehall” to be examined by police for their role in the scandal and alleged cover-up.
Advertisement
Bates, 69, took on the fight against the Post Office and the government from his home in north Wales after he was sacked from his business in 2003.
His masterstroke was raising £47 million of litigation funding to allow postmasters to fight a group action in the High Court, which ultimately blew the scandal open and unlocked dozens of acquittals and £1 billion of compensation.
The story has topped the agenda since his fight was dramatised on ITV, with the starring role played by Toby Jones.
Now, amid calls that he be knighted, Bates is focused on the next stage of the campaign: accountability through the criminal courts.
“There are scandals like Hillsborough, Grenfell, banking scandals, maybe Windrush,” he said. “Everyone can think of cases where it feels bosses and figures in government seem to have got away with it.
Advertisement
“If we’re successful in bringing forward prosecutions and holding people to account for what they’ve actually done, it will send a message to the corporate world that this will happen to you if you misbehave or abuse your powers.”
Bates, who had discussed the possibility of private prosecutions with lawyers before the statutory inquiry was set up, is speaking out now because he fears that lethargy has set in.
The inquiry has not said if it will pass a file to the police or prosecutors, despite the chairman Sir Wyn Williams’s team poring over millions of documents to build a picture of what happened.
The Metropolitan Police, which has special status at the inquiry, has said it is investigating possible fraud offences at the Post Office, but its commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has said its work will take until at least 2026.
A perjury investigation has been running since 2020 but there has been no apparent progress for two years after two former Fujitsu IT experts were interviewed under caution.
Advertisement
“We need clarity as to whether or not building a schedule for investigation is in the inquiry’s remit,” Bates said. “If it is not doing it presently, either its remit needs to be changed or we, the JFSA [Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance], have to start fundraising.
“If the evidence is there, we should move forward with criminal action as soon as possible,” he said. “While much anger is aimed at Post Office personnel, and rightly so, others who have been involved, whether faceless mandarins of Whitehall, or lawyers involved, should also be looked at.
• Meet the real Alan Bates who took on the Post Office and won
• Who is responsible for the Post Office scandal?
• The 10 key takeaways from the Post Office inquiry
• The key Post Office inquiry witnesses and what their evidence could reveal
“It was Paula Vennells who agreed at the MPs’ select committee that the buck stops with her, but it is not just her.”
Does this new phase mean Bates’s campaign continues? “Once the redress scheme for the 555 is out of the way, I will have felt that my job is done, but this [prosecutions] is very important to the group,” he said. It’s not a no.
Advertisement
This week Kevin Hollinrake, the Post Office minister, said “people within the Post Office, possibly further afield, should go to jail” for their role in the Horizon scandal, where evidence could be “established”.
In submissions filed in February, Edward Henry KC, representing a number of sub-postmasters, told the inquiry that he believed hearings held last autumn had established that more than a dozen staff at the Post Office and Fujitsu could be prosecuted for plotting to pervert the course of justice.
Nadhim Zahawi MP, the former Tory chairman of the business select committee who questioned Vennells in 2015, has called for corporate manslaughter charges, alongside individual actions, a position that Bates agrees with as “decisions are signed off by boards at the end of the day”, although he says precisely what crimes are prosecuted is the domain of legal experts.
In January, The Times reported that Tom Little KC, a senior Treasury counsel for the Crown Prosecution Service, had been advising the police during the inquiry. He is part of a team of six barristers — described as the “brightest and the best” — who prosecute the most serious and complex cases for the CPS, raising the hopes of sub-postmasters.
Sources said he would be the “point man” in deciding who, if anyone, would be investigated and prosecuted, adding that the police would be watching “each and every day” of the inquiry.
Advertisement
At least five sub-postmasters have taken their own lives in the Horizon accounting scandal, and more than 250 have died without receiving their final compensation payout.
In total, 4,500 former owner-managers and Post Office staff fell victim, including up to 980 prosecuted on data from the faulty Horizon accounting system.
A spokesman for the inquiry said: “The inquiry is an ongoing legal process so we cannot confirm what Sir Wyn’s recommendations are likely to be after he has finished hearing oral evidence. However, there is nothing in law that prevents any investigative, prosecuting or regulatory authority conducting investigations alongside the inquiry and taking any action that they see fit.”
In the Hillsborough disaster, in which 97 Liverpool football fans died, one person was successfully prosecuted: the stadium’s health and safety officer, who was fined £6,500.
Trials are not expected to start for companies and individuals responsible for the Grenfell Tower disaster, in which 72 people died, until 2026, with corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, fraud and health and safety offences under consideration.
The inquiry into the infected blood scandal, in which about 3,000 people died after being injected with HIV or Hepatitis C from unscreened blood from the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, has heard that civil servants and senior doctors knew of the problem long before action was taken. No one has faced prosecution.
