Sir Alan Bates says he hopes ‘real bad guys’ will be held to account

In an interview with the BBC’s World at One programme, Sir Alan said he hoped public scrutiny would ensure justice was done.

Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds were wrongly prosecuted after Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT accounting system made it appear as if money was missing.

Many lost their livelihoods or were forced to make ends meet, while others have described feeling ostracized from their communities. Some former sub-postmasters took their own lives.

On Monday, Edward Henry KC, representing the victims, said: “The truth is this tragedy is not about an IT system. Horizon did not destroy the innocent – the Post Office’s malign culture did.”

“People were ruined, people went bankrupt, people were jailed, there were atrocious miscarriages of justice, people died,” he said.

His statement marked the beginning of the end of the inquiry, which was set up in September 2020 to look into the postal service scandal.

It has heard from 298 witnesses, received 780 depositions and processed more than 2.2 million pages of disclosure.

Witnesses have included Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, who has been widely criticized for her handling of the case.

Summing up, Henry told the inquiry: “The world’s greatest horrors, man’s cruelty to man, are not caused by monsters, malfunctions or accidents, but by those who claim to be acting in the name of good.”

At the start of the year, the ITV drama Mr Bates versus the Post Office captured the public’s imagination and won a number of awards by focusing on the human stories behind the scandal.

Sir Alan said “the country will hold a lot of people to account for this and they will want to see real justice” as a result.

He also said he hoped the inquiry’s chairman, Sir Wyn Williams, would “name names in this one”.

Sir Wyn’s final report into the scandal is due to be published next year, but Sir Alan said he was concerned it could be “shelved” and little would happen afterwards.

As Sir Wyn considers all the information, one of the lawyers representing the victims, Sam Stein KC, called for the inquiry to remain involved, particularly in holding the Post Office and the Department for Business accountable for compensation payments.