Sir Alan Bates has settled his claim against the Department for Business and Trade over the Horizon scandal for a reported £4 million to £5 million. The 70-year-old campaigner, who led a decades-long fight for justice on behalf of wrongly prosecuted subpostmasters, told The Sunday Times that he believes criminal convictions remain elusive: «I don't think we'll get that (justice) for a long time yet. All the baddies seem to be hiding.»
The settlement marks the end of Bates' personal claim in the compensation scheme, though around 100 subpostmasters are yet to settle their cases. Bates had previously rejected two counter-offers from the DBT before accepting the final amount. He explained his decision in The Sunday Times interview: «I'd run the full course. I couldn't appeal it any further. If I hadn't accepted what they were prepared to give me, I wouldn't have got anything. It was take it or leave it. You have to be realistic about these things. We're getting on nowadays. We don't need vast quantities of money, we need enough hopefully to tide us over.»
Background to the scandal
Around 1,000 subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted and convicted between 1999 and 2015 due to faults in the Horizon accounting software. The scandal gained widespread public attention after the ITV drama "Mr Bates Vs The Post Office" aired earlier this year. Many victims contemplated self-harm due to the ordeal they experienced.
The Department for Business and Trade confirmed the settlement in a statement: «We pay tribute to Sir Alan Bates for his long record of campaigning on behalf of victims and have now paid out over £1.2 billion to more than 9,000 victims. We can confirm that Sir Alan's claim has reached the end of the scheme process and been settled.» The compensation scheme operates on an ex gratia basis, meaning the government is not legally obligated to provide payments.
Bates advised other subpostmasters still pursuing claims to be realistic about the process. «I have to remind them, listen to your legal team and keep challenging it, but it's not an endless process. Ultimately it is an ex gratia scheme, they don't legally have to give you anything,» he said. He plans to move to a new house in Wales and write his memoirs about the campaign: «I need to put down on record what really did happen and how we managed to move the whole thing forward.»
Note: This article was created with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
