9 things we learned as Alan Bates and Post Office bosses were grilled on the Horizon scandal

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https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... s-32224779

In a mammoth evidence session in Parliament, MPs grilled former subpostmasters and Post Office bosses about delays to compensation to victims of the Horizon IT scandal

Former subpostmaster and hero campaigner Alan Bates has branded the Post Office a "dead duck" that should be sold off.

In a mammoth evidence session in Parliament, MPs grilled former subpostmasters about the organisation as compensation continues to be delayed. Hundreds of subpostmasters are still awaiting compensation despite the Government announcing that those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts.

Former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton was also questioned by MPs about his claim he was ordered to slow down payments to victims of the Horizon IT scandal so the Tories could “limp into” the general election. In a packed day, current Post Office chief executive Nick Read - who it emerged said the organisation stands by some Horizon convictions - also gave evidence to the The Business and Trade Committee.

ITV drama 'Mr Bates vs the Post Office' ignited a ferocious backlash over the scandal, which saw more than 700 subpostmasters prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015.

The Mirror has rounded up the key seven moments from a dramatic day in Parliament as victims continue to fight for justice.

1. Alan Bates says Post Office should be sold
Former subpostmaster and lead campaigner Mr Bates branded the Post Office a "dead duck" and said it will be a "money pit" for taxpayers for years. He told MPs he believes it should be sold off, stating: "It will not change and you cannot change it.

"My personal view about the Post Office is it's a dead duck and it has been for years and it's going to be a money pit for the taxpayer for years to come. And you should sell it to someone like Amazon for a pound."

And quizzed about rumours that the organisation had been told to go slow on compensation, he said: "It wouldn't surprise me." He has told MPs that the Government should "get on and pay people" amid continued fall-out from the Horizon IT scandal.

His story recently became the subject of an ITV drama titled Mr Bates vs The Post Office, starring actor Toby Jones. Mr Bates told added that he had considered getting all the former subpostmasters involved in the initial High Court case to "stand as MPs when the next election comes", adding: "Then we'll sort it out once and for all."

2. Staunton claims chief exec nearly quit because he wasn't paid enough
Former chairman of the Post Office Mr Staunton claimed the organisation's current chief executive was going to resign because he was "unhappy with his pay". He said he'd tried to secure a pay rise for Nick Read, who was thinking of quitting because he wasn't paid enough.

But he said he was given short shrift by former Business Secretary Grant Shapps. The Tory Minister had told him about Mr Read's pay: "Don't even think of coming for any salary increase."

Pressed on the gap between executive pay he said: "There's an enormous discrepancy, as of course there is in and the other commercial organisation between the person on the shop floor and the Chief Executive officer of course."

3. Post Office branded 'rotten to core' because of low pay
Huge pay gaps in the Post Office show how the business is "rotten to the core", bosses have been told.

Labour MP Ian Lavery pointed out that two of three postmasters who gave evidence were earning less than £20,000 a year. He told bosses: "Your bonuses on top of the hundreds of thousands of pounds in wages was 20 times more than their annual salary. Does this not really show how the Post Office is rotten to the core?"

Mr Read responded: "I'm not going to answer that question, clearly, I'm clearly well paid and I'm clearly in a position where I'm trying to make sure that the commercial sustainability of the post office is going to be there for the next generation as well."

4. Ex-chairman says allegations came to light during probe into chief exec
Addressing allegations that his behaviour was being looked into, Mr Staunton confirmed that an investigation was ongoing. He said that an allegation of politically incorrect comments made by himself had been made in an 80 page report relating to Mr Read.

Asked if he was informed that his behaviour was under investigation in November last year, Mr Staunton said: "What there is, actually, is Mr Read fell out with his HR director and she produced a 'speak up' document which was 80 pages thick.

"Within that, was one paragraph... about comments that I allegedly made. So this is an investigation, not into me, this is an investigation made into the chief executive Nick Read.

"That one paragraph you could say was about politically incorrect comments attributed to me which I strenuously deny. This was not an investigation into me, this was an investigation based on the 80-page document prepared by the HR director."

5. Ex-postmaster says he sold everything and left country
Former subpostmaster Tim Brentnall, who is still battling to get full financial redress more than three years after his conviction was overturned, told MPs £600,000 "doesn't go anywhere near" redressing the ordeal people like him have gone through.

He said people in the business where he worked shunned the shop after he was painted as a fraudster. The Horizon victim said he had hidden away as a result of his ordeal.

He said he'd been accused of stealing more than £20,000. He added: "I sold my car, borrowed money from my parents and the business I paid the money back to to avoid the theft charge, but they then then charged me with false accounting."

6. Staunton doubles down on claims - and says he is victim of 'smear campaign'
Mr Staunton doubled down on his claims that he'd been ordered to slow down payments - and said he has been the victim of a "smear campaign".

Describing a meeting with senior civil servant Sarah Munby, he said he was told that "money was tight". He said he was told "this is no time to rip off the band-aid" and said he'd have to look at "three levers" - including compensation. Mr Staunton said: "It's such an unusual conversation that I did a full note of it actually used putting in quotation marks what I was told. And I was accused of being a liar until thankfully, I found this note just just a few days ago."

He also said that he is a victim of a "smear campaign" after his fallout with Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, after she said his claim in the Sunday Times that he was told to delay pay-puts to subpostmasters was "completely false". "We all know that things were moving far too slowly... and the reason why people have latched onto what I said in the Sunday Times was that finally someone was being honest about how deep-seated the problems were and why nothing was being done," he said.

"I still think that more could be done, at least to make compensation more generous, and the process of getting justice less bureaucratic. But I will at least have achieved something if the sunlight of disinfectant, which the Secretary of State so approves of, means that Government now lives up to its promises.

"What the public wants to know is: why was everything so slow? ... And why does everything remain so slow? I've spoken up on matters of genuine public concern, have been fired, and am now subject to a smear campaign."

7. Post Office says it's received 1,000 more claims since ITV drama
The Post Office revealed that it has had another 1,000 claims for compensation since ITV's series on the Horizon scandal.

"The closure was potentially looming until the excellent ITV series when we've had over 1,000 new claims in, which I think is fantastic by the way, because my job is to pay out fair compensation," Simon Recaldin, remediation matters director at the Post Office, told MPs on the Business and Trade Committee.

He said this now makes it more difficult to figure out when the compensation programme will be completed. "For you to now ask me to put a timescale on that is going to be challenging because I'd already dealt with 2,500 claims and I'd made the offers for 2,500 claims, and we were going through the process of resolving any disputes in that," he said.

"Therefore, I had a trajectory for those towards the end of this year and March next year to close all those down. Now, with another 1,000 cases in there, I have to reassess that plan in terms of how I deliver those."

8. Final compensation bill is likely to be more than £1billion
Department for Business official Carl Cresswell said he estimates that the final sum paid in compensation by taxpayers will pass £1billion.

He said: "I personally think that we will end up spending more money on compensation overall than that £1billion figure that was said in the earlier stages." At the moment around a third of victims have put in claims, the committee has heard. Mr Cresswell says he hopes that by August that will be up to 95%.

He said that 28 people who were paid less than £75,000 have had their compensation figure topped up.

9. We still don't know how much of this Fujitsu will pay
Members of the public will be "astonished" that taxpayers could foot a bill of more than £1billion over the scandal.

Tory MP Mark Pawsey said: "I think many of our constituents would be astonished to find that they, as taxpayers are having to contribute this money because of the bad decisions of the management within the post office."

Mr Cresswell responded that there is still discussion about how much of the bill software developer Fujitsu foots.

He said: " I think the the public mood is very much behind the postmasters, rightly, but I think that the question about who contributes towards the costs overall, taxpayer or someone else is still very much alive."

Andy McDonald said: "They (Fujitsu) came here with lots of expressions of sorrow and commitments. What are you doing to actually nail it down?" He said he was surprised that a sum hasn't been agreed already.

Mr Cresswell told the committee: "I think the principle of the moral obligation has been stated. We are in contact with Fujitsu, but I'm afraid we have not at this point achieved or you have said that you think that we should do."