Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey is under fresh pressure over the Post Office Horizon scandal amid renewed scrutiny of his actions as a government minister.
The Sunday Times has published a cache of correspondence between former sub-postmaster Alan Bates and ex-ministers from the Coalition government – including Sir Ed.
Mr Bates’s fight for justice has been portrayed by Toby Jones in the acclaimed new ITV drama, ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’, which has raised new public awareness of the scandal.
More than 700 Post Office branch managers were handed criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software, known as Horizon, made it appear as though money was missing from their outlets.
It has been described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history and a public inquiry into it is ongoing.
Sir Ed was today accused of ‘fobbing off’ the victims of the scandal after his replies to Mr Bates during his time as postal affairs minister between 2010 to 2012 were revealed.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey is under fresh pressure over the Post Office Horizon scandal amid renewed scrutiny of his actions as a government minister
The Sunday Times has published a cache of correspondence between former sub-postmaster Alan Bates and ex-ministers from the Coalition government – including Sir Ed.
Mr Bates’s fight for justice has been portrayed by Toby Jones in the acclaimed new ITV drama, ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’, which has raised new public awareness of the scandal
The Sunday Times reported Mr Bates wrote five letters to Sir Ed during his time in the role.
In the first of them, on 20 May 2010, Mr Bates urged Sir Ed to intervene and called for an ‘independent external investigation instigated at ministerial level’.
He said this would ‘without any doubt easily find evidence of the error-ridden system’.
In his reply, Sir Ed told Mr Bates that a meeting would not serve ‘any useful purpose’ and suggested the matter was not an issue for the government as the Post Office was treated as an ‘arm’s length’ body by ministers.
In a follow-up to Sir Ed’s letter, on 8 July 2020, Mr Bates told the then minister his response to the ‘very serious issues I had raised was not only disappointing but I actually found your comments offensive’.
‘It is because you have adopted an arm’s length relationship… [that] you have enabled them to carry on with impunity regardless of the human misery and suffering they inflict,’ he added.
The newspaper reported the pair then met and, in another letter sent on 14 October 2010, Mr Bates sought to elaborate on a number of issues they had discussed.
A week later, on 21 October 2010, Mr Bates wrote to Sir Ed for a fourth time to notify him of ‘yet another victim’.
But, in a reply in December 2010, Sir Ed told Mr Bates that ‘as I made clear in the meeting’ neither he nor the Department for Business could intervene in cases currently before the courts or where a legal judgment had been reached.
He added: ‘POL [Post Office Ltd] continues to express full confidence in the integrity and robustness of the Horizon system and also categorically states that there is no remote access… which would allow accounting records to be manipulated in any way.’
In a fifth letter to Sir Ed, on 20 August 2011, Mr Bates accused the minister of ‘having nailed your colours to POL’s mast’ and suggested there ‘was little point in continuing a dialogue with you or your department’.
He also notified Sir Ed that members of the Justice For Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) had begun legal action against the Post Office and warned the eventual financial liability for taxpayers ‘has the potential of being astronomical’.
Mr Bates added that Sir Ed’s decision to ‘ignore our offer to work with you and your department’ had left the group with ‘no option other than to seek redress through the courts, which is now where the real truth behind Horizon will be exposed’.
Sir Ed was promoted to the Cabinet as energy secretary in February 2012, at which point he was succeeded as postal affairs minister by fellow Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb, who in turn was replaced by Jo Swinson six months later.
During the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition government, the Department for Business was run by senior Lib Dem MP Sir Vince Cable.
Former Lib Dem ministers were accused of ‘fobbing off’ victims of the Post Office scandal while they were in government.
Senior SNP MP Joanna Cherry posted on Twitter: ‘With government comes responsibility.
‘Lib Dems in the frame for fobbing off the victims of Post Office miscarriages of justice but successive Tory Governments shouldn’t be off the hook & it falls to them to finally sort this out.’
A Lib Dem source pointed to how Sir Ed was the first postal affairs minister to record a meeting with Mr Bates after he had previously reached out to various ministers under the previous Labour government.
They also noted how four Tory postal affairs ministers between 2015 and 2019 recorded no official meetings with Mr Bates or the JFSA.
A party spokesperson said: ‘Ed’s heart goes out to the families caught up in this scandal and his focus is on getting justice and compensation for those impacted.
‘Not realising that the Post Office was lying on an industrial scale is a huge regret. Ed will fully cooperate with the inquiry to get to the bottom of what went wrong.’