Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, was advised to meet Post Office campaigner Alan Bates in 2010 to avoid bad publicity over the Horizon scandal, according to documents obtained by the BBC. As postal affairs minister between May 2010 and February 2012, Sir Ed oversaw the Post Office, which is wholly owned by the government but maintained an arm’s length relationship when it came to day-to-day operations. Bates, who set up the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, wanted to discuss Horizon, which at the time the Post Office maintained was not faulty. His initial request for a meeting in May 2010 had been rejected, but Sir Ed did later meet him in October that year, after officials at the business department warned about the possibility of bad headlines such as “government minister refusing to meet victims”.
Documents reveal that Sir Ed was advised to meet Bates for “presentational reasons”. The civil servants drew up a note for Sir Ed ahead of the October meeting saying that they had noticed journalists looking into the story and the meeting was recommended “against the background of potential publicity”. The note advised him to “continue to express full confidence in the integrity and robustness of the Horizon system.” It also gave him a list of potential “elephant traps” for the discussion including advice to “avoid any commitment to adopting any of” the objectives put forward by Bates’s campaign group. He was also advised to “avoid committing to set up an independent/external review of Horizon”, with the note adding any such review would be “expensive” and “time-consuming”.
Sir Ed said he was the first minister to meet Bates and added he took his concerns “very seriously”. “When I put those concerns to the Post Office, concerns about the Horizon IT system, I’m afraid I was lied to,” he added. With a general election coming up, he said he had not considered stepping down as Liberal Democrat leader. “When I go out there campaigning, we’re finding incredible results in seats that only we can beat the Conservatives in,” he said.
Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted hundreds of sub-postmasters and mistresses after faults with the Horizon accounting system made it look like money was missing. The Liberal Democrats have accused the Conservative-majority government in place since 2015 of being slow to compensate victims. The UK’s business department has stated it is working to speed up compensation to those wrongfully convicted and is bringing forward legislation to overturn the convictions of those wrongly prosecuted.
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