A campaigner at the centre of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal has urged the government to sell the “dead duck” organisation to “someone like Amazon for £1”.
Alan Bates, whose experience founding the Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance and taking the Post Office to the High Court was dramatised in the ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, appeared at the House of Commons business and trade committee today.
During the Q&A, Bates told MPs: “My personal view about 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 in the years to come.
“You should sell it to someone like Amazon for £1, get really good contracts for all the serving subpostmasters and within a few years you’ll have one of the best networks around Britain.”
Asked if he thought a change of leadership at the Post Office would change how it dealt with financial redress for subpostmasters, he said: “I think over the years I’ve been dealing with Post Office, the culture has always been Post Office.
“It hasn’t changed, it’s been the same for donkey’s years – it will not change and you cannot change it.”
He also urged the Post Office and the government to “get on and pay people” and said it was wrong to describe the payments as compensation, as they were “financial redress”.
Quizzed on whether he believed the government had a grip on the redress process, the campaigner replied: “No, I’m afraid not – it’s very disappointing. This has been going on for years, as you well know, and I can’t see any end to it.”
He later added: “I don’t know what you can do other than remove the whole scheme from government itself … and try and do it elsewhere.
“We keep coming back to this time after time… pay people. There’s a lot of distractions, a lot of other things brought up, thrown up all the time – but just get on and pay people.”
Post Office former chairman Henry Staunton – who became embroiled in a row with business secretary Kemi Badenoch after he claimed he was told to delay Horizon compensation payments – alongside current chief executive Nick Read will also give evidence today.