News about Alan Bates

They were cheered on while scrambling up Gold Hill, a steep cobbled street in Shaftesbury in Dorset - immortalised by the ad directed by future Oscar nominee and knight Sir Ridley Scott. Each cheese block being lugged was 14in in diameter, weighed 55lb and needed 500 pints of milk to make. Crowds braved the rain as they huddled under umbrellas while encouraging the runners along the 72m-long route. The record time for completing the course stands at 15 seconds, in the event which forms part of the Shaftesbury Food and Drink Festival.

Tom Hayes was jailed for rate-rigging but says he was a scapegoat. Some are sceptical, but there is growing concern a miscarriage of justice has taken place. Ruth Sunderland speaks to him as Hayes reveals how he went from a fleet of Mercedes and a multi-million pay packet to a life serving alongside those in prison for killing people and on his release being broke and living in his parents' flat.

Alan Bates, the campaigner and former sub-postmaster, has called the Post Office an 'atrocious organisation' that is 'beyond saving'. At the same time, the founder of the Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society, Dinah Johnson, fears the Royal Mail's proposal to reduce second-class post to two or three days a week may spell the end of letter-writing. So with the postal service under fire from all directions, how well do you know your letters?

A review has been launched into a second Post Office IT system rolled out years before Horizon amid fears dozens more sub-postmasters may have been wrongly convicted, it emerged tonight. The Capture software was used in branches during the 1990s, years before the controversial Horizon system was introduced. More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 because of faults with Horizon. Glitches in the system meant money looked as if it was missing from many branch accounts, when in fact it was not. The miscarriage of justice was hauled back into the spotlight in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office - but it also led to former sub-postmasters recognising similarities between the Horizon and Capture systems. Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake is understood to have met with a former sub-postmaster and a lawyer representing 35 people who now believe they were also wrongly accused of stealing

Former subpostmaster Alan Bates has said he will pursue private prosecutions against those responsible for the Horizon IT scandal if the inquiry does not pass a file to prosecuting authorities. Mr Bates, who was played by Toby Jones in a critically-acclaimed drama, led the campaign against the Post Office on behalf of fellow postmasters who were wrongly accused of dishonesty and fraud.

I was abused physically by my wife. In the 1980s, we had a six-year relationship but I left her for the third time because of it. Two years later we met by accident and got together again. When family and friends protested I told them she'd changed... I still think I had to leave my wife and do right by the boys and know that it's now pointless to fret. But how I long for a relationship with my adult sons.

The probe into the Horizon scandal was told Ms Vennells (top left) made a 'false statement' about the outcomes of sub-postmasters' court cases in a letter to former Conservative MP Oliver Letwin. The inquiry was shown minutes of a meeting between Ms Vennells, former chair Alice Perkins and MPs such as Lord Arbuthnot in which she claimed a small number of subpostmasters had been 'borrowing' money from the tills. The minutes of the meeting read: 'It appears that some subpostmasters have been borrowing money from the Post Office account/till in the same way they might do in a retail business, but this is not how the Post Office works. 'Post Office cash is public money and the Post Office must recover it if any goes missing.' Speaking from the witness box at the inquiry on Wednesday, Lord Arbuthnot said of the meeting: 'At the meeting of May 17 with Oliver Letwin and me, Alice Perkins and Paula Vennells both raised the problem of there being lots and lots of cash lying around in unexpected places.'

Lead campaigner and ex-subpostmaster Alan Bates joked that the head of the Post Office 'should've brought his cheque book' with him to the Horizon IT Inquiry. The 70-year-old laughed as he suggested that Nick Read, who attended the inquiry today, could have sorted out remediation for his case 'there and then' while they were in the room together. He also said the Post Office has to 'get on with it' when it comes to properly compensating subpostmasters wrongly convicted in the scandal, after many have waited more than a decade for justice. It came after the inquiry at Aldwych House in London heard that Mr Bates had been sacked by the company because it considered him 'unmanageable'. The organisation has come under fire since the airing of the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, which put the Horizon IT scandal under the spotlight. More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu's faulty Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.

Lead campaigner and ex-subpostmaster Alan Bates was sacked by the Post Office because it considered him 'unmanageable', the Horizon IT Inquiry heard today. The probe was shown slides from a presentation about Horizon prepared by a former Post Office manager, which claimed Mr Bates 'clearly struggled with accounting'. The undated presentation about the system's integrity, created by the organisation's former managing director of branch accounting Dave Smith, read: 'Bates had discrepancies but was dismissed because he became unmanageable. Clearly struggled with accounting, and despite copious support, did not follow instructions.' An internal review of his dismissal concluded he was 'unsuitable' for the role, and said: 'The decision to terminate was not only right - it was the only sensible option.' Mr Bates gave evidence from the witness box today where he said his campaign for justice for subpostmasters was 'something you couldn't put down'. He also claimed that the Post Office spent 23 years 'attempting to discredit and silence me'.

Prominent campaigner Alan Bates arrived at the Post Office IT Inquiry in London today ahead of giving evidence to the investigation as it enters a significant phase. Mr Bates founded the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, and led a group of 555 subpostmasters who took the Post Office to the High Court over the scandal. His story recently became the subject of an ITV drama titled Mr Bates vs The Post Office, starring Toby Jones. Glitches in the Horizon IT system used by the Post Office meant money looked as if it was missing from many branch accounts, when in fact it was not. The scandal, which was ongoing from 1999 until 2015, represents one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK legal history and more than 100 subpostmasters have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal.

The 66-year-old appeared on Good Morning Britain earlier today and said she believes the Post Office needs to be 'taken over' by someone else to try to fix the once well-regarded company. Mrs Hamilton, a sub-postmaster at South Warnborough, Hampshire, was sacked over financial discrepancies. She re-mortgaged her house twice to fill the shortfall and was charged with theft of £36,000. She later admitted a lesser charge of false accounting to avoid jail.

The four-parter in January, with Toby Jones as subpostmaster Alan Bates, was the most watched program of the year, and the most popular drama of the last three years, according to ITV. It revealed how hundreds of subpoelmasters were wrongfully accused of stealing and fraud as a result of a flawed computer system, prompting Rishi Sunak's passing of a new bill to dismiss their convictions. Julie Hesmondhalgh's wife and Monica Dolan, as another of the victims, are among the first ensemble performances to debut on the Radio Times list.

Harcus Parker was one of the first law firms to advise disaffected Woodford investors to take a collective action against Link. Nevertheless, they were all suspended in their tracks in February this year as the High Court approved a redress scheme that squabbled out between the regulator and Link. However, Harcus Parker's most recent letter to those who have joined the now defunct group action outlines how the redress will be dealt with by fees (35 percent), insurance premiums, and insurance premium tax. It doesn't make for straightforward reading; an estimated 60% of the initial redress paid will have to be returned when Harcus Parker's invoices land in clients' email inboxes.

According to The Times, Jayakanthan Sivasubramaniam, 35, was investigated by the Post Office after being accused of stealing £179,000 from his Putney branch during the Horizon scandal in 2005. Two investigators searched the store on March 4 and searched their financial records, locking the couple out completely, according to his heartbroken wife, who requested to remain anonymous. She returned to home the next day after attending their two children's birthday party, only to find her husband's body in the attic. However, nearly twenty years after Mr Sivasubramaniam's death, his widow has been refused any compensation, despite the fact that it was her husband who had the company's name.

The former chief executive had been briefed about reports regarding the establishment of the remote unit at Fujitsu's Bracknell headquarters in 2013, two years before she told MPs that there had not been any miscarriages of justice.' Ms Vennells was told of the allegations made by former Post Office union rep Michael Rudkin while visiting Bracknell in 2008 and that they were investigating, according to a new bombshell video obtained by Channel 4 News. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were found guilty of stealing, fraud, and false accounting, due in part to defects in Fujitsu's Horizon system. Sub-postmasters have been complaining that the system was broken for more than two decades.

Janet Skinner, the wrongfully sentenced subpoena who spent months in a drug-infested jail cell, has said she wants 'justice' and 'accountability' for the Office of Justice mishap that culminated in her spending months in a drug-infested jail cell. In 2007, the 52-year-old was sentenced to prison for a reported shortfall of £59,000 from her Post Office in Hull. Ms Skinner told BBC Newsnight that she wanted to do something to those responsible for the miscarriage of justice, which resulted in more than 700 Post Office branch executives being falsely accused of stealing. She told Victoria Derbyshire that she needed 'arrests, people held accountable, sent to prison, with confiscations made against them, essentially forfeiting all their assets, the same way we've been treated. I lost my career in 2006, and I was arrested in February of 2007.'

Ms Vennells was told by a taped meeting with independent investigators from Second Sight on July 2, 2013 that sub-postmaster branch accounts could be accessed remotely. Ms Vennells, who had her CBE officially stripped from her by the King last month, told MPs in 2015 that she was unaware of any miscarriage of justice. Due to a computer error in the Horizon software, more than 900 sub-postmasters were found guilty of theft, theft, and false accounting between 1999 and 2015. The former chief executive of the Post Office while it routinely denied there was a problem with its Horizon IT system, and hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongfully charged.

After classified data revealed that the Horizon IT probe was covered up, pressures were building on the Post Office to face criminal charges last night. Despite years of denying this for years, the company and Fujitsu knew their flawed computer system could alter sub-postmasters' accounts more than ten years ago. Following hardware failures in the Horizon framework, more than 900 sub-postmasters were found guilty of theft, fraud, and false accounting between 1999 and 2015. When the Post Office retained forensic company Second Sight to conduct an independent probe, the recordings were made in 2013.

An inquest heard today that a grandfather died after waiting almost 32 hours for an ambulance because paramedics were on strike. On the isle of Anglesey, North Wales, William Guy, 77, broke his hip after falling in the bathtub of his care home just before 2.15 p.m. on February 20, last year. Medulance Service Trust (WAST)'s three days of strikes had started on the day, with bosses alerting patients that the strike will be'very dangerous and have a significant effect on (their) ability to respond to 999 calls.' Despite the fact that workers at the care home dialled 999 immediately, it was almost 32 hours later, at 10.10 p.m., when an ambulance arrived to bring Mr Guy, a retired car valetter who once worked on the Snowdon mountain railway, to the hospital. But by then, he had developed pneumonia and died at Gwynedd Hospital in Bangor the following day.

It comes after Henry Staunton, the company's deposed Post Office chairman, announced that the investigation was underway and pointed to the existence of an 80-page whistleblowing dossier compiled by the organistion's HR. On Tuesday, Mr Staunton told MPs on the Business and Trade Committee that he was going to resign because he was'unhappy with his pay.' In 2021-22, he earned £815,600,600, and £573,000 in 2022-23.

In a blistering letter, Henry Staunton, who was fired from his position in January, accused the government of not owning its "failings" or doing "the right thing" by wrongly accusing subordinates. The government had 'consistently concealed behind the Post Office's skirts, spinning them away from danger,' the note, sent to Liam Byrne, the chair of the industry and trade committee, said.'

According to MPs, the Post Office's boss is being investigated internally, and has reportedly threatened to resign four times after claiming that his salary is too low. During a Commons committee hearing into the Horizon IT scandal, bombshell revelations about Chief Executive Nick Read (pictured, right) whose salary is £435,000 were revealed yesterday. As he was undergoing criminal probe, former Chairman Henry Staunton (left), sacked last month, made the admission by standing by his assertion that government authorities ordered him to withhold compensation payments to wronged sub-postmasters.

In the aftermath of the Horizon IT scandal, campaigning postmaster Alan Bates delivered a scathing review of the Post Office, saying that the culture will'n't change'. He warned the Post Office will only be a "money pit" if it stays under government watch, as well as "one of the best networks around," he told MPs. Mr Bates was the subject of a hit ITV thriller that sparked a lot of public outrage over the persecution of hundreds of postmasters who had been accused of stealing due to inaccurate accounting software. The Commons Business Committee is receiving a day of testimony into the current state of play in the efforts to resolve the long-running chaos.

Following the ITV drama Mr Bates, the Liberal Democrat leader who served as the post office minister under the coalition government between 2010 and 2012 apologized to victims earlier this month. Sir Davey, who will testify alongside former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells in April, admitted that it took him too long to speak out.