The Post Office scandal: 13 petitions call for key campaigner Alan Bates to receive a CBE or knighthood
13 petitions are currently doing the rounds calling for key campaigner of The Post Office scandal to receive a CBE or knighthood. Watch more of our videos on Shots! and live on Freeview channel 276
Demands for Alan Bates to receive a knighthood for his decades-long fight for justice for subpostmasters hit by the Horizon scandal has received backing from Downing Street as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said the honour would be ‘common sense’. Head of Change.org UK petition Nick Mitchell[2] said that so far, there are 13 petitions calling for Alan Bates to receive either a CBE or knighthood for his efforts.
13 petitions are currently doing the rounds calling for key campaigner Alan Bates of The Post Office scandal to receive a CBE or knighthood
In a more than 20-year scandal, hundreds of postal workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for alleged false accounting, theft and fraud, because of a glitchy software system that incorrectly showed money missing from accounts.
Some spent time in jail while others went bankrupt, saw their marriages destroyed and some died before their names were cleared. Managers at Post Office branches across Britain, called postmasters or postmistresses, are often at the heart of their communities, trusted individuals who handle people’s savings and pensions. The Post Office maintained for years that data from the defective Horizon computer accounting system, developed by Japan’s Fujitsu and rolled out in 1999, was reliable, while accusing branch managers of theft.
Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells has said she is giving back her CBE
Who is Alan Bates and what did he do to help?
He is an ex-postmaster who set up and led the Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance in a decades long battle to expose the Post Office’s actions won a legal battle paving the way for dozens of convictions to be overturned. But 25 years on from the first convictions for theft and fraud, it is the four-part ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office that has renewed mass public interest in the scandal like never before. Watched by nine million viewers so far according to ITV figures, the mini-series centres on the story of sub-postmaster Alan Bates, played by actor Toby Jones.
This lead to a public outrage calling for justice.