Bates accuses Post Office firm of being ‘disingenuous at best’

Lawyers acting for the Post Office tried to ‘drown’ victims in documents to stop them pursuing justice, according to campaign leader Alan Bates.

The former sub-postmaster appeared at the Post Office Inquiry today in the first hearing of the phase looking at the fallout from the scandal.

In a 67-page written statement, Bates said the Post Office’s mediation scheme to try to agree a settlement failed ‘as it was part of the cover up by POL’ and used as a fishing expedition to see what evidence sub-postmasters had about the Horizon IT system.

Bates, who founded the Justice For Subpostmaster Alliance (JFSA), said he and hundreds of other victims then brought a group litigation because this was the ‘only way to expose the truth’. But he accused the Post Office and its external lawyers Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD) of failing in their disclosure obligations. Bates said from the very start claimant firm Freeths had written to request copies of the known error logs, but that WBD replied it was not sure if such a thing existed. This was ‘disingenuous at best’, said Bates.

He added: ‘We/our expert stumbled across the fact that [system failures] existed, and POL had not volunteered this information, so we had to push for their disclosure as well. Hundreds of thousands of documents were provided which was no doubt a deliberate attempt to drown us in documents, and then key disclosure was being provided right up to and including the trial which could have derailed it and was extremely frustrating.

‘[WBD partner] Andrew Parsons was asked to prepare a number of witness statements explaining why disclosure orders had not been complied with. POL made it incredibly difficult.’

Parsons is due to give evidence to the inquiry over two days next month.

Bates commented that the Post Office decision to issue an application for Mr Justice Fraser to recuse himself from hearing the group litigation (the application failed) was ‘made out of desperation’.

‘The application had immediate ramifications and it seemed as if POL were trying to delay everything so that we would run out of money,’ he told the inquiry. ‘It was a truly irresponsible decision.’

Bates said the Post Office employed a ‘cynical approach’ by fighting harder in order that the sub-postmasters would run out of funding to continue their case.

He was due to give oral evidence for the whole of today.