Post Office misled me about scandal, insists Ed Davey

Sir Ed Davey is facing further pressure over his handling of the Post Office IT scandal when he was postal affairs minister in the coalition government.

In May 2010, the Liberal Democrat leader refused to meet Alan Bates, the sub-postmaster who led the campaign to expose the scandal, saying he did not believe it "would serve any purpose".

He has now said he was "deeply misled by Post Office executives".

But Tory MP Paul Scully accused him of "airbrushing his actions".

Sir Ed did later meet Mr Bates in October 2010 - and the Lib Dems say he was the first postal affairs minister to hold such a meeting since campaigners began pressing for talks in 2003.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 branch owner-operators were wrongly prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting, on the basis of faulty information from Horizon software introduced by the Post Office.

Some went to prison. Many were financially ruined. Some have since died.

The affair has been described by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) as "the most widespread miscarriage of justice the CCRC has ever seen and represents the biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history".

An independent public inquiry led by retired judge Sir Wyn Williams is continuing. Events surrounding the scandal are back in the spotlight because of an ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which has been screened this week.

In a letter to Mr Bates in 2010, Sir Ed said the government had an "arms length relationship" with the Post Office, so it had "the commercial freedom to run its business operations without interference".

"The integrity of the Post Office Horizon system is an operational and contractual matter for POL [Post Office Ltd], whilst I do appreciate your concerns... I do not believe a meeting would serve any useful purpose," he added.

Sir Ed told Times Radio on Thursday Post Office executives "didn't come clean. There were definitely attempts to stop me meeting [campaigners].

"We were clearly misled. I think ministers from all political parties were misled."

But Conservative MP Paul Scully, postal affairs minister from 2020 to 2022, told the Sun newspaper the Lib Dem leader was "airbrushing his actions a decade later".

Sir Ed, he said, had "flunked his first test of leadership. The Post Office clearly misled plenty of people but being a minister is not just picking up a ministerial car or an entourage for a while.

"The job of a minister is to probe and get action... He's one of several people in power that have failed the hundreds of postmasters affected by the biggest miscarriage of justice in British court history.

While he was the minister responsible, Mr Scully was widely criticised for resisting widening a government inquiry into the scandal into a statutory public one. Statutory inquiries have legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence.

Ministers relented on this point in May 2021, with Mr Scully saying the context of events had changed after the convictions of 47 former staff were quashed and hundreds more were expected to follow.

Writing in the Sun, former Home Secretary Priti Patel, whose father was a sub-postmaster, said: "These pillars of the community were bullied and betrayed by the Post Office, courts and successive Labour and Lib Dem ministers."

Asked about Sir Ed's involvement on LBC, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: "All of those involved at the time... do need to answer some basic questions" because people's lives, livelihoods, health and mental health had been severely affected.

But, he suggested, the priority should be paying all the compensation set aside and the government should "get on with it".

Speaking on a campaign visit to Stockport, Rishi Sunak said the government was "keen to work through" compensation claims "as quickly as possible."

Asked if he could promise that all affected Post Office staff would receive compensation by the end of the year, he said: "It's important that all those who suffered get the justice they deserve, that's why we've set up three different compensation schemes.

"We have paid out almost £150m to over two-and-a-half-thousand people."

A Lib Dem spokesperson told the BBC: "Ed's heart goes out to the families caught up in this scandal and his focus is on getting justice and compensation for those impacted.

"He bitterly regrets that the Post Office was not honest with him at the time and will fully cooperate with the inquiry to get to the bottom of what went wrong."

Campaigning in Surrey earlier this week, Sir Ed said he regretted not asking "tougher questions" of Post Office managers, describing what had happened as "dreadful and it's been going on for so long".

He said the government "really needs to sort out the compensation", and accused Post Office executives of "dragging their feet" and "not bringing evidence to the inquiry".

Both Mr Sunak and Sir Keir have sidestepped calls for former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells to lose her CBE over the Horizon scandal.

Ms Vennells has said she is "truly sorry" for the "suffering" caused to sub-postmasters and postmistresses who were wrongly convicted of offences.