Sir Alan Bates receives his honorary doctorate from Coventry University.
The campaigner speaks to Covfeed and shares his frustrations with the British system prior to his doctorate. - By Jack Woolf
Sir Alan Bates has received his honourary doctorate from Coventry University during a recent graduation ceremony at Coventry Cathedral.
The famed campaigner rose to prominence through his championing of the victims of the Horizon Scandal. A new system named Horizon was installed into the Post Office computer systems by a company called Fujitzu. The computer system declared non-existent shortfalls in individual post office finances that the sub postmasters (the person who runs that particular post office) then had to pay. As a result hundreds of people were accused of theft by the post office. Some lost their jobs, others were imprisoned and some even killed themselves.
Sir Alan Bates was one of those who was fired, he publicly complained about the issue and eventually created an organisation called Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, he got hundreds of people affected by this together in a local village called Fenny Compton in Warwickshire. They campaigned for justice and succeeded in High Court, though after legal fees the compensation to the victims was a comparatively low 12 million pounds, which ended up being about £20,000 for each victim.
Sir Alan, when Covfeed got the chance to interview him prior to receiving his doctorate, said this was nowhere near enough. “Compensation is something you get for stubbing your toe. This is financial redress that people are owed,” he said. “Some of them have been waiting for twenty years to get it, they need to get on with their lives,” he continued. 1.8 billion pounds were allocated towards the victims of the post office scandal in the most recent budget, but Sir Alan raised concerns. “Just coming out with a number doesn’t help many people. Does it cover legal fees? The cost of the inquiry? We’re trying to resolve this at the moment,” he said.
A public inquiry has been ongoing since 2020 to investigate the scandal, and now involves the metropolitan police looking into the post office and Fujitzu. “There are now over 100 officers working on it,” Sir Alan said. “They are determined to follow through wherever the evidence leads, no matter how high up it goes.”
One issue with the inquiry is that it has not set a deadline. Sir Alan understands this to an extent, “It’s not going to happen quickly, it’s going to take a number of years,” he said. But he did write to Sir Keir Starmer asking for some guidance on when to expect a deadline. His response, according to Sir Alan, was disappointing. “It was bog standard civil service speak, a re-hash on what we heard before. No assurances on a deadline,” he said. His frustration when stating this was clear.
Sir Alan made the point that he did not blame politicians for the slowness of the inquiry, in fact he highlighted contributions made by particular MPs like James Arbuthnot, the conservative MP who first championed the post office victims in Commons. “One of the big problems we’ve had along the way is the system, the civil servants,” he said. “The whole process has turned highly bureaucratic and highly legal.”
One key element of the horizon scandal has been the awareness raised by the hit ITV drama called ‘Mr Bates vs the Post office’ that became one of the most successful shows the network has ever produced. Sir Alan shared some reservations of the series but was ultimately positive. “The true full story is not quite reflected in there, but it’s hard to compress 20 years of campaigning into a few hours,” he said. “It was highly successful getting over the damage that major government organisations inflicted on ordinary people, the way they abused their power,” he continued. “That woke up the nation.” He did add that he was pleased with Toby Jones’ performance of him.
Finally, Sir Alan mentioned how scandals like this can be prevented in future. “We can’t keep reinventing the wheel every time there’s a new scandal or inqury, there’s got to be a process to deal with it,” he said.
Jenna Ward, Dean of Business and Law at Coventry University, was one of those responsible for Sir Alan’s nomination. She described Sir Alan as “humble, knowledgeable and inspiring.” “The values and spirit that he showed are very much aligned with the graduate attributes we encourage in our own students,” she said. ‘It could be any of us in that situation, it makes you reflect on how you as an individual would behave', Jenna continued.
Sir Alan may have been honoured by Coventry university, but justice for the victims of the Horizon scandal is still clearly a long way off. He clearly intends to keep fighting for those affected, and that fight and his leadership are exactly why he received this doctorate.