Post Office would do 'anything to hide Horizon failures' - Alan Bates

We'll be wrapping up our coverage very shortly, thanks for joining us.

If you'd like a recap of this afternoon's evidence session with Alan Bates, here's what the inquiry heard:

• Bates branded the Post Office an "atrocious organisation" and "dead duck" which "needs disbanding and needs building up again from the ground floor", suggesting it should be sold to "someone like Amazon"
• An email chain showed that, as early as July 2013, the Post Office was drafting a letter to its insurers to notify them of potential issues with Horizon. It showed a Post Office lawyer had written: "From a PR perspective, it would look bad if this got into the public domain"
• Elsewhere in the email chain, a Post Office lawyer said Bates had a "somewhat loose relationship with the truth"
• Bates told the inquiry sub-postmasters told him of serious losses in the tens of thousands but they were too "terrified" to tell the Post Office
• As he left the inquiry Bates said he hoped victims got compensation "sooner rather than later", adding it had gone on for "far too long"

• The current chief executive of the Post Office, Nick Read, was also watching - he told the BBC he was there to show support for the sub-postmasters, and acknowledged the financial redress scheme has been “slow” and said he would like to "accelerate" it

If you'd like a summary of the morning session, you can click here.

Today's coverage has been edited by Johanna Chisholm, Doug Faulkner and Adam Durbin and written by Ece Goksedef, Aoife Walsh, Christy Cooney, Gem O'Reilly, Barbara Tasch, Ben Hatton, Suneil Asar and Joe McFadden.

BBCCopyright: BBC

More from the BBC's interview with Alan Bates now, where he is asked how confident he is that there will be any criminal prosecutions as a result of the scandal.

"I think we will see some," he says. "Whether it's undertaken by the authorities themselves, or whether we as a group have to bring some if the authorities fail us once again - we'll have to wait and see."

Asked what he will do when it is all over, he jokes:

Quote Message: Me? I’m going to buy a little post office somewhere and put my feet up!"

Me? I’m going to buy a little post office somewhere and put my feet up!"

Asked whether he trusts the inquiry to hold the Post Office to account, Bates tells the BBC that he "certainly hopes they do".

"The evidence is certainly starting to appear to enable them to," he says.

Bates adds that the main thing he wants is for the victims of the scandal to get the compensation they have been promised "sooner rather than later".

"It's gone on far too long," he says.

Asked about the fact he still has not received compensation himself, he adds: "Yeah, exactly! What about it?".

Quote Message: I'm in no special place in the queue. I'm just one of the many. They just have to get on with it."

I'm in no special place in the queue. I'm just one of the many. They just have to get on with it."

We're now hearing directly from Alan Bates, who was greeted by cries of "Sir Alan" as he left the inquiry and then stopped to speak with the assembled reporters.

Asked how he felt the day went, he tells the BBC it was "interesting" and a "good start" to the hearings coming up.

We'll bring you more from our interview with him here, so stick with us.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

We've inevitably been hearing a lot about the Horizon IT system - here's a reminder about what it is.

Horizon was developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, for tasks such as accounting and stocktaking.

It was an electronic point-of-sale (Epos) system that was introduced by the Post Office in 1999 so as to replace the old paper accounting that was used across the country up until then.

However, shortly after being introduced, sub-postmasters quickly began to complain about bugs in the system after it falsely reported shortfalls - often for many thousands of pounds.

The Horizon IT system is still used by the Post Office, which describes the latest version as "robust".

• You can read falsemore about Horizon and the Post Office scandal here.

BBCCopyright: BBC

While we've been covering some of the more technical components of the Post Office inquiry today, it's worth remembering that there were many people who had their lives entirely upended because of the faulty Horizon system.

Our colleague Nicky Campbell took calls this morning from victims of the scandal on BBC 5 Live Breakfast. Here's what some of those sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses have been telling us:

Peter Collins, a sub-postmaster from Blackpool, tells BBC how he was forced to borrow nearly £20,000 to support himself after being caught up in the scandal and emphasises how “everybody needs to know the injustice that’s been done on a massive scale”.

Quote Message: I went to a dark place because it all came back, what could have happened to me, it didn’t by the grace of God, but I suddenly realised I could have lost everything.” from Peter Collins Sub-postmaster from Blackpool

I went to a dark place because it all came back, what could have happened to me, it didn’t by the grace of God, but I suddenly realised I could have lost everything.”

Seema Misra was pregnant with her second child when she was convicted of falsely accounting and theft at her branch in West Byfleet.

Quote Message: “I had faith in the justice system. I thought, 'Why would I go to prison for a crime I never committed?' But everything collapsed when I had 15 months imprisonment" from Seema Misra Sub-postmistress from West Byfleet

“I had faith in the justice system. I thought, 'Why would I go to prison for a crime I never committed?' But everything collapsed when I had 15 months imprisonment"

Janet Skinner was sent to prison in 2007 at the age of 35, after being falsely accused of stealing £60,000 as one of the "Post Office 39". Her conviction was later quashed, but she couldn't see her children and eventually lost her home - an experience she describes as one that "destroyed [her] life".

Quote Message: "It’s not just a computer system or remote access, this is people who have now committed this crime against people.” from Janet Skinner Former sub-postmistress

"It’s not just a computer system or remote access, this is people who have now committed this crime against people.”

The inquiry is closing for today and Bates’s evidence is now over.

Inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams says he sees "hands preparing" but asks people not to applaud.

He says there will be witnesses coming who may not be "as attractive to you" and that he would hate to think he would have to intervene to "prevent bad behaviour".

He says that in the interest of being even-handed "this is not a public meeting but a public inquiry, it is not a court of law, but it is a judicial process".

The inquiry will resume tomorrow morning at 10:00 BST.

Another moment of light relief there - with Alan Bates himself finding humour in memos sent about him.

In emails from 2017 that we've just seen, between Post Office lawyers one accuses Bates of having a "loose relationship with the truth".

It came after a statement Bates put out at the time, on behalf of his Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) group, which said many more former sub-postmasters and postmistresses wanted to join "the action" and make claims against the Post Office.

Bates laughs at the message but not nearly as loudly as some people in the room. I spy a small group of people I know to be former sub-postmasters and postmistresses nudging one another.

The inquiry has moved onto questions from Ed Henry KC, a lawyer for a group of sub-postmasters.

Henry refers to an e-mail chain that shows that, as early as July 2013, the Post Office was drafting a letter to its insurers to notify them of potential issues with Horizon.

The chain shows one of the Post Office's lawyers expressing a concern that, "from a PR perspective, it would look bad if this got into the public domain".

When asked about the culture at the Post Office after his dealings with them, Bates said "it's an atrocious organisation, it needs disbanding and needs building up again from the ground floor.

"The whole postal service is a dead duck and needs to be sold to someone like Horizon... not Horizon, to someone like Amazon", he says to laughs in the room.

The inquiry now hears that a judge had warned against the Post Office’s aggressive litigation tactics.

Bates is now asked whether he, as a litigant, experienced any such behaviour.

"They were definitely trying to outspend us," Bates says. "Anything they could do to spin it out, anything they could do to recuse the judge or whatever, they did. Anything to cost us money and try to get us to stop the case. That was obvious."

The hearing has moved on to the launch of the group legal action by sub-postmasters against the Post Office and some internal discussion of the launch between the Post Office and its lawyers.

Beer is asking Bates about an internal Post Office e-mail chain focusing on a press release from the JFSA which stated that over 1,000 sub-postmasters had "applied" to join the action, as opposed to having already joined it.

In the chain, one Post Office executive notes "they haven't joined yet", to which one of the lawyers responds: "Let's not forget that Alan Bates has a somewhat loose relationship with the truth..."

Bates defends the claim that over 1,000 sub-postmasters had applied, saying the actual total was around 1,200, some 550 ultimately joined the action.

Much of the inquiry’s session today has been focusing on letter exchanges between Bates and the various ministers who were responsible for postal affairs during the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in the years between 2010 and 2015.

In that period the parliamentary under secretary of state for employment relations and consumer affairs was responsible for postal affairs.

Several names have been mentioned in the evidence because the post was occupied by a few different people in those years - all from the Liberal Democrat party. For clarity, here’s a brief timeline:

• Ed Davey - May 2010 to February 2012

• Norman Lamb - February 2012 to September 2012

• Jo Swinson - September 2012 to December 2013

• Jenny Willott - December 2013 to June 2014

• Jo Swinson - June 2014 to May 2015

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

The inquiry room has emptied out a little since lunch. This is entirely normal as the day goes on, with some journalists and members of the public opting to sit in the common space outside so they can talk to one another or take calls.

Inside, where rows of people remain, we're continuing to hear evidence from Alan Bates, the former sub-postmaster and inspiration for ITV's Mr Bates vs the Post Office drama series.

Lawyers - who are sitting at the front of the room - are taking notes as various letters Bates has sent over the years are shown to us.

In one piece of correspondence that we've seen recently, he accuses the Post Office of not only "hardening its corporate defence" against postmasters, but "invoking the protection of the public purse as their last line of justification for not righting the wrongs they have inflicted on so many".

In a separate letter, one that Bates sent to former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells, he says "many of the prosecutions that POL [Post Office Ltd] have pressed home should never have taken place".

Beer reads from Bates' witness statement, in which he says he believed "the mediation scheme had failed as it was part of the cover up by POL [Post Office Limited]".

He goes on to say that the Post Office would come across things that it wouldn't like and there was an element of not wanting to accept blame.

Bates also said that he felt there was no intention of reaching a fair decision and that the Post Office had been using the scheme to see what evidence that sub-postmasters had about Horizon.

The inquiry now turns to a letter Paula Vennells sent to Bates, criticising him for writing those letters to Jo Swinson.

In it Vennells says the letter to Swinson came as a "shock and a disappointment" and that it breached "confidentiality" as well as bypassed the structure of the working group.

Bates says that this is another instance where he questions whether Vennells was getting correct information from her staff as she "never ever" attended any of the working group’s meetings.

The letter also says that the Post Office would have to consider its position within the scheme as a result of this letter, which is something Bates says he was not aware the Post Office was having an internal debate at the time whether his letter was "a golden opportunity" - as Beer put it - to end the scheme quickly.

Earlier, I brought you some of the key lines from my interview with former sub-postmistress Nicki Arch. Here's some more from that chat.

The 53-year-old tells me this has been going on for far too long: "I've got a 19 year old whose mother has always been the Post Office woman. I was in my twenties when all this happened and I'm turning 54 this year. I've been fighting every one of those years."

She says it's her "intention" to one day move on but "we're not there yet" and adds that it's down to the "amazing" work of Alan Bates that any progress has been made at all:

Quote Message: The letters he wrote all those years ago could've been been written last week - that's how much the Post Office and government have taken notice, absolutely nil."

The letters he wrote all those years ago could've been been written last week - that's how much the Post Office and government have taken notice, absolutely nil."

Nicki goes on to say she's now been given a "good" interim payment from the government, but is yet to receive a formal compensation offer.

Bates, whose own offer was received 111 days after his claim was submitted, described it as "cruel" earlier this year.

I ask Nicki what she needs to get past this traumatic episode in her life, to which she tells me the interim payment she's received can help her "buy a house and hopefully move on".

"I don't know what the end looks like you see, because I've never been there. I've always been fighting."

In a letter to Jo Swinson - who became Post Office minister in September 2012 - Bates questions why the Post Office are still prosecuting sub-postmasters, given the systemic failures identified by forensic accountants Second Sight.

He goes on to say that the Post Office were aware of the issues.

Beer turns to a second letter sent to Swinson in April 2014 in which Bates accuses the Post Office of causing delays to the mediation scheme.

The letter says that, regardless of what it was then saying publicly, the Post Office was "hardening its corporate defence" and also seemed "prepared to invoke the protection of the public purse as their last line of justification for not righting the wrongs they have inflicted on so many".

It adds: "It appears that whatever Post Office can block, it does".

Bates tells Beer there was no change as a result of the letter.

As the inquiry starts again, we are seeing a letter which Bates sent to Sir Anthony Hooper in November 2014.

Hooper, a former Court of Appeal judge, was the independent chair of the mediation group that had been set up between the JFSA and the Post Office.

In the letter, Bates says the mediation scheme as set up had "strayed so far from the original purpose" and was so disappointing that at least one applicant - of the few who had actually had a mediation meeting - withdrew from the process.

Bates writes that as the scheme progressed "the more entrenched and defensive" the Post Office became and that the "original concept of actually seeking the truth has long since been abandoned".

Bates now says that the scheme was "holding up cases" and asking for "extension after extension" to investigate them.

He adds that initially there was supposed to be a four-to-six-week period for the scheme to investigate a case but that some faced delays of up to seven months.