Alan Bates pictured (Image: Getty)
Downing Street has backed calls for hero postmaster Alan Bates to be knighted after his battle for justice in the Post Office scandal
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokeswoman said yesterday it would be “common sense” to honour the crusading former subpostmaster.
She was responding to calls led by cabinet minister Esther McVey who said Mr Bates should be knighted “as soon as possible”.
Mr Bates, who is 69, is said to have refused an OBE while former Post Office chief Paula Vennells still held the CBE she received deep into the scandal in 2019.
But MPs and campaigners have called for Mr Bates’s honour to be re-submitted now that Ms Vennells has agreed to relinquish hers in the face of a public outcry.
The Prime Minister’s press secretary argued that it is “hard to think of someone more deserving of being rewarded through the honours system than him”.
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She responded to the call from Ms McVey, who is nicknamed the “minister for common sense”, for Mr Bates to be knighted saying: “That sounds like common sense to me.”
Mr Bates himself showed a characteristic humility yesterday in response for the calls for him to be honoured.
He said: “It’s not about me, it’s about the whole group and it’s about getting this money out to people as soon as possible so they can try and get on with their lives and try and put this behind them.
He added: “It ain’t over yet. The devil is in the detail.”
Asked if he could ever put the scandal behind him and move on with his life he joked: “I think Mr Bates goes on holiday is possibly the next thing.”
He seemed unaffected by the praise led by Ms McVey who, asked when he might be knighted told GB News: “As soon as possible, I hope, but obviously it’s got to go through the regular process.
“But I have to say when the New Year’s Honours List came through, I said I want to see more ordinary extraordinary people. And I’m quite convinced this man is an extraordinary person and the public will be behind him.
“Anybody can nominate him and I’m quite sure we will see Sir Alan as soon as possible.
“They’ve waited far too long across all parties, they’re waited all too long (and) now have to act swiftly.”
“£148 million has already been paid out in compensation. We’ve got the inquiry ongoing. There was a court case, £600,000 pounds…agreed to up front, if they were convicted.
“But this does need to be speedy and we do need to see this happening because people are saying it’s taken too long this compensation.”
Political support for the honour crossed political lines, with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also backing the move.
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His spokesman said: “I think Alan Bates clearly has emerged as a hero throughout this for the way in which he has led the campaign, the fortitude and resolve he was shown given everything that has been thrown at him throughout this process.
“Obviously honours have their own independent process, but I’m sure that is something the public would regard as entirely appropriate and we would support.”
Labour Party chair Anneliese Dodds said she also backed a knighthood for Bates: “I think there’s a very strong argument for it.
“But I would say, as well as the symbolism around this and the empathy that we’ve heard, what these former postmasters really need to see is compensation and they need those wrongful convictions to be quashed…they’ve waited for far too long for that.
“So, absolutely, let’s honour those who campaigned so hard, particularly Alan Bates and others. But let’s make sure they get what’s due too because for many of them, they just cannot wait.
“Careers have been ruined and some of them now, sadly, are really quite elderly. They need to get that support and that restitution now.”
MPs from the Conservatives and Labour called for Mr Bates to be given an honour ‘higher than an OBE’ for his relentless campaign to clear more than 700 postmasters wrongfully convicted during the Horizon IT scandal.
Tory David Jones MP for Clwyd West said Mr Bates should be honoured for the “huge amount” he had done “to expose what was going on at the Post Office”.
Labour’s Kevan Jones, a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board, said Mr Bates “deserves an honour much higher” than an OBE.
Mr Bates was a subpostmaster in north Wales who was accused of theft when his money stock counts did not match those of the digital accounting system.
He was contractually obliged to pay back the “losses” from his own pocket, and, despite first reporting issues with Horizon in 2000, he had his contract terminated in 2003 when he refused to comply with Post Office policy.
He led the campaign group Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance to its High Court victory in 2019.
Mr Bates, now 69, and his partner, Suzanne Sercombe, started their Post Office outlet in Llandudno in 1998.
He first realised something was wrong when £6,000 went missing from his books and soon suspected it was down to Fujitsu’s flawed Horizon software system.
He refused to pay back the shortfall and was later closed down, losing some £60,000 that the couple had invested in the business.
The postmaster’s long-running battle for justice accelerated dramatically after ITV broadcast the harrowing drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, starring Toby Jones, which highlighted the scandal earlier this month.
The system of awarding honours is complex and has various criteria over the awarding of knighthoods, CBEs, OBEs and other honours.
Former Post Office chief Paula Vennells on Tuesday announced she would give up her CBE after a petition calling for her to be stripped of it reached more than 1.2 million signatures.
Whitehall’s forfeiture committee will now go through the official process of withdrawing it.
