Sir Alan Bates has reached a seven-figure deal to settle his claim over the Post Office Horizon scandal, more than 20 years after he began campaigning over what turned into one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice.
Sky News has learnt that the government has agreed a deal with the former sub-postmaster after handing him what he described as a “take it or leave it” offer during the spring.
Sir Alan has previously said publicly that that proposal amounted to 49.2% of his original claim.
One source suggested that his final settlement may have been worth between £4m and £5m, implying that Sir Alan’s claim could have been in the region of £10m, although those figures could not be corroborated on Tuesday morning.
A government spokesperson said: “We pay tribute to Sir Alan Bates for his long record of campaigning on behalf of victims and have now paid out over £1.2bn to more than 9,000 victims.
“We can confirm that Sir Alan’s claim has reached the end of the scheme process and been settled.”
Sky News has attempted to reach Sir Alan for comment about the settlement of his claim.
Sir Alan led efforts over many years to prove that the Horizon software system supplied by Fujitsu, the Japanese technology company, was faulty.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015, with scores of people either ending their own lives or making attempts to do so.
However, it was only after ITV turned their fight for justice into a drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, that the government accelerated plans to deliver redress to victims.
Even so, the compensation scheme set up to administer redress has been mired in controversy.
Writing in The Sunday Times in May, Sir Alan described the process as “quasi-kangaroo courts in which the Department for Business and Trade sits in judgement of the claims and alters the goalposts as and when it chooses”.
“Claims are, and have been, knocked back on the basis that legally you would not be able to make them, or that the parameters of the scheme do not extend to certain items.”
Sir Alan had previously been made compensation offers worth just one-sixth of his claim – which he had labelled “derisory”, with a second offer amounting to a third of the sum he was seeking.
Sir Ross Cranston, a former High Court judge, adjudicates on cases where a claimant disputes a compensation offer from the government and then objects to the results of a review by an independent panel.
In 2017, Sir Alan and a group of 555 sub-postmasters sued the Post Office in the High Court, ultimately winning a £58m settlement.
However, swingeing legal fees left the group with just £12m of that sum, prompting ministers to establish a separate compensation scheme amid a growing outcry.
A significant number of other sub-postmasters have also complained publicly about the pace, and outcome, of the compensation process.
The first volume of Sir Wyn Williams’s public inquiry into the Horizon scandal was published in July, and concluded that at least 13 people may have taken their own lives after being accused of wrongdoing, even though the Post Office and Fujitsu knew the Horizon system was flawed.
The miscarriage of justice left the Post Office’s reputation, and that of former bosses including chief executive Paula Vennells, in tatters.
A subsequent corporate governance mess under the last government further dragged the Post Office’s name through the mud, with the then chief executive, Nick Read, accused of being absorbed by his own remuneration.
In recent months, the government has outlined a further redress scheme aimed at compensating victims of the Capture accounting software which was in use at Post Offices between 1992 and 2000.
Since then, a new management team has been appointed and has set the objective of boosting postmasters’ pay and overhauling technology systems to enable Post Office branches to offer a broader range of services.
