Alan Bates: Post Office Was Run by ‘Thugs in Suits’

The Horizon IT inquiry has heard that leading campaigner and former subpostmaster accused Ed Davey in 2010 of allowing the Post Office to be, “asset stripped by little more than thugs in suits.” Mr. Davey—now Sir Ed Davey and leader of the Liberal Democrat Party—was the postal affairs minister between May 2010 and February 2012 in the coalition government under Lord David Cameron. The Post Office has been heavily criticised since the broadcast of the ITV drama “Mr. Bates Vs The Post Office,” which focused on the Horizon IT scandal. More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 despite growing evidence that Fujitsu’s Horizon IT system was faulty and was giving the misleading impression that money was going missing from sub-post office branches....