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- Written by Jack Fenwick
- bbc politics
Sir Ed Davey, who became post secretary in 2010, was advised to meet with Post Office campaigner Alan Bates to avoid negative publicity from the Horizon scandal, a BBC investigation has revealed.
Sir Ed, now Liberal Democrat leader, has faced questions in recent weeks over why he initially refused to do so.
He met the campaigner five months later and said he regretted not meeting him sooner.
He was encouraged to meet with Bates for “personal reasons,” the documents said.
Officials at the business department that oversees the post office warned that headlines such as “Government minister refuses to meet victim” may appear.
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said Sir Ed was the first minister to meet Mr Bates, adding that they took Mr Bates’ concerns “very seriously” and had reported them to the Post Office.
“It is now clear that the advice given to Ed at the time was based on lies from the Post Office,” they added.
From 1999 to 2015, the Postal Service indicted hundreds of subpostmasters and mistresses for making money appear missing due to flaws in its Horizon accounting system.
Sir Ed oversaw the Post Office as Minister for Posts and Telecommunications from May 2010 to February 2012. Although the Post Office is fully funded by the government, it remains independent in its day-to-day operations.
Former Deputy Postmaster General Bates founded the Justice League for Postmasters to campaign for wrongful convictions to be overturned and wanted to discuss Horizon, which the Post Office at the time claimed was free of defects. Ta.
An initial request for a meeting in May 2010 was refused, but Sir Ed met him in October 2010.
“Avoid any promises.”
A memo written to him by business unit officials ahead of the October meeting said journalists were looking into the matter and the meeting was recommended “for potential publicity reasons.” ing.
In a memo released to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act, civil servants advised Sir Ed to “continue to express their full confidence in the integrity and robustness of the Horizon system”.
It also provided him with a list of potential “elephant traps” for discussion, including “avoiding any commitment to adopt any of the goals” laid out by Bates’ campaign group. It also included advice.
He was advised to “avoid committing to launching an independent/external review of Horizon”, adding that such a review would be “expensive” and “time consuming”. There is.
The memo revealed “very early” in the meeting whether Mr Bates was considering legal action against the Post Office, allowing Sir Ed to adopt an approach that avoids commenting on pressing legal issues. recommended to do so.
Writing in the Guardian last week, Sir Ed said that when Mr Bates first became Posts Minister in May 2010, officials told him that Mr Bates was “owned but not run” by the government. He said he was advised not to meet him.
“He wrote to me again asking me to reconsider and then I met him in October,” he added.
A memo obtained by the BBC said Mr Bates’ initial request for a meeting was refused “on the grounds that the issues raised were operational and contractual matters for the Post Office”.
The paper said Bates’ “second (and more confrontational) letter” was followed by “reports that Channel 4 was planning to run a news story” and that this second meeting request “could be a publicity stunt.” He warns that he was accepted “on the basis of his gender.”
Sir Ed is not the only politician facing questions over his handling of the scandal.
While the scandal was unfolding, several Conservative and Labor MPs held a press conference on the postal issue, with the Liberal Democrats accusing the Conservative-majority government in power since 2015 of being slow to compensate victims. Was.
“Ed said he was disappointed that he couldn’t see through the Post Office’s lies and that it took him five months to meet Alan Bates,” the Liberal Democrat spokesperson added.
A spokesperson for the department said: “We would like to pay tribute to the excellent campaign Alan has led and his determination to deliver justice for the thousands of innocent postmasters affected by this scandal. “I will.”
He added that the ministry is working to accelerate compensation for wrongfully convicted people and is introducing legislation to overturn the convictions of wrongfully accused people.
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