Alan Bates ‘turned down OBE and provide to open Glastonbury’
The former subpostmaster leading the fight against the Post Office has ‘turned down an offer to open Glastonbury’, the actor who plays him in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office has revealed.
Toby Jones starred as prominent campaigner Alan Bates in the hit show, which told the story of the hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly accused of stealing money from the Post Office in the Horrizon IT scandal.
Glitches in the computer system used by the Post Office meant money looked as if it was missing from many branch accounts, when in fact it was not. The scandal is seen as one of the UK’s biggest miscarriages of justice.
Bates, now 68, founded the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, and led a group of 555 subpostmasters who took the Post Office to the High Court.
Jones, who said he had ‘played a hero’ in the four-part series, has insisted that nothing will distract Bates until justice is completely served.
Speaking at Hay Festival, Jones said: ‘He can’t be bought. He’s asked to open Glastonbury. “No, thank you”. He’s asked to do these things, he doesn’t want to do any of that. He says, “I’ve got work to do”, which is to get that stuff done.’
Alan Bates (pictured outside the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry) founded the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, and led a group of 555 subpostmasters who took the Post Office to the High Court
Jones starred as the prominent campaigner in the hit ITV show Mr Bates vs the Post Office
Jones revealed that Bates had been offered the chance to open Glastonbury, but the former subpostmaster had turned it down (file image of Glastonbury’s pyramid stage)
Speaking about his role as Mr Bates, he said: ‘I get to play a hero. Really, someone who I think of as a hero. Someone in the culture who just doesn’t seem to be subject to the same forces that we all are.’
The scandal, which was ongoing from 1999 until 2015, has seen more than 100 subpostmasters have their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal.
Last week, Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells cried as she gave evidence during three days of questioning at a public inquiry into the scandal.
The shamed 65-year-old also told the hearing in London that there are ‘no words’ that will make the ‘sorrow and what people have gone through any better’.
Earlier this year, ITV bosses announced the first episode of Mr Bates vs. the Post Office had been watched by 9.2million viewers, with the four episodes being the most watched programmes on any channel so far this year.
The series, including the documentary, has now reached 14.8million people.
When asked about why the ITV drama was such a success, Jones said: ‘There’s a feeling of outrage, justly, and the story is told very clearly, and it’s by no means obvious.
‘Computer software malfunction is not an obvious thing to make a drama about.’
Bates, now 68, was a key figure in exposing one of the UK’s widest miscarriages of justice
The campaigner was famously played by Toby Jones, centre, in an ITV TV drama
Paula Vennells was the CEO of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, while the firm was falsely prosecuting subpostmasters on the basis of poor data from the Horizon IT system
The ITV drama highlighted the Horizon IT scandal causing significant public outrage
In May, Bates said he would reject compensation over the scandal for the second time after the Government offered just under a third of what he has requested.
He revealed he was offered just 30 per cent of what he believes he is owed.
This was the second offer that Mr Bates had rejected, the first offer in January was around 16 per cent and he described it as ‘cruel, offensive and derisory’.
Mr Bates was sacked from his Llandudno branch in 2003, when he refused to accept blame for shortfalls on his account.
After years of campaigning against this decision, he would uncover that he was just one of around 900 sub-postmasters who were wrongly prosecuted over the software issues.
Some of these people were sent to prison after being convicted of false accounting and theft, some had their finances left in tatters and some will never see justice as they have since died.
The Government set up a compensation scheme for these postmasters called the Group Litigation Order (GLO), that opened last year to ensure the claimants received extra money to reflect the gravity of their situations.
Applicants in this scheme can also opt to settle their claims on a full and final basis for a total fixed sum of £75,000, inclusive of interest, instead of making a claim for their individual losses.
