Alan Bates: Toxic Post Office can't get its act together

Post Office campaigner Alan Bates has slammed the Post Office as a "toxic organisation" that "cannot get its act together".

Mr Bates said financial redress for sub-postmasters is "the real priority" as the firm's bosses are engulfed in a row with the former chairman.

The former sub-postmaster Alan Bates led the campaign to expose the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.

His work partly inspired the recent ITV drama which reignited public interest.

Following an evidence session in front of MPs on Tuesday, he told the BBC's Today programme that victims of the scandal were being "dragged all over the place with one thing after another by this toxic organisation that cannot get its act together - and it's just appalling."

During the hearing in Westminster, he said that the bitter row that has broken out between government and the former Post Officer chairman Henry Staunton was a "distraction", adding that the government needs to "get on and pay people".

Mr Bates said that he wants the compensation scheme for victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal to speed up.

He also questioned the framing of money due to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses under the GLO scheme as "compensation".

"It's not - it's financial redress. This is money these people are actually owed and they've been owed it for years.

"Compensation sounds like something at the benefit, at the whim, of the government and all the rest of it... Let's get it right and let's really push forward on that aspect," he added.

Mr Bates founded the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, and he and five others took the Post Office to the High Court in 2017.

He continues to campaign for all sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses affected by the Horizon software failure and for fair compensation from the government.

Mr Bates' two-decade fight inspired the recent ITV mini-series - Mr Bates vs the Post Office - which told the story of hundreds of sub-postmasters and postmistresses who were wrongly prosecuted after a faulty accounting system suggested money was missing from Post Office branches.