Alan Bates says ‘everyone will be surprised’ about how much Post Office and Government knew about Horizon scandal

The public will be “surprised about how much was known early on” by the Post Office and the Government about what was going wrong with the Horizon system, former subpostmaster Alan Bates has said.

Appearing before the Business and Trade Committee on Tuesday (January 16), the former subpostmaster who has led the campaign for justice said it is for the inquiry to establish the level of Fujitsu’s culpability.

“My gut feel on this, having looked at lots of paperwork over the years, is how much did the Post Office really know in the early days and how much did government really know in the early days about what was happening at Fujitsu?

“I think everyone’s going to be surprised about how much was known.”