The Post Office Horizon scandal is an appalling miscarriage of justice – one of the biggest in British history.

From the year 2000, hundreds of sub-postmasters across the country were wrongly convicted, because of faults with the Post Office’s Horizon IT system that it covered up for years. And it took until 2019, and a High Court battle, for the Post Office to finally admit it and for the truth to come out.

An independent, statutory inquiry into the scandal is underway, and the Met Police are now investigating potential criminality by the Post Office.

It is critical now that the inquiry and the police urgently get to the bottom of this, that the Post Office executives responsible are held properly to account, and that sub-postmasters and their families finally get the compensation they deserve.

Sadly, the Conservative Party and their cheerleaders have decided to use this awful tragedy as a political football. Their supporters like Kelvin MacKenzie, disgraced former editor of The Sun, have resorted to lies and smears. Instead of listening to the voices of the victims, they are busy manufacturing political attacks on Ed Davey and other Liberal Democrats who served as Postal Affairs Ministers between 2010 and 2015. As a result, there’s a lot of misinformation flying around. (Remember, it was in 2000, the Post Office began taking legal action against sub-postmasters using Horizon data as evidence.)

When Ed Davey became Postal Affairs Minister in May 2010, he was advised by civil servants not to meet Alan Bates of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. Just as none of the previous Labour Ministers had met with him or anyone from the campaign in the years before 2010.

Screenshot below of the official record of Ed Davey’s meeting with the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance

But just five months after becoming a Minister, Ed did meet with Alan Bates in October 2010 to hear his concerns. In fact, Ed is the first Minister on record as meeting with Alan Bates. The four Conservative Postal Affairs Ministers from 2015-2019 recorded no meetings with Mr Bates or the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance on their official disclosures.

Ed Davey’s letter to Alan Bates

Ed Davey was the first Minister on record meeting with Alan Bates, just five months after becoming a Minister.

Ed has said many times that in hindsight he wishes he could have done more, and that he bitterly regrets that the Post Office lied to him at the time. Alan Bates himself has said that sadly Ed could not have secured justice more quickly for sub-postmasters because of the way the Post Office was acting. Source Leading Horizon campaigner and former Conservative MP, Lord Arbuthnot has said that focusing on Ed Davey is “bit of a red herring … I wouldn’t concentrate on one Party, as of course no Party comes out well.”.

The Post Office’s lies were only exposed years after the end of Ed’s time as a Minister. The true picture finally started to emerge through the sub-postmasters’ court cases. Remote access was described by the High Court judge in Alan Bates’ case as “a very important central element of the whole dispute” but that “The truth concerning remote access has now emerged in 2019” after a whistleblower came forward. Source: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-post-office-judgment.pdf

Ed and other Liberal Democrat MPs joined campaigners in calling for a full, independent, statutory inquiry into the scandal – even as Conservative Ministers refused.

Eventually, in May 2021, those calls were successful and the current inquiry was established. However, the Post Office is still dragging its feet – delaying the progress of the inquiry by failing to provide crucial documents on time. This Conservative Government must put a stop to that so the inquiry can get to the bottom of this scandal as quickly as possible, and those responsible can be held to account.

Ed’s advisory work for the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF), between 2015 and 2021, was exclusively about energy and climate change policy, and was properly declared on the MPs’ register of interests.

Ed had no knowledge that a separate part of this large company, which has thousands of clients, started to represent the Post Office in 2019. This was four years after Ed started advising at HSF and towards the end of his time there. Ed never had any conversations with anyone at HSF about the Post Office or the Horizon scandal.

He has always been completely transparent about how these earnings go towards supporting Ed and Emily’s son John, who needs 24-hour care now and for the rest of his life.