The victims of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal are facing "another fight on their hands" after the "disgraceful" process of their compensation scheme, it has been claimed.Sir Alan Bates has accused the Government of "shortchanging victims" in its compensation scheme, calling it a "kangaroo court".FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Evening, nice to see you. Great story on the front page of the Sunday Times, which has just dropped Mr Bates versus the bureaucrats.
00:07So the post office hero, Mr Bates, is complaining quite rightly that quasi kangaroo court is frustrating victims payouts of the post office scandal.
00:16Basically, long story short, victims aren't getting their compo.
00:20No, absolutely. He's been waiting, what, 22, 23 years since the first complaints went in.
00:25And he was told by the former prime minister, Rishi Sunak, only two years ago that they would get their claims settled.
00:34And now it seems that it's not going to happen.
00:38The promise that was made was that there would be no legalistic speak in these claims.
00:45In other words, they weren't going to get lawyers in to play hardball with them.
00:49And in fact, that's what's happening.
00:50He's been offered a 49.2 percent of what he's originally claimed.
00:55And he says that's not good enough.
00:58So it looks like it looks like they're going to have another fight on their hands, which is quite disgraceful, really.
01:05And the same will be happening for all the other victims of this post office scandal.
01:09And I'll say, David, as well, it's also happening with the infected blood victims who have been absolutely stitched up by the state,
01:17you know, be it the health secretaries or the NHS, pharmaceutical companies, for decades.
01:22They are still waiting for their compensation.
01:24And a lot of them, a lot of them are dying.
01:26They were all infected with AIDS, HIV from filthy blood from Skid Row in America.
01:31And they're all dying off.
01:32They're seeing out their last days without ever really getting justice.
01:35And I suspect a lot of these postmasters are probably, you know, not around either.
01:40Some of them are getting quite elderly now, you know.
01:42And I'd like to know how much the lawyers are making out of all this.
01:45They're probably raking in far more than some of these people will ever see.
01:50And it's quite a disgrace, really, because this man really did fight hard for the people there.
01:55And they thought they'd won a victory.
01:57And it seems to me that this is going to drag on even further.
01:59So it's another scandal in the making here.
02:01Good for the Sunday Times to bring this one to light.
02:04What Sir Alan Bates is saying is that there should be an independent organisation,
02:11free from the civil service, to make decisions on public sector scandals like this.
02:16Because obviously the civil service have got no money.
02:19And they're trying to keep the government is in massive debts.
02:23And they're trying to limit the claims as much as they can,
02:26which we can understand why they get lawyers to do that.
02:28But that's no good if you're the victim of a real wrongdoing.
02:33Yeah, a disgraceful way to treat those victims of the post office scandal.
02:36And I'll say it again, the contaminated blood scandal as well.
02:38Paul Richards, you had a quick question for David?
02:40Well, I mean, David, you and I speak to ministers.
02:43And we know that they are absolutely determined to get compensation and justice for these people.
02:49So what is the hold up?
02:51Is it the civil service?
02:52Is it the legal system?
02:53You know, what can ministers do to kind of break the logjam and get these people the justice they deserve?
02:57I think you're right.
02:59The civil service does have a mind of its own in many ways.
03:03They are, for good reasons, separate from governments.
03:06You know, there's the democratic side who make the big decisions and the civil service who make it happen.
03:12But they're probably going through the various protocols that they've always had.
03:16It's a very bureaucratic system.
03:17So they'll be saying we have to get the lawyers involved and make sure we're not paying more than we need to and one thing and another.
03:23And that's probably what's happening.
03:25So how can we crack some heads together then?
03:27How can we get it moving?
03:28I think that's where the ministers have to get involved.
03:30And I hope that seeing this in the papers tomorrow morning, they'll say this is a disgrace.
03:35We need to do something about it.
03:37Peter Blexley?
03:38David, there's one name missing from this front page article, and it deeply concerns me, and that's Fujitsu.
03:46Have they kind of been forgotten about?
03:48What are journalistic sources doing about pursuing that company who created this flawed IT system?
03:55And what happened to the money?
03:58Because it didn't simply disappear.
04:00It must have gone somewhere.
04:02And who got their grubby mitts on it?
04:04That's an absolutely brilliant observation, that, Peter.
04:08I mean, Fujitsu were massively involved in this and implicated.
04:11Now, I guess this is where the lawyers are getting involved, because they're saying who owes the money to them.
04:19The civil service, well, the post office was the organization which wronged them originally using a dodgy system.
04:28So whether that's a separate action or not, I don't know.
04:31You'd have to ask a lawyer about that.
04:32But it looks to me like the blame has all been heaped on the post office rather than on the subcontracted Fujitsu.