What has Sir Ed Davey said about Post Office scandal as he faces inquiry?
Davey was postal affairs minister in the coalition government between 2010 and 2012 and previously said he was ‘lied to’.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey is set to be quizzed on his role in the Post Office scandal when he appears before the Horizon inquiry today.
Fresh from his party’s triumph in the general election, Davey will likely face some tough questions on Thursday over what he knew about the scandal. Davey was postal affairs minister in the coalition government between 2010 and 2012 and previously said he was “lied to” while in the role.
He has also previously faced criticism for refusing a meeting with campaigner Alan Bates in 2010 to discuss concerns about the Horizon software that led to hundreds of mistaken prosecutions. However, he eventually met with Bates five months after the request was made.
Yahoo News UK rounds up some of things Davey has said about the Post Office scandal since it was thrust back into the spotlight…
‘The Post Office was lying on an industrial scale’
On 8 January this year, just days after the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office aired, Davey was facing intense pressure for his role in the scandal. As scrutiny intensified over what he knew, Davey hit out at the Post Office for “lying”.
He said: “I wish I had known then what we all know now, the Post Office was lying on an industrial scale to me and other ministers... My heart goes out to all those people, we need to make sure their convictions are overturned and we need to make sure they are fairly compensated, and quickly."
‘I’m deeply sorry’
With pressure to apologise ramping up, Davey apologised to the victims of the scandal on 1 February and explained what happened when he initially refused to meet Bates.
He wrote in The Guardian: “As one of the ministers over the 20 years of this scandal, including my time as minister responsible for postal affairs, I’m sorry I did not see through the Post Office’s lies – and that it took me five months to meet Alan Bates, the man who has done so much to uncover it…
“The Post Office is owned by the government but not run by it, so the official advice I was given when I first became a minister in May 2010 was not to meet Bates. He wrote again urging me to reconsider, and I did then meet him that October. But he shouldn’t have had to wait.
"When Bates told me his concerns about Horizon, I took them extremely seriously and put them to the Post Office. What I got back were categorical assurances – the same lies we now know they were telling the subpostmasters, journalists, parliament and the courts.”
‘I should have said sorry sooner’
On 25 February, Davey conceded that he should have apologised “earlier on” in relation to his role in the Post Office scandal.
Asked why it took him so long to apologise, Davey told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “I probably should have said sorry earlier on, but it is a huge scandal and our hearts go out to those hundreds of subpostmasters and their families who were treated appallingly.
The key thing now is to make sure that those exonerations happen quickly, that they get the compensation quickly and that they get to the truth with the inquiry.”
Asked whether he should have questioned the Post Office’s version of events a bit more, he said: “I was never asked a question in parliament, actually. It wasn’t raised that much with me – Mr (Alan Bates) did, and that’s why I met him.
”There were a few written questions and a few letters, but it wasn’t actually until the BBC had a Panorama programme, where they found that insider in Fujitsu who blew the whistle… and the Panorama programme was aired in August 2015. I don’t know what ministers at the time knew about that.”
‘I’m sorry for not seeing Alan Bates’
Asked why he didn’t act at the time that accusations against the Post Office and claims about the Horizon system were coming to light, Davey apologised for not seeing Bates sooner than he did.
He told Sky New on 16 April: “I did, I saw Mr Bates… and I was the first Post Office minister to see him, to be fair, and having seen him I put his questions…
“I feel that as someone who’s sorry for not seeing through the lies, and sorry for not seeing Alan Bates, I’m sure other people feel that as well. We wish we got to the bottom of this.”
‘I’m upset about what happened’
On 10 June, during the general election campaign, Davey was pressed on the Post Office scandal. He told reporters once again that he had been “lied to” by executives.
He said: “I have been campaigning hard for postmasters in my constituency and more broadly. Like everyone else, (I’m) really upset about what happened and quite angry the subpostmasters were lied to, that I and all ministers of political parties were lied to.
“The system of government is complicated and it relies on people telling the truth, so it’s very difficult in a very complicated, very, very busy ministerial position to work out that you’re being lied to.”
‘Guilty parties should go to prison’
Speaking on 26 June, Davey said guilty parties in the Post Office scandal “will have to go to prison for this conspiracy of lies”.
Asked how he felt about being “lied to”, Davey told the PA news agency: “I think if you were a subpostmaster lied to by the Post Office, if you were one of the many ministers over this whole period lied to, whether you were in the media and you were lied to, whether you were in the courts – the lawyers, the judges, the juries – who were lied to, I think all of us particularly on behalf of the subpostmasters who suffered, I think we should be angry on their behalf.
“That’s the reason why I was campaigning with others for the inquiry, which is really trying to get to the bottom of this and hold people to account in the Post Office and in Fujitsu.
“It’s why I’m a big supporter of the police investigation because I think people will have to go to prison for this conspiracy of lies, and ultimately I think it’s for the subpostmasters – they need compensation, they need it urgently, generous, but they also need to know the people who are responsible for this – they need to be held to account.”
