Post Office inquiry live today: Alan Bates says company spent 23 years lying ‘to silence me’ on Horizon scandal

An internal Post Office document, titled “Horizon Integrity”, described Alan Bates as having “become unmanageable”.

The apparent review of possible cases of Horizon faults claimed the former subpostmaster “clearly struggled with the accounting and despite copious support did not follow instructions”.

Detailing several other possible known cases, it then states: “Details of the cases do bear looking at.”

Mr Bates denied that he struggled with accounting, laughed when asked if he received copious support, and on the matter of instructions, said: “Basically try and bankrupt myself? No I didn’t, not to that extent.”

While Alan Bates said he “never” received a reason for the Post Office terminating his contract, he has been shown a letter by the company to an MP in 2003 claiming that it had “lost confidence in his willingness to conduct the job in the manner expected”.

The claim came in correspondence – seen by the inquiry – to MP Betty Williams, who had written to the Post Office to relay her constituent’s concern about the temporary closure of the branch run by Mr Bates.

Asked if that had ever been explained to him, Mr Bates told the inquiry: “No.”

Alan Bates has said he believed the Post Office were trying to “make a lesson” of his case when terminating his contract in 2003.

“I felt they were going to make a lesson of my case – because a number of other people knew what was going on at that time, and I think it was something the Post Office liked to try and give lessons of how they were in charge,” he told the inquiry.

Alan Bates has said he was “never” given an explanation for his dismissal by the Post Office.

Asked by the inquiry’s lead counsel how it felt to receive a letter from the Post Office in August 2003 telling him they were terminating his contract that November, he said: “I was annoyed with them, to put it mildly, but I think it was partly expected in a way.

“Because it was pretty obvious they were after me, one way or another, and the build-up of correspondence over the period was certainly pointing in that direction.

“But I always found it quite interesting that I pulled them up on the point about trying to terminate me and my contract under Clause 12 of the contract … but they didn’t do it that way. They decided to go just under this ‘any reason they wanted in three months’ notice without giving a reason’”.

The inquiry’s lead counsel clarified: “So it’s a ‘without fault, without reason’ termination, just on three month’s written notice”, adding: “You’d had the £1,100 written off, you’ve had the Post Office acknowledging it was because of a genuine dispute over whether Horizon was to blame for it, you’d been rolling over other surpluses since then with Post Office knowledge – and then this arrives.”

Mr Bates replied: “It was a bit strange in a way, because we were a very busy Post Office, in fact it was a time when a lot of Post Offices were losing trade but our sales figures were very high in the region, we developed a lot of new business in there. But it was their decision to do it [fire me] and so be it.”

He added: “I did offer at one point when … we were heading in this direction …