The Post Office scandal: 13 petitions call for key campaigner Alan Bates to receive a CBE or knighthood

Demands for Alan Bates to receive a knighthood for his decades-long fight for justice for subpostmasters hit by the Horizon scandal has received backing from Downing Street as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said the honour would be ‘common sense’.

Head of Change.org UK petition Nick Mitchell said that so far, there are 13 petitions calling for Alan Bates to receive either a CBE or knighthood for his efforts.

What is the Post Office scandal?

In a more than 20-year scandal, hundreds of postal workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for alleged false accounting, theft and fraud, because of a glitchy software system that incorrectly showed money missing from accounts.

Some spent time in jail while others went bankrupt, saw their marriages destroyed and some died before their names were cleared.

Managers at Post Office branches across Britain, called postmasters or postmistresses, are often at the heart of their communities, trusted individuals who handle people's savings and pensions.

The Post Office maintained for years that data from the defective Horizon computer accounting system, developed by Japan's Fujitsu and rolled out in 1999, was reliable, while accusing branch managers of theft.

Who is Alan Bates and what did he do to help?

He is an ex-postmaster who set up and led the Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance in a decades long battle to expose the Post Office’s actions won a legal battle paving the way for dozens of convictions to be overturned.

But 25 years on from the first convictions for theft and fraud, it is the four-part ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office that has renewed mass public interest in the scandal like never before.

Watched by nine million viewers so far according to ITV figures, the mini-series centres on the story of sub-postmaster Alan Bates, played by actor Toby Jones. This lead to a public outrage calling for justice.

A petition calling for the former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells to lose her CBE over the Horizon scandal attracted more than 1.2 million signatures, forcing her to announce yesterday (Tuesday) that she would be handing it back.

Vennells oversaw the organisation while it routinely denied there were problems with its Horizon IT system.

The former chief executive said she was “truly sorry” for the devastation caused to staff who were falsely accused of fraud, amid outrage.

Campaigners and MPs welcomed her decision to give up the award – but said Ms Vennells still had “questions to answer” about her role in the scandal at the public inquiry, which resumes this week.

What is Rishi Sunak doing to overturn the wrongful convictions?

Rishi Sunak has announced new legislation to overturn the convictions of hundreds of sub-postmasters prosecuted by the Post Office in the Horizon IT scandal.The UK Prime Minister told the House of Commons on Wednesday he wanted “justice and compensation” for the more than 700 people convicted between 2000 and 2014 of theft or false accounting using flawed data from Fujitsu’s Horizon software.

An independent inquiry as well as a police investigation into the scandal are ongoing, and top business executives and former ministers are in the firing line as no senior Post Office staff have been punished to date.

If you would like to sign one of the petitions to help get Alan Bates a knighthood or a CBE click HERE.