Sir Alan Bates has reached a seven-figure deal to settle his claim over the Post Office Horizon scandal, more than 20 years after he began campaigning over what turned into one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice.

Sky News has learnt that the government has agreed a deal with the former sub-postmaster after handing him what he described as a “take it or leave it” offer during the spring.

Sir Alan has previously said publicly that that proposal amounted to 49.2% of his original claim.

One source suggested that his final settlement may have been worth between £4m and £5m, implying that Sir Alan’s claim could have been in the region of £10m, although those figures could not be corroborated on Tuesday morning.

A government spokesperson said: “We pay tribute to Sir Alan Bates for his long record of campaigning on behalf of victims and have now paid out over £1.2bn to more than 9,000 victims.

“We can confirm that Sir Alan’s claim has reached the end of the scheme process and been settled.”

Sky News has attempted to reach Sir Alan for comment about the settlement of his claim.

Read more:
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Who are the key figures in the scandal?
Victim died days before compensation letter arrived

Sir Alan led efforts over many years to prove that the Horizon software system supplied by Fujitsu, the Japanese technology company, was faulty.

Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015, with scores of people either ending their own lives or making attempts to do so.

However, it was only after ITV turned their fight for justice into a drama, Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, that the government accelerated plans to deliver redress to victims.

Even so, the compensation scheme set up to administer redress has been mired in controversy.

Writing in The Sunday Times in May, Sir Alan described the process as “quasi-kangaroo courts in which the Department for Business and Trade sits in judgement of the claims and alters the goalposts as and when it chooses”.

“Claims are, and have been, knocked back on the basis that legally you would not be able to make them, or that the parameters of the scheme do not extend to certain items.”

Sir Alan had previously been made compensation offers worth just one-sixth of his claim – which he had labelled “derisory”, with a second offer amounting to a third of the sum he was seeking.

Sir Ross Cranston, a former High Court judge, adjudicates on cases where a claimant disputes a compensation offer from the government and then objects to the results of a review by an independent panel.

In 2017, Sir Alan and a group of 555 sub-postmasters sued the Post Office in the High Court, ultimately winning a £58m settlement.

However, swingeing legal fees left the group with just £12m of that sum, prompting ministers to establish a separate compensation scheme amid a growing outcry.

A significant number of other sub-postmasters have also complained publicly about the pace, and outcome, of the compensation process.

The first volume of Sir Wyn Williams’s public inquiry into the Horizon scandal was published in July, and concluded that at least 13 people may have taken their own lives after being accused of wrongdoing, even though the Post Office and Fujitsu knew the Horizon system was flawed.

The miscarriage of justice left the Post Office’s reputation, and that of former bosses including chief executive Paula Vennells, in tatters.

A subsequent corporate governance mess under the last government further dragged the Post Office’s name through the mud, with the then chief executive, Nick Read, accused of being absorbed by his own remuneration.

In recent months, the government has outlined a further redress scheme aimed at compensating victims of the Capture accounting software which was in use at Post Offices between 1992 and 2000.

Since then, a new management team has been appointed and has set the objective of boosting postmasters’ pay and overhauling technology systems to enable Post Office branches to offer a broader range of services.

Every week, the Money team answers a reader’s financial dilemma or consumer problem – email yours to moneyblog@sky.uk. Today’s is…

My father passed away in April 2022. My mother was formally diagnosed with dementia a few months later. After Dad passed I helped Mum take care of the lion’s share of admin and tried to simplify things in her life cognisant of her reduced capacity. One of the things was to cancel the Sky subscription as this was only ever for Dad to watch the football. In June this year Mum went into full time care and as her son, with full power of attorney, I went about mitigating all her outgoings as I didn’t want her to be paying out unnecessarily now that she was in full-time residential care where everything is covered. Here I unearthed a BT Sport subscription which my mum had been charged for in the past three years. I explained that there was no way my mother would be aware she had this service let alone would use it. We didn’t get any paper bills. BT is unwilling to waiver the charges other than initially offering a paltry £30 on compensation and then at a later date was prepared to offer a further £80, which I declined – this amounts to more than £1,000.
Barry

Thank you for your email, Barry – I was really sorry to read about what your family has gone through and your story illustrates the minefield that often awaits relatives when a loved one dies.

Read all the latest Money tips and news here

This is far too big a topic to cover in one post but it’s worth going over some basics that apply across the board (and Citizens Advice has a useful guide here).

When someone dies, the executor named in any will is responsible for sorting the deceased’s financial affairs. If there isn’t a will, an administrator will be appointed – usually a friend or relative.

There are a couple of mechanisms that can help.

There’s the government’s Tell Us Once scheme, which will notify multiple organisations:

• HMRC – to deal with personal tax and to cancel benefits and credits, for example child benefit;
• Department for Work and Pensions – to cancel benefits and entitlements, for example universal credit or state pension;
• Passport Office – to cancel a British passport;
• DVLA – to cancel a licence, remove the person as the keeper of up to five vehicles and end the vehicle tax;
• Local council – to cancel housing benefit, council tax reduction, a Blue Badge, inform council housing services and remove the person from the electoral register;
• Social Security Scotland – to cancel benefits and entitlements from the Scottish government, for example Scottish child payment.

Tell Us Once will also contact some public sector pension schemes and Veterans UK to cancel or update Armed Forces Compensation Scheme payments.

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Another mechanism is the Death Notification Service, which many major banks and building societies have signed up to and can help when dealing with multiple accounts.

You probably noticed that none of the above cover household bills and subscriptions – there are no shortcuts here other than contacting each organisation.

We have abbreviated your email above, but the key detail is that your mum was ultimately responsible for sorting your dad’s financial affairs – but, given she was just a few months from an official dementia diagnosis, she arguably wasn’t in a fit position to do so.

Had she been diagnosed at the time, it would have been possible to ask a court to replace her as executor and, with access to your father’s bank statements, you would no doubt have spotted the BT Sport subscription fee coming out each month.

Sadly, this wasn’t the case – and BT continued to legitimately charge for a service it was still providing.

Ultimately, it’s hard to pin blame on either side here. It’s an unfortunate case that was hard to avoid – though I would have been surprised if BT didn’t make some effort to help your family.

After I got in touch with them, they responded quickly – and it wasn’t long before they reached out to you.

Though the company maintained no errors were made on their part, they offered you a goodwill gesture that you told me you were happy with.

In a statement to me, BT said: “While the family had Sky, they were also accessing and paying BT for TNT Sports on their Sky box.

“We have spoken to Barry who acknowledges that while the Sky TV service was cancelled, BT were never contacted to report a bereavement or request cancellation of the service.

“Although there has been no BT error, we have offered a reimbursement of six months to acknowledge their experience.”

This feature is not intended as financial advice – the aim is to give an overview of the things you should think about. Submit your dilemma or consumer dispute via:

• WhatsApp here
• Or email moneyblog@sky.uk with the subject line “Money Problem”

Rachel Reeves has refused to rule out breaking her manifesto pledge not to raise certain taxes, as she lays the groundwork ahead of the budget later this month.

Asked directly by our political editor Beth Rigby if she stands by her promises not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT, the chancellor declined to do so.

She told Rigby: “Your viewers can see the challenges that we face, the challenges that are on [sic] a global nature. And they can also see the challenges in the long-term performance of our economy.”

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She went on: “As chancellor, I have to face the world as it is, not the world as I want it to be. And when challenges come our way, the only question is how to respond to them, not whether to respond or not.

“As I respond at the budget on 26 November, my focus will be on getting NHS waiting lists down, getting the cost of living down and also getting the national debt down.”

‘Each of us must do our bit’

Ms Reeves’s comments to Rigby came after a highly unusual pre-budget speech in Downing Street in which she set out the scale of the international and domestic “challenges” facing the government.

She also hinted at tax rises, saying: “If we are to build the future of Britain together, each of us must do our bit for the security of our country and the brightness of its future.”

Despite her promise that last year’s budget – which was the biggest tax-raising fiscal event since 1993 – was a “once in a parliament event,” the chancellor said that in the past year, “the world has thrown even more challenges our way,” pointing to “the continual threat of tariffs” from the United States, inflation that has been “too slow to come down,” “volatile” supply chains leading to higher prices, and the high cost of government borrowing.

She also put the blame squarely on previous Tory governments, accusing them of “years of economic mismanagement” that has “limited our country’s potential,” and said past administrations prioritised “political convenience” over “economic imperative”.

Ms Reeves painted a picture of devastation following the years of austerity in the wake of the financial crisis, “instability and indecision” after that, and then the consequences of what she called “a rushed and ill-conceived Brexit”.

“This isn’t about re-litigating old choices – it’s about being honest with the people, about the consequences that those choices have had,” she said.

‘I don’t expect anyone to be satisfied with growth so far’

The chancellor defended her personal record in office so far, saying interest rates and NHS waiting lists have fallen, while investment in the UK is rising, and added: “Our growth was the fastest in the G7 in the first half of this year. I don’t expect anyone to be satisfied with growth of 1%. I am not, and I know that there is more to do.”

Amid that backdrop, Ms Reeves set out her three priorities for the budget: “Protecting our NHS, reducing our national debt, and improving the cost of living.”

Cutting inflation will also be a key aim in her announcements later this month, and “creating the conditions that [see] interest rate cuts to support economic growth and improve the cost of living”.

She rejected calls from some Labour MPs to relax her fiscal rules, reiterating that they are “ironclad,” and arguing that the national debt – which stands at £2.6trn, or 94% of GDP – must come down in order to reduce the cost of government borrowing and spend less public money on interest payments to invest in “the public services essential to both a decent society and a strong economy”.

She also put them on notice that cuts to welfare remain on the government’s agenda, despite its humiliating U-turn on cuts to personal independence payments for disabled people earlier this year, saying: “There is nothing progressive about refusing to reform a system that is leaving one in eight young people out of education or employment.”

And the chancellor had a few words for her political opponents, saying the Tories’ plan for £47bn in cuts would have “devastating consequences for our public services,” and mocked the Reform UK leadership of Kent County Council for exploring local tax rises instead of cuts, as promised.

Concluding her speech, Ms Reeves vowed not to “repeat those mistakes” of the past by backtracking on investments, and said: “We were elected to break with the cycle of decline, and this government is determined to see that through.”

‘Reeves made all the wrong choices’

In response to her speech, Conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride wrote on X that “all she’s done is confirm the fears of households and businesses – that tax rises are coming”.

He wrote: “The chancellor claims she fixed the public finances last year. If that was true, she would not be rolling the pitch for more tax rises and broken promises. The reality is, she fiddled the fiscal rules so she could borrow hundreds of billions more.

“Every time the numbers don’t add up, Reeves blames someone else. But this is about choices – and she made all the wrong ones. If Rachel Reeves had the backbone to get control of government spending – including the welfare bill – she wouldn’t need to raise taxes.”

He called for her to resign if she raises taxes.