Alan Bates has said he “took offence” after former postal affairs minister Sir Ed Davey suggested the government had an arm’s length relationship with the Post Office.
Mr Bates wrote to Sir Ed in May 2010 on behalf of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) group to request a meeting with him to discuss issues related to the Horizon IT system.
The now Liberal Democrat leader declined Mr Bates’ first request for a meeting, and a Civil Service briefing note shown to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry recommended a meeting was offered following the campaigner’s second letter for “presentational reasons against the background of potential publicity”.
Sir Ed served as postal affairs minister under the coalition government between 2010 and 2012.
He responded to Mr Bates’ initial letter saying the government had adopted “an arm’s length relationship with the company” so that the Post Office had “commercial freedom” to run operations without interference from the government.
The former postmaster said Sir Ed’s response “appeared to be a standard template response” that had not taken into consideration the content of his original letter, describing it as “disappointing”.
When questioned by counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC on why he took offence at Sir Ed’s letter in 2010, Mr Bates said: “It was because of the structure, wasn’t it.
“The government was the sole shareholder, they were the owners, as such, of all of this.
“How can you run or take responsibility for an organisation without having some interest in… or trying to be in control?”
At the time, the JFSA had almost 100 members, according to Mr Bates’ letter.
In his witness statement, Mr Bates wrote of Sir Ed’s letter: “It was disappointing because they had not read or taken into account anything which I had said in my previous correspondence.
“It appeared to be a standard template response.
“I took offence at the phrase ‘arm’s length’, as detailed in my response dated 8 July 2010.”
Following an exchange of letters, Sir Ed and Mr Bates met in October that year.
Asked whether Mr Bates recalled the outcome of the meeting and if Sir Ed engaged in the issues the former subpostmaster had raised, the campaigner responded: “I don’t recall the detail of the meeting and I’m quite certain that if there had been something positive that was coming out of it, I’d have remembered that.”
A Liberal Democrat spokesman said: “Alan Bates is a hero for all he has done to represent subpostmasters through this horrific miscarriage of justice.
“Ed was the first minister to meet with Mr Bates and took his concerns to the Post Office and the Federation of Subpostmasters. Ed, like Mr Bates and so many others, was lied to. No-one knew the scale of these lies until the whistleblower from Fujitsu revealed the truth several years later.
“Ed has said that he’s sorry that he didn’t see through the Post Office’s lies, and that it took him five months to meet Mr Bates.
“The Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to ensure postmasters get full and fair compensation urgently, and Post Office executives who lied for decades are held properly to account.”