Alan Bates ‘turned down offer to open Glastonbury’ as former subpostmaster leading fight against the Post Office ‘can’t be bought’

The former sub-postmaster leading the battle against the Post Office has ‘turned down an offer to open Glastonbury’, the actor who plays him in the film. ITV drama Mr Bates versus the Post Office has revealed.

Toby Jones played prominent campaigner Alan Bates in the hit show, which told the story of the hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly accused of stealing money from the Post Office in the Horrizon IT scandal.

Faults in the computer system used by the Post Office caused money to appear to be missing from many branch accounts when in fact this was not the case.

Bates, now 68, founded the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance and led a group of 555 subpostmasters who took the post office to the Supreme Court.

The scandal is seen as one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice and Jones said he had ‘played a hero’ in the four-part series.

Speaking at the Hay Festival, Jones said: “I get to play a hero. Truly someone I consider a hero. Someone in the culture who just doesn’t seem to be subject to the same forces as all of us.”

Alan Bates (pictured outside the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry) founded the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance and led a group of 555 subpostmasters who took the Post Office to the Supreme Court

Jones played the prominent campaigner in the hit ITV show Mr Bates vs the Post Office

Jones revealed that Bates had been offered the opportunity to open Glastonbury but the former sub-postmaster had turned it down (file image of Glastonbury’s pyramid stage)

Jones also claimed Bates ‘can’t be bought’ and believes the former sub-postmaster won’t quit until justice is served.

Jones said, “It can’t be bought. He is asked to open Glastonbury. “No, thank you”. He is asked to do these things, but he doesn’t want to do any of that. He says, ‘I have a job to do,’ which is to get things like that done.”

The scandal, which lasted from 1999 to 2015, led to the convictions of more than a hundred subpostmasters being quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Last week, former Post Office boss Paula Vennells cried as she gave evidence during a three-day interrogation at a public inquiry into the scandal.

The embarrassed 65-year-old also told the hearing in London that there are “no words” that will “make better the grief and what people have been through.”

Earlier this year, ITV bosses announced that the first episode of Mr Bates vs. the Post Office was watched by 9.2 million viewers, with its four episodes being the most watched programs on any channel so far this year. The series, including the documentary, has now reached 14.8 million people.

When asked why the ITV drama was such a success, Jones said: ‘There is a rightful sense of outrage and the story is told very clearly, and it’s certainly not obvious.

‘The failure of computer software is not something that can be taken for granted and turned into a drama.’

Bates, now 68, was a key figure in exposing one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice

The campaigner was famously played by Toby Jones, centre, in an ITV TV drama

Paula Vennells was CEO of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, while the company wrongly prosecuted sub-postmasters based on poor data from the Horizon IT system

The ITV drama highlighted the Horizon IT scandal which caused significant public outrage

In May, Bates said he would turn down compensation over the scandal for a second time, after the government offered just under a third of what he requested.

He revealed that he was only offered 30 percent of what he believes he is owed.

This was the second offer Mr Bates had rejected; the first offer in January was about 16 percent and he described it as “cruel, insulting and ridiculous.”

Mr Bates was sacked from his Llandudno branch in 2003 after refusing to take the blame for deficits in his account.

After years of campaigning against this decision, he learned that he was just one of about 900 sub-postmasters who were wrongfully prosecuted due to software problems.

Some of these people were sent to prison after being convicted of false accounting and theft, some had their finances in tatters, and some will never see justice because they have since died.

The government set up a compensation scheme for these postal workers, the Group Litigation Order (GLO), which came into force last year to ensure claimants received additional money to reflect the severity of their situation.

Applicants for this scheme can also choose to settle their claims on a full and final basis for a total lump sum of £75,000, including interest, rather than making a claim for their individual losses.