“I thought about turning it down,” the Post Office chief told me, admitting he found out about his honour when former managing director Paula Vennells asked him about her role in the scandal Alan bates.
Post office manager and activist hero Alan Bates has been knighted after decades of fighting for justice for hundreds of wrongly convicted post office managers.
The dedicated former post office chief who exposed the Post Office Horizon scandal found out about the honour last month when he attended the first day of evidence in the official investigation into his former boss Paula Vennells.
Sir Alan said he was “surprised” by the award but “hugely honoured”. He added that he was accepting the award on behalf of all the victims of The Post, whose fight for justice has cost them millions through the ITV drama Mr Johnson, Bates v Post Office.
But the activist admitted he had considered declining the honour – he had previously declined an OBE when Ms Vennells still held it. The Cabinet Office announced she had been stripped of the title in February for “bringing the awards system into disrepute”.
“I’ve done it half-heartedly,” he said. “I declined the OBE because at that point Paula Vennells held it for her services to the Post Office.
“I realised that if I had assumed anything at that point it would have been a slap in the face by the rest of the group.
“I could very well see from all the emails, messages and cards that there are many people out there who would like some recognition for the work I’ve done on behalf of others.”
“I felt that if I had rejected it it would have been a bit of an insult to all those who had pushed for it. This is about all of us, it’s about the whole campaign.”
Finally, a conversation with a friend convinced me to accept the title this time.
“This confidant said to me, ‘You’ve done all the work, it’s time for someone else to do it,’ he said. “If it gives me another leg up and helps to get the rest going, then so be it.
Sir Alan leads the Justice League for Postmasters, which continues to campaign for a financial settlement for hundreds of victims.” He was responsible for the Horizon IT scandal and joined a class action lawsuit against the Postal Service. Their compensation awards were eaten up by huge legal costs.
“I felt that [the knighthood] was a kind of recognition not just of me and my work, but of the whole group and what everyone has had to go through, which was awful,” he said.
On a day filled with mixed emotions, during his lunch break at the Post Office’s Horizon IT Research Bureau, he received an email from the honours committee informing him of his knighthood.
where Ms Vennells broke down in tears multiple times and made a series of admissions about her tenure from 2012 to 2019.
He described receiving the news of his knighthood, which also came on the same day he had spoken to the Metropolitan Police about their separate investigation into the scandal, as a “bolt out of the blue”.
In what has been described as Britain’s most widespread miscarriage of justice, more than 900 post office managers were wrongfully prosecuted after a flaw in IT software reported money missing from post office accounts. Many were jailed or forced into bankruptcy.
Once the investigation is complete, the Metropolitan Police Inquiry will look into possible offences including perjury and perversion of justice.
Sir Alan said he did not yet know which senior royal would knight him, but added: “I think it will be a great opportunity to see what they know about what goes on around a group of post office managers.”
The youngest of the 1,077 recipients in the King’s Birthday Honours List, 20-year-old Shamza Butt, will receive a BEM for her work as a member of the National Citizen Service Trust’s Youth Voice Forum.
Centenarian Harold Jones is the oldest person to be recognised for his work raising money for motor neurone disease charities.
They will be joined by Rebecca Redfearn, the 24-year-old Paralympic swimmer and two-time medallist who overcame a chronic, genetic eye disease to win silver medals at both the Rio and Tokyo Games and has been awarded an MBE.
When she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at age 7, she gradually lost her sight over time, but her coach’s urging led her to take up para swimming. And now she’s heading to Paris this summer to win gold.
Though she’s now a world champion in breaststroke, she said she felt “really isolated” as a child, unable to go out with friends at night or learn to drive a car as a teenager.
And she ignored her coach’s warnings that her career was over after giving birth to her son Patrick in 2020, qualifying for her second Paralympics nine months later.
“It was a battle. Sleepless nights and a newborn. But I had this end goal. And I wanted to be on the podium in Tokyo,” she said.
“All the leisure centres were closed because of COVID so I had to get a bit creative with my training – I converted one of the sheds into a gym and put a giant hot tub in the garden.”
While women make up 48% of the total, 40% of CBE level recipients are female. What’s more, Dr. Sue Griffiths, a member of the committee, said they would “work hard” to overcome the inequality.
“It’s not completely fair but it’s a significant improvement on previous honour lists,” she added. Ethnic minority winners make up 10% of winners