Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said the Post Office lied to him on an “industrial scale” as he attempts to defend his role in the Horizon IT scandal.
Sir Ed has come under increasing criticism for his lack of action when he was postal affairs minister between 2010 and 2012.
Victims of the Post Office scandal faced convictions because of faulty accounting software. The renewed interest in the scandal comes after an ITV drama, entitled “Mr Bates vs. The Post Office”, which depicted the major miscarriage of justice.
Sir Ed Davey told broadcasters yesterday: “I wish I had known then what we all know now, the Post Office was lying on an industrial scale to me and other ministers.”
He added: “My heart goes out to all those people, we need to make sure their convictions are overturned and we need to make sure they are fairly compensated, and quickly,” he said.
In May 2010, Davey refused to meet Alan Bates, the post office operator and campaigner whose story has now been depicted in the ITV drama. At the time, the now-Liberal Democrat leader said he did not believe it “would serve any purpose”.
Davey later met Bates in October 2010.
In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Sir Ed went further to accuse senior Post Office officials of misleading him and other minister with a “conspiracy of lies”.
Conservative figures have been openly attacking Davey over his role in the scandal, with party vice chair Lee Anderson accusing the Liberal Democrat leader of siding with the Post Office.
“This man, this Ed Davey, has not really looked at both sides of the story. He took the side of the Post Office employers and sadly many went to prison due to him not listening”, Anderson told GB News.
He demanded the Liberal Democrat leader “make a public apology in Parliament to these people that sadly took their lives, the families of these victims, and the people who went to prison”.
Conservative MP Sally-Ann Hart has insisted that if Davey is found to have “overlooked something that was glaringly obvious, then he should do what he tells everybody else to do when they make the slightest mistakes… he should consider whether he should himself resign”.
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