Sir Alan Bates says the civil service "could do a lot more" to speed up compensation schemes for subpostmasters who were victims of the Horizon IT scandal. He speaks ahead of giving evidence before the Business and Trade select committee. Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Yeah, I think it's important these matters are aired and the Select Committee is a very
00:05good place to air the concerns and actually bring them out once again. I say again because
00:13they've already been aired a number of times. But no, I think as the whole process moves
00:18on it's important that it keeps being reviewed and keeps being tested. And so I'm hopeful
00:25today that they're going to hear exactly where things are up to and see if we can put a bit
00:30of pressure on to try and speed things up. Because we've got to, after all this time,
00:34we've got to move this thing to completion. It's very hard to put your finger on one particular
00:40person, but I think the bureaucracy is certainly slowing it down. I think within the civil
00:46service I think they could do a lot more to speed it up than they have been doing. Well
00:51since this all began, even in our GLO group, the 555, I think over 70 have passed away.
00:58So I mean we are losing numbers. But I mean there's a lot of people who are determined
01:05to see it through to the end. And yes there are, you're right, there are some people who
01:09have given up. It's been too much for them. And I can understand that. When you've spent
01:14so many years fighting this battle and seem to be banging your head against the brick
01:18walls for so long, it's too easy just to accept it. And I do worry also that some people
01:25are accepting claims which, you know, for lower amounts than perhaps they're entitled
01:31to if they hadn't gone a bit longer. Well some people now, you know, they're well into
01:36their 80s, they're not well, they've got children in their 60s starting to come through. They've
01:42had enough. You know, they don't want to wait another six months, another year or so, for
01:48a final resolution to their claim. They just want to take something to get on with their lives.