Alan Bates: Horizon victims dying while waiting for redress
The former sub-postmaster who has led the campaign for justice in the Horizon scandal criticises the "madness" of delays in compensation, saying people are "dying" waiting for payments. Appearing before MPs at the Commons’ Business and Trade Committee Mr Bates says financial redress for those affected is "absolutely bogged down in red tape". Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 I'm frustrated, to put it mildly. I mean, there is no reason at all why full financial
00:07 redress shouldn't have been delivered by now. It's it's gone on for far too long. People are
00:13 suffering. They've been they're dying. We're losing numbers along the way. And it's it just
00:18 seems to be tied up in bureaucracy. And that's that seems to be the big problem. I mean, it's
00:25 this scheme, the current scheme started in March 2022. And I mean, that's what 80 22 months ago
00:36 now. And we still have very few cases that have actually gone through or come out the other end.
00:42 So it is frustrating, to put it mildly. After mine had gone in, it took them I think it was
00:49 53 days before they asked three very simple questions. I mean, it's madness. The whole
00:58 thing is madness. It's not being true. And there's no transparency behind it, which is even more
01:03 frustrating. We do not know what's happening to these cases once they disappear in there.
01:09 Now it's bogged down, absolutely bogged down, the red table.